For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2012. Cross-posted at Global Policy TV and Pacific Standard.
Publicizing the release of the 1940 U.S. Census data, LIFE magazine released photographs of Census enumerators collecting data from household members. Yep, Census enumerators. For almost 200 years, the U.S. counted people and recorded information about them in person, by sending out a representative of the U.S. government to evaluate them directly (source).
By 1970, the government was collecting Census data by mail-in survey. The shift to a survey had dramatic effects on at least one Census category: race.
Before the shift, Census enumerators categorized people into racial groups based on their appearance. They did not ask respondents how they characterized themselves. Instead, they made a judgment call, drawing on explicit instructions given to the Census takers.
On a mail-in survey, however, the individual self-identified. They got to tell the government what race they were instead of letting the government decide. There were at least two striking shifts as a result of this change:
- First, it resulted in a dramatic increase in the Native American population. Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. Native American population magically grew 110%. People who had identified as American Indian had apparently been somewhat invisible to the government.
- Second, to the chagrin of the Census Bureau, 80% of Puerto Ricans choose white (only 40% of them had been identified as white in the previous Census). The government wanted to categorize Puerto Ricans as predominantly black, but the Puerto Rican population saw things differently.
I like this story. Switching from enumerators to surveys meant literally shifting our definition of what race is from a matter of appearance to a matter of identity. And it wasn’t a strategic or philosophical decision. Instead, the very demographics of the population underwent a fundamental unsettling because of the logistical difficulties in collecting information from a large number of people. Nevertheless, this change would have a profound impact on who we think Americans are, what research about race finds, and how we think about race today.
See also the U.S. Census and the Social Construction of Race and Race and Censuses from Around the World. To look at the questionnaires and their instructions for any decade, visit the Minnesota Population Center. Thanks to Philip Cohen for sending the link.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 41
Tili Sokolov — April 10, 2012
As a former US Census enumerator for the 2010 decennial census, I'd just like to note that in-person enumeration does still take place. It's used for the households which do not mail in the census form. However, we were trained never to fill in our own personal judgments of race, gender, age, etc., only to ask the respondents for their information and fill in what they say. So, for example, I recorded one man's race and his children's races by writing in "African American and Human", since this is what he wanted. Gender was a bit more difficult: many respondents got annoyed at me if I asked them "what is your gender?" after they'd already told me their name, so I got in the habit of generally saying "so, just to double-check, your gender is female?" It grated on my politics, but most people already had very little patience for me, and it didn't seem like the time or the place to make people question their cis privilege.
Umlud — April 10, 2012
And starting in 2000, you could choose more than one race. As a multi-racial person, this option is awesome!
Dianna Fielding — April 10, 2012
That's very interesting. I have read, too, that the first census the categories for race were "Free white male, free white female, and slave." Thank goodness times have changed!
I like being able to fill in my own categories. No one knows me like I do.
pduggie — April 10, 2012
I have to wonder if "native american" isn't asking for an ideological answer, say from whites or others saying "I'm just as much a 'native American' as anybody. I'll pick that", even aside from 1/16th cherokee folks deciding to identify too.
Philip Cohen — April 10, 2012
Great post.
The timing is off, however. The Census used self-enumeration starting in 1960, although a complete mail-out/mail-back was not implemented until 1970.
You can see all the questionnaires, and accompanying instructions, for each decade here: http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumForm.shtml
Charles Richter — April 10, 2012
This reminds me of something I found once while studying the 1880 census records of Chinatown in Portland, Oregon. Of the entire enclave, there was a single interracial couple, Mr. P, and Emma Long. Emma was an English immigrant married to a Chinese tailor. The Longs had two children, both of whom were enumerated as "white" like their mother, although in a different hand from that of the enumerator who filled out the rest of the form. It seems likely that the enumerator was unsure how to classify the children, and left it up to a supervisor to decide based on the races of the parents.
eeka — April 10, 2012
The "are Puerto Ricans white?" question is an interesting one, because it shows how census categories of race don't quite mesh with reality. In the case of people of Latino ancestry, they have the "Latino" category for indicating that they identify as part of a community of color, while still seeing their appearance as "white." Other places besides Latin America have diversity of race, and they don't all have this option. My community has a number of Cape Verdean families, and when filling out the forms at the program where I work, the people who have a large percentage of Portuguese ancestry, thus don't look 100% Black African (but would be people most people would read as a person with some African ancestry), write "white" on their forms as this is the race they're considered in Cape Verde, which completely erases them as a person of color from the statistics. These aren't generally people who are trying to whitewash themselves and be "just American" at all -- I'm talking mostly about people who speak the language and eat the food and proudly teach their children that they're Cape Verdean. Yet the public health department statistics are going to count them under our American definition of "white" (which equals "needs no sensitivity extended toward their racial background") instead of as people of color.
