The social construction of race is a well established view in social sciences and biology. It simply posits that racial categories and the general idea of race is culturally created and maintained. One of the clearest examples of how racial categories are socially constructed is the US Census. The Census has long been a barometer for the racial ethos, and racial categories are hotly contested. In 2000 the hot debate for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). who decides the racial categories, was whether or not to include the multiracial category. Advocates claiming to represent interracial couples and their children wanted the multiracial category. In contrast, traditional Civil Rights groups, such as the NAACP, worried that the Black population would decrease if a multiracial category was included, so they opposed a multiracial category. In the end, the Census Bureau compromised by allowing people to mark more than one category for the first time.
So what were the final racial categories on the 2000 census? In total people could choose from 15 categories: White, Black/African Am. or Negro, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Other Asian, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, Other Pacific Islander, and Some Other Race. The census does not consider Hispanics/Latinos to be a race, so the “Spanish Origin” question is separate from the race question. Other groups, such as Middle Easterners were unsuccessful at their lobbying efforts and consequently their proposed categories were not placed on the census. The contention in 2000 was nothing new. The racial categories on the Census have constantly changed, and their legitimacy is routinely challenged.
In the early years there were fewer racial categories. The 1790 census divided people into the following groups: free White men 16 and over, free White males under 16, free White females, all other free persons, and slaves. The primary racial divisions in the Census in the early years were between free Whites, enslaved and free Blacks, and “Indians not taxed.” The primary purpose of the census was to determine voting. The more the population of free Whites and enslaved Blacks the more votes an area could receive. Indians “not taxed” did not count for purposes of voting, and enslaved Africans counted as 3/5 of a person. The mid to late 1800s saw the development of some new racial categories. The 1850 Census, which noted that there were a few “domesticated Indians” who were taxed and should be counted differently. Census takers (called enumerators) were reminded that Indians were who living among Whites (not on reservations) were to be counted. Also in the mid 1800s, enumerators were asked to make a distinction between mulattoes and Blacks. Enumerators were given this warning about the mulatto category, “The word is here generic, and includes quadroons, octoroons, and all persons having any perceptible trace of African blood.” By the late 1800s new racial categories were introduced: In 1890 the categories were black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians (for those who do not know: octoroon is 1/8 Black, Quadroon is ¼ Black).
In the early 1900s the racial categories expanded and contracted. Octoroon and quadroon were dropped in favor of a catch-all mulatto category, and a category called “other” was introduced. The mulatto category disappeared from the Census by the mid-century. It should also be noted that a series of questions about “nativity” (citizenship) were introduced. The backlash against Southern and Eastern European immigrants is likely the reason for this. People wanted to know how many immigrants were coming and where they were coming from. This became even more important after 1924 National Origins Act, put strict immigration quotas keep out immigrants who were considered “less desirable” (Italians, Russians, Poles, and other Southern and Eastern Europeans). (The structure of this immigration law required determining the ethnic extraction of Americans in order to set quotas and maintain the ethnic balance in favor of English, German, and Irish immigrants. These were not considered races, but the focus on ethnicity in the early part of the century reveals how the White category was somewhat contentious.) Additionally, the distinctions between taxed and non-taxed Indians became mute after the 1920 Census because Indians on and off reservations were enfranchised. However, in 1930 the decision was made that people of Mexican origin did not fit into these categories White, Negro, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese, so they were given their own designation; however, this changed in 1940 when enumerators were instructed to classify Mexicans as White unless they were “definitely Indian or some other race than White.” The growing population of people from Latin American, Eastern Europe, and the Indian subcontinent caused some debate about new categories; thus the Census issued the following instructions in 1960:
“The instructions for completing P5 (race or color) by observation directed that Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, or other persons of Latin descent would be classified as ”White” unless they were definitely Negro, Indian, or some other race. Southern European and Near Eastern nationalities also were to be considered White. Asian Indians were to be classified as ”Other,” and ”Hindu” written in.”
The introduction of a “Hindu” category, which lasted only one year, is fascinating since most would today consider Hindu a religion and not a race.
In the modern era of the Census the number of categories has expanded dramatically. By 1970 the Census had the following racial categories…White, Negro or Black, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean, Indian, and Other. The modern concept of a unified group called “Hispanics” was created in this census based on the newly formed “Spanish Origin” question, which has been on every census since 1970. However, the Census has never considered people of “Spanish Origin” a race…and census forms often say Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race. In 1980 a few more races were added Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Guamanian, Samoan, Eskimo, and Aleut.
