

Racebox.org - The Census since 1790 - nirmal
http://racebox.org/

======
yummyfajitas
The original purpose of the race box was to count slaves as 3/5 of a person
(for congressional representation). Since we no longer do this, why is the
race box still there?

~~~
forkandwait
There is a lot of history / context / baggage packed into a single question on
the census, but I think our concern with race is fairly obvious when you
consider our history . The US has always been concerned with figuring out its
racial composition, since slavery and all its multitude of consequences (Jim
Crow, lots of poor blacks leaving the south for Northern cities) have made it
so important. Think of all the money and power that used to go with whether
you were white or black, or whether you could treat an employee (or slave) as
white or black, or whether your state had a lot of black people or not who
only got you 3/5 of a representative!

It is starting to seem anachronistic to worry over race (thank god!), but that
history is really very recent; think about bussing riots in the 1970s, etc.
Also, a huge number of government programs have a mission to try to fix racial
disparities (successfully or not), and they need information on basic racial
population composition.

That said, I can't wait until nobody cares about race anymore. The litmus test
on this will be whether ("inter") marriage matters; in coastal cities among
college educated people, it isn't really news if one's parents are asian and
white, or latino and white, but it still elicits comment and introspection if
they are black and white...

I think the big dividing lines today depend on education and family cultural
background, but I am not sure how a decennial census might track that.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_I think the big dividing lines today depend on education and family cultural
background, but I am not sure how a decennial census might track that._

The Census Bureau also continually sends out the American Community Survey to
a subset of the population. It asks much more detailed questions, so the data
may already exist.

~~~
forkandwait
Right. My point was that the job of decennial is basically to get a 100% count
of bodies and residences, and that is hard enough without going into
sociological detail.

------
tokenadult
Much more about this issue in the context of college admission, including
tracking the number of students officially reported as "race/ethnicity
unknown" via mandated college reporting to the federal government:

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-
admissions/92721...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-
admissions/927219-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-8-a.html)

------
DrSprout
I like how the 1940 census lists "Indian" and "Hindu" as separate races. I'm
pretty sure I know what they mean, but just the same...

------
Perceval
I liked the 1900–1920 ones best. There's no point in trying to pretend that
the categories are scientific/natural or otherwise given. Might as well let
people just fill in whatever they self-identify as. Would probably yield more
interesting and insightful results in the process.

------
skoob
Why do Americans use the word race when they mean ethnicity?

~~~
tokenadult
What privileges one definition of "race" (or of "ethnicity") over another?

"The concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects self-identification
by people according to the race or races with which they most closely
identify. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be
interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature."

<http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68176.htm>