We also have a large Haitian/Haitian-American community here, and many of those families put "other" on forms if it only lists "African" or "African-American" but not "Black." Most of our Haitian families very proudly identify as Haitian and Black, but don't feel that it's relevant or important that their ancestors originally came from Africa and/or have strong feelings that they have nothing in common with African-Americans and don't wish to be grouped together.
Denise — April 10, 2012
Puerto Ricans are not attempting to 'white wash' as it appears some intimated. Instead it speaks to a very conflicted identity that wishes to honor ALL our ancestry--indigenous, African (mostly Yoruba), Eurasian/Middle Eastern (mostly Lebanese and Syrian) and European (not just Spain, but Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and others). That we still recognize Boriken (Taino name for the island), refuse to give up Spanish, and actually filed suit in NYC to stop the racial identification on birth certificates (black mothers were having white babies and white mothers were having black babies, oh my) is testimony to our resistance to being othered and subjugated (we WON). That is what race is from a sociological and anthropological standpoint, no? A label that reifies a social construction. I love when I get the "you don't look like" comment when I disclose my last name or identity as well as the resultant reassessment of my person-hood. The usual fumbling around 'oh, I thought you were white' is truly interesting since my pale skin gives me access to many privileges (and racist/xenophobic commentary) over those who are more phenotypically Latin or Black. Regardless, recent DNA analysis indicates our love of all things Taino is not just nostalgia--According to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61
percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent
have African and 12 percent Caucasian. Now what that LOOKS like, well, that is our beautiful rainbow. See http://www.centrelink.org/KearnsDNA.html
Gilbert P — April 11, 2012
Commercial DNA analysis companies such as 23andme and Lumigenix can already give everyone a definitive maternal and paternal family origin, complete with handy acronym such as 'H1B2'. Just spit into the tube. No more agonizing or philosophizing.
Melinda — April 11, 2012
A big part of the jump in Native Americans between 1980 and 2000 was due to Natives "coming out" so to speak. A lot of off-rez Natives concealed their racial/ethnic identities for generations until the late 70's. In my parents' generation, they weren't allowed to talk about it outside of the house when they were kids. I was born in 1976 and my parents were born in the 1940's. I was in the first generation that grew up talking about our racial background openly.
Yael — April 11, 2012
Some of the discussions in this thread - the ones about Native American identifications and about mixed race, specifically - reminded me of a detail I once found in some 1910 census data that I ran into while researching something off an old postcard for my blog.The family in my postcard included a white husband (deceased at the time of the census) and a half-Snohomish wife, and in the image attached here I found said wife and one of her sons living with her sister and her sister's daughter.
[I apologise for this long and rambling introduction, by the way, it just seemed necessary in order to make the details in the image a bt clearer.]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XcviM_aBOY4/TMrSpzvJZfI/AAAAAAAAAX8/GfWsD-xZy6Y/s1600/temp+3+small.jpgAnyway, what was very interesting to me was the detail that you can see in the 'race' column: the terms 'HB' and 'QB' (which logic dictates should stand for 'halfbreed' and 'quarter-breed') are obviously written over something else that has been deleted, presumably 'W' for 'white'.I could just imagine the census guy filling these out, then catching on to something in the conversation, saying 'Ah, so your mother was an Indian?' and pointedly scratching out the 'W' and correcting his listing. (I have kind of a wild imagination sometimes, though.)
Yael — April 11, 2012
Some of the discussions in this thread - the ones about Native American identifications and about mixed race, specifically - reminded me of a detail I once found in some 1910 census data that I ran into while researching something off an old postcard for my blog.The family in my postcard included a white husband (deceased at the time of the census) and a half-Snohomish wife, and in the image attached here I found said wife and one of her sons living with her sister and her sister's daughter.
[I apologise for this long and rambling introduction, by the way, it just seemed necessary in order to make the details in the image a bt clearer.]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XcviM_aBOY4/TMrSpzvJZfI/AAAAAAAAAX8/GfWsD-xZy6Y/s1600/temp+3+small.jpgAnyway, what was very interesting to me was the detail that you can see in the 'race' column: the terms 'HB' and 'QB' (which logic dictates should stand for 'halfbreed' and 'quarter-breed') are obviously written over something else that has been deleted, presumably 'W' for 'white'.I could just imagine the census guy filling these out, then catching on to something in the conversation, saying 'Ah, so your mother was an Indian?' and pointedly scratching out the 'W' and correcting his listing. (I have kind of a wild imagination sometimes, though.)
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