So what if anything do all of these changes tell us about the social construction of race? If race was truly biological, then we would not have seen so many changes in the Census. If race was biological, then we wouldn’t have groups lobbying to be added or to have other categories taken away. This is not to say that there is nothing genetic about our skin color, hair texture, or the shape of our faces, but the fact that we have this debate about which visible characteristics to pick and chose indicates that there is something more than biology at work. Take the instructions in 1940 that very explicitly say that southern Europeans were to be classified as White. Today many people take it for granted that Italians are classified as White; however, this was enough of a point of contention in 1940 that instructions had to direct people that this group should be marked as White. Additionally, the following statement undermines the notion that skin color and ancestry alone determine one’s race:
“A person of mixed White and Negro blood was to be returned as Negro, no matter how small the percentage of Negro blood; someone part Indian and part Negro also was to be listed as Negro unless the Indian blood predominated and the person was generally accepted as an Indian in the community.
A person of mixed White and Indian blood was to be returned as an Indian, except where the percentage of Indian blood was very small or where he or she was regarded as White in the community.”
Consequently someone who is ¼ Black, but visibly White, such as Professor Gregory Howard Williams the man pictured on the left, is considered Black by the Census. On the contrary someone who is ¼ White, but visibly Black would be counted as Black. Is this an issue of genes, physical appearance, or biology? No, it is about the distribution of power and resources. (A more detailed discussion of this can be found here.) Race is a political issue, and who knows what the next Census will include. Multiracial may become it’s own new category. Middle Eastern may be added. Some of the various east Asian groups may be dropped since the Census groups them together in most reports. This is clearly not about biology but about representation and its connection to the power structure. Formal recognition of a racial group in the US Census means that this new group will be officially recognized, which strongly influences the political power of each group.
Endnote: All of the data on historical changes in Census categories can be found here.
This is cross posted at Rachel’s Tavern
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Rachel,
Thank you for posting this.
I assume – perhaps wrongly – that the decision to post this came at least partially out of the thread discussion on the HIV/AIDS topic.
I’ve felt uneasy about capitulating to the “race is biological, damn it” people on that thread to the extent that I did, but I felt a bit at sea trying to figure out how to respond. I feel like your summary here is one good explanation for how race is socially constucted.
(A corrolary, of course, is historical construction of “Italians” “Jews” and “Irish” as non-white, which of course means that the concept of whiteness itself is complicated and socially determined.)
I wonder if those who feel that race is biologically determined might retort that they aren’t talking about race as it’s constructed here, but the old-fashioned “five racial types” – caucazoid, mongoloid, negroid, etc.
I don’t know the history of these terms – apart from the fact that they’ve been thoroughly discredited, at least in the circles I travel – but it’s possible that their construction has remained more stable. However, I seem to recall that you can’t reliably determine which of these “five types” a person belongs to…
In any case, even if it’s true as TangoMan suggested in the prior thread, that one can determine many people’s “race” genetically — by seeing that they have certain combinations of genetic markers — I still don’t see that this argues for distinct racial categories with solid boundaries. Surely, one could divide the human race along non-traditional lines – separating out the Eurasians, but dividing Africa into three parts – and then find genetic markers that would allow one to – sometimes – determine which of these populations someone belongs to.
But just because we could create a Thispieceofwestafrican – and even if we could figure out genetic markers that could sometimes identify these individuals – racial group wouldn’t mean that it was somehow a “real” thing. Instead, we’d have created a different set of socially constructed boundaries. Where we placed those boundaries would still be socially constructed.
I guess this is just another way of thinking about what you’ve said in this post — the idea that race is socially constructed isn’t about saying “these people’s ancestors aren’t from the place the race title describes” but about saying “why and when we opt to create distinctions between people from one place and people from another stems from social history not biological distinction.”
Some of this is speculation and rumination, of course. I appreciate corrections from those better versed in race theory than I.
Thank you, this one was interesting.
What do you mean by “truly” biological? Race is a term used in many contexts; e.g in biology and also in everyday politics, and when it comes to politics it certainly isn’t just about “objective biology” as you pointed out via examples. As the cynics say, politics is just a question of personal interests masquerading as a question of principles – and what would be a better mask than science?
To be exact, even in biology “race” is just a taxonomic construct; for example, in Finland there’s this molecular blob called “Mikko”; and in nature there are these rideable creatures called “horses” and purring creatures called “cats”; and in a block of land called “China” there is an extended family of things called “human” called “the Chinese”, and these extended families are called “races”. This is why I prefer “African-Americans” over “blacks” (because there are many races whose skin is black).
