Mobilising for pure prestige? Challenging Federal census ethnic categories in the USA (1850–1940)

Abstract

The US census is characterised, among other features, by the importance it gives, to this day, to race. There is an ongoing debate on the use of racial categories to underpin affirmative action policies, but their presence in the census is little discussed. This tends either to mask the functions of racial and ethnic categories in the pre‐civil rights era or to lead to consideration of such categories as a mere residue of historical discrimination. Yet it would be unfortunate to write a history of such census categories that reduces them to these two functions: to identify, first, groups of non‐European origin and then ‘new immigrants’ subject to official discrimination, and later their supposed descendents in order to include them within the scope of compensatory policies. Such an approach would elide the more complex and still largely neglected history of the social construction of ethnic and racial categories. This article examines several cases in which groups mobilised to demand that government agencies should take account of their existence in a different way, in a context where no material advantage was at stake. In so doing, it historicises the statistical categories of race and ethnicity, which cannot be understood solely by reference to their current usage.

The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities

“…By 1890, the census racial classification scheme reflected a growing preoccupation with identifying persons with even the slightest hint of African ancestry, adding categories for “quadroon” (persons with one-fourth black ancestry) and “octoroon” (persons with one-eighth or less black ancestry). In 1930, Mexicans were added to the growing list of “nonwhites.” Fearing the move as an effort to stigmatize (and possibly deny naturalization to) Mexican Americans by labeling them a nonwhite racial group, the Mexican American population (and the Mexican government) strongly protested the change, and the racial category was soon disavowed by the director of the Census Bureau (Cortes 1980; Schor 2005: 92−93; Hochschild and Powell 2008: 80−81).…”

“…Although early-twentieth-century Census Bureau reports acknowledge the limits of using enumerators’ perceptions as a basis for racial classification (US Bureau of the Census 1918: Ch. 11; Schor 2005: 91), racial ideology and government policies were constructed on the assumption that outward appearances signified racial origin. The changing racial classifications used by the Census Bureau reflect the deep ideological and political divides in American society, where color and culture were used at various times to justify slavery, exploitation, and official forms of discrimination (Davis 1991; Fredrickson 2005; Hochschild and Powell 2008).…”

Making Mexico: Legal Nationality, Chinese Race, and the 1930 Population Census

“…To indicate the race of each individual, 1930 U.S. census takers had to choose among various classifications including white, black, Indian, Chinese, and-for the first time and only time-the "Mexican" race. 77 The instructions given to enumerators for recording Mexican race in column twelve of the 1930 U.S. census ballots recognized mestizaje as important-"Practically all Mexican laborers are of a racial mixture difficult to classify, though usually well recognized in the localities where they are found"-but insisted it was also important to count Mexicans as a separate racial group. 78 The instructions continued "In order to obtain separate figures for this racial group, it has been decided that all person born in Mexico, or having parents born in Mexico, who are not definitely white, Negro, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese, should be returned as Mexican."…”

Strategizing the Decennial Census of Housing for Poverty Reduction in Kenya

“…The topics covered in housing censuses are not as controversial as those dealt with in population censuses. In the latter, topics such as ethnicity, religion and income have raised a lot of controversy in the US and UK (see, for example, Aspinall, 2000;Cook, 2004; Schor, 2005). The US census, for example, is always characterized by litigation and political outcry; as discussed by Mitroff et al.…”