{"id":2262,"date":"2006-04-16T18:02:59","date_gmt":"2006-04-17T01:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/16\/the-social-construction-of-our-ever-changing-racial-categories\/"},"modified":"2006-04-16T18:02:59","modified_gmt":"2006-04-17T01:02:59","slug":"the-social-construction-of-our-ever-changing-racial-categories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2262","title":{"rendered":"The Social Construction of Our Ever Changing Racial Categories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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”\u009d 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.<\/p>\n

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.”\u009d 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”\u009d 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”\u009d 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.”\u009d 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 \u00c2\u00bc Black).<\/p>\n

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”\u009d 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”\u009d (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”\u009d (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.”\u009d 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: <\/p>\n

“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.”\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The introduction of a “Hindu”\u009d category, which lasted only one year, is fascinating since most would today consider Hindu a religion and not a race.<\/p>\n

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”\u009d was created in this census based on the newly formed “Spanish Origin”\u009d question, which has been on every census since 1970. However, the Census has never considered people of “Spanish Origin”\u009d 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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“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.
\nA 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.”\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"Consequently someone who is \u00c2\u00bc 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 \u00c2\u00bc 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<\/a>.) 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.<\/p>\n

Endnote: All of the data on historical changes in Census categories can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This is cross posted at Rachel’s Tavern<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}