IMHO the threshold of what is considered a race should be left for biologists and all notions of race (and sex, for that matter) should be abolished from the books of law.
Mikko, biologists don’t talk about races in this sort of way because there geniunely is no biological meaning to race. Even things like sickle cell or cystic fibrosis, are found in all populations but at different rates.
The notion of distinct biological races of people is not meaningful…..at least when it is in anyway equated with social definitions of race.
i think the formal biological explanation is this:
there are clearly some characteristics that persist in certain populations because people with those characteristics statistically continue to select mates within the population. skin color is the most externally obvious example.
but there are ways to measure the variability of genes within any population.and the key fact is (from what i have gathered over the years, but i don’t have any hard sources, so some biologist please back me up here): the variability from person to person within any proposed “racial group” is greater than the variability from group to group. thus any attempt at a biological definition of race that refers to genetic similarity will break down, since the variation within that group will be too great, and will thus defy the purported genetic definition.
mathematically, this means that it’s fair to say that a particular (socially defined, or self-identified) group might have a higher probability of possessing a certain gene (for resistance to malaria due to sickle cell trait, or blue eyes, or whatever), but mere possession of a cluster of such genes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a member of that group, and so you can’t define the group clearly based on biology.
this brief history of racial classifications is fascinating. i know a lot of east-asian people, and i can rarely tell by looking at them whether they are of chinese, japanese, or korean origin. on the other hand, without much effort, it’s pretty easy to identify some characteristics that (roughly, of course) distinguish african groups (somalis tend to be tall with prominent cheek-bones, for instance). so it’s very strange that the various east-asian groups get their own racial categories, while various black groups are just called “black”. part of this is due, of course, to the loss of knowledge of background due to slavery, but surely part of it is also due to social standing: once you’re black it apparently doesn’t matter what sub-category of black you are. once you’re east-asian, our government still cares.
you might argue that the government cares because people from various east-asian backgrounds speak different languages, and that’s fine. but that’s a linguistic distinction, and it’s just false to call it a racial distinction. rachel’s point is that eventually all those racial distinctions evade definition, and the best you can do is define groups based on language or country of origin (for recent immigrants).
anyway, thanks for the post.
uhhh sorry…those italics were meant just for the word “probabily”. i suck.
I cannot claim to be a biologist, but I sense a contradiction here. If we can show that certain traits (e.g dark skin or cystic fibrosis) occur at different densities in different extended families (e.g more often in African-Americans than in Chinese), then that suggests a taxonomy (i.e classification) is meaningful.
The odds of having cystic fibrosis and, say, the odds of having a certain skin color, aren’t really different kinds of traits: as you pointed out with the example of cystic fibrosis, they occur at different densities in different populations (as a trivial example, almost 100% of African-Americans have dark skin.)
I agree with emphasis on the word “distinct”: building taxonomies isn’t an exact science, and borders between taxonomic units aren’t clear-cut and undebatable. That’s another reason why the notion of race complicates social systems.
(as a trivial example, almost 100% of African-Americans have dark skin.)
Define dark. Lena Horn?
Hasn’t our understanding of biology (including human biology) changed a bit in the last two and a quarter centuries? And why would the (purely hypothetical) scientific facts of race preclude interest-group politics any more than the (very non-hypothetical) scientific facts of climate change preclude interest-group politics?
Just to be clear, I have no interest in claiming that race is “biological,” rather than “socially constructed.” I just don’t think this particular argument is very good.
Not sure what happened to my blockquote tags there. That first paragraph was supposed to be quoted.
[Fixed! –Amp]
These diseases appear to be based more on geography than race. Sickle Cell trait is a genetic mutation in response to malaria which is carried by various species of mosquitos. As they and malaria have spread through Africa and into India, for example, sickle cell trait occurance in the populations has increased.
There are theories that CF trait(not the disease) originated as a mutation in response to diseases of the intestines like Cholera and Typhoid, to protect against massive electrolyte inbalance from the diarrea that is prevalent with both diseases. That has been used to explain the rate of CF and CF trait in the United States and parts of Europe. There’s interesting material on this online.
CF trait linked to typhoid
Another example of changing racial categorization: Up until the middle of the 20th century, more or less, Jews, especially Eastern European Jews, were not considered white people in either the United States or much of Western Europe. (In fact, according to some European-authored racial taxonomies–the one I am thinking of is either by Richard Wagner or one of his relatives–Jews were even more “mongrelized” than Blacks.)
Well, there was supposed to be more to that last post, but I got interrupted, pressed “post” accidentally and now I have to go teach. So let me just say that there is a book I have been meaning to read, How Jews Became White Folks that traces the history of this transformation.
This is just a general response to several of the comments made (especially to Polymath and Madolin). Another way to think about this is to ask why we pick the physical traits that we do to signify race. For example, let’s say Michael Jordan has type A+ blood and Oprah Winfrey has B- blood. My blood type is A+, so I could get Michael’s blood but Oprah couldn’t. Why not use blood type as a distinction? Or what about height (that’s what they did in Rwanda)? We could even divide people based on whether or not they have attached earlobes. There are millions of genetic variations that we could use to divide people into subgroups, but we only choose certain ones. The reason we choose skin color is because it visible and easy to tell. In the blood type example I used above is not easy to tell, but very clearly reflects a biological reality.
Richard Dyer (I think I have his name right), in his book White, makes the point that whiteness, the choice of whiteness, has at least some of its roots in Christian notions of purity. Unfortunately, the book is in storage and I have no access to it.
Oh? By at least one of the definitions of “African-American” listed, probably the one in effect at the time and place I was born, that is, the “one drop” rule (any AA ancestory means you’re AA), I’m African-American. My skin is white. Really. Ok, maybe light pink. But it sure isn’t dark, no matter how much sun it’s exposed to. Bright red, occasionally, dark, never. And I’ve got blue eyes. Of course, the “one drop rule” is a very silly definition meant to enforce eugenics, not to describe any biological reality, but still, the fact that I can, in principle, claim to be African-American shows how flexible the definition of “race” is.
It’s a tricky problem because there are people who are more closely related than other people and it is sometimes useful to acknowledge that fact. For example, certain classes of anti-high blood pressure drugs work better on people of primarily European ancestory, others on those of primarily African ancestory. So it’s helpful to know someone’s ancestory when deciding which drug to start them on. Of course, one has to tailor the recommendation to the individual, but “race” can be a handy guide of where to start. On the other hand, there’s no really good biological definition of race. The general meaning as I understand it is a group of more genetically similar individuals. But what is genetically similar? If one looks at polymorphisms (normal variations) of one particular protein called transthyrin, there are more variants in Africa than the rest of the world combined. So one might say that the world’s races include two or three African races and all others. Mitochonodrial groupings are somewhat different. There is only one major mitochondrial haplogroup (with three minor variations) in Africa, while there are at least five in the pre-Columbian Americas (including a rather bizarre one that might be of Viking origin…or not.)
My conclusion in the end is that it’s sometimes useful and interesting to look at race as long as one remembers that, at the bottom, it’s an invention.
Even today there are parts of the UK where a dark southern European wouldn’t be considered as white (the definition for white is much broader in America). I remember some years ago, my brother had a dark Spanish boy (on an school exchange visit from Spain) staying with our family (in Liverpool). I overheard some white English boys referring to my brother and the Spanish boy as “2 black guys”… I think the Spanish boy would have been mortified if he had known about that. lol.
My favorite example of the changing historical constructions of race is a diagram that was punlished in a newspaper in Australia in the 19th century. It had some drawings of people in profile, “proving” that Irish people were more closely related to Africans than to the English.
I’m teaching Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color and he has one of the better histories of the racialization of Europeans out there. His book, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. My Introduction to Ethnicity and Race course goes a little bit further into debates over social construction and race. Hope people find it useful. If you know of others, please post them here. My debate with The Objectivist on race and science comes out next Thursday. I’m looking to put together an unofficial link farm between now and then. Thanks.
The “2006 Census Test” is taking place in Austin Texas right now – here’s the current race categorization (with “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” being a separate question):
Plus there is an interesting question, one that has me stumped to tell the truth:
It’s fill-in-the-blank, up to 57 characters. Plus a “Don’t know” check box.
My favorite demonstration of the (quickly!) shifting constructions of race is the following:
Dearborn, MI has the largest US population of “Arabs”. This is, in part, becasue racist Henry Ford, when planning the city as his racially pure utopia, limited residency in Dearborn to white people. While Arab is not, yet, an official census-defined race here in the US, I think its more than clear that in the current context “Arab” people are a stigmatized, racialized non-white group in the current culture.