Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 3 | Beyond Census 2000: As a Nation, We are the World, page 3 (low bandwidth)

We do not normally think of the civil rights movement (which is often seen as beginning in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus) as central to the nation’s demographic narrative, but we should. In many ways, it is the 20th century result of forces rooted in 19th century immigration, both voluntary and forced. Under the banner of civil rights, African Americans mounted an offensive designed to bring about an alignment of demography with democracy. Courts and legislatures were enlisted in what became a campaign to end the injustice of exclusion. Thus, the civil rights movement can be understood as arising from a desire for unity, rather than a celebration of diversity. Many believed that discrimination would be swept away when the principles of democracy were recognized by all and applied equally to all citizens.

But as it turned out, discrimination did not give way easily and, as a society, we were soon enmeshed in unfamiliar political and legal territory. Equal opportunity came to mean proportionate representation; the definition of individual rights expanded to include group rights; and the principles of nondiscrimination were translated into affirmative action. Discrimination, which many had thought of as simply the attitudes and actions of real estate agents or employers or college admissions officers or election clerks, proved also to be embedded in residential segregation patterns, wage rates, university enrollments and the shape of election districts. In other words, it was something that could be measured. The vocabulary of prejudice began to include definitions of institutional racism. In the 20th century, statistical proportionality—comparing the percentage of the population that is minority with the percentage of that minority working, for example, in the police force, or participating in higher education or living in desirable housing—became the weapon of choice in advancing the goals of the civil rights movement. This gave the census an even more central role to play in the nation’s civic and political life because statistical proportionality cannot be assessed without a count of how many members of various racial and ethnic groups are living in the U.S. Thus the story of the census in the 20th century also becomes one of racial taxonomy.

Sorting by Race
in the U.S. Census

In 1790, the census divided the resident population of the U.S. into three racial groups: free whites, slaves and all other free persons (native American Indians). No census since has been without a question on race, a distinction shared with only two other population characteristics: age and gender. How we have measured these two traits has been stable across two centuries—after all, we know what those traits mean. Not so with race; it has been measured dozens of different ways. Racial categories have been added or dropped depending on prevailing political beliefs. Over the years, this situation has led to a steady expansion in the number of racial categories listed on the census form, a pattern, as we shall shortly see, that repeats itself with a vengeance in the 2000 census.

In the 1820 census, for instance, we first added “free colored persons” to the racial classification scheme. After the Civil War, there was interest in “shades of color,” and the census classified people as mulatto (the offspring of a black person and a white person), quadroon (one-quarter black ancestry) and octoroon (one-eighth black ancestry). In 1890, Asians were counted in the census, which listed separate categories for Chinese and Japanese. Filipinos, Koreans and Hindus (confusing a religion with a race) were counted in 1920. Hawaiian and Part Hawaiian appeared on the 1960 census form, as did Aleut and Eskimo, in each instance recognizing that the newest states in the Union had introduced further diversity. Mexican as a category appeared in 1930, then was dropped to be replaced by a question on Hispanic origin.

Why has the way we count and sort by race always been such a volatile issue? Because throughout American history, starting with the 1790 census, a classification of racial groups has been used to regulate relations among the races and to support discriminatory policies designed to protect the numerical and political supremacy of white Americans of European ancestry. Throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the racial classification system separated those entitled to full participation in national life from those whose race or national origin was cause for exclusion. Slavery itself, including the attempt to balance admission to the Union of slave and free states in the first half of the 19th century, is one such instance. So also—to give just a few other examples—were the forced relocation of native Americans to reservations; “Jim Crow” laws that discriminated against black Americans; racially motivated immigration quotas; and the interning of Japanese Americans in detention camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Even today, as modern biology provides mounting evidence that race is not a scientifically meaningful way to sort and classify, we find it hard to let go of racial divisions. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s gave fresh momentum to racial measurement. In the latter part of the 20th century, using the same tool previously wielded to deny rights, groups historically discriminated against began to use racial measurement to achieve full civic membership. The nation was called upon to explain why there were—proportionately speaking—few members of minority groups heading major corporations, or at the helm of universities or being elected to political office; or why there were more people of color in prisons and receiving harsher sentences than their white counterparts committing similar offenses. The basic logic of racial taxonomy was easily extended—as it was for women’s rights and the rights of the handicapped—to encompass the idea that disproportionate representation implied a glass ceiling or other racially based barriers to full access that had to be eliminated.

The racial taxonomy that gave rise to statistical proportionality as a tool of governance was based on a small number of discrete categories—white, black and Indian. Asians were then added and, in 1970, “Hispanic” was included as an ethnic category. By 1990, every resident of America, according to the census, could be sorted into one of five main racial groups: White, Black or Negro, Native Indian/Native Alaskan, Asian, or Other. There were Asian sub-groups, but these were combined as one Asian category. Importantly, being of Spanish/Hispanic origin was treated in 1990, and again in 2000, as an ethnic and not a racial distinction; a person of Hispanic origin could be of any race.

Census 2000 introduced a dramatic change in our racial classification system. It allowed Americans to define themselves as being of multiple race. From now on, as far as the government is concerned, you don’t have to try to shoehorn yourself into one discrete racial group: you can belong to two, even three, four or five.

How did this happen? What does this mean for how we live together?

It happened because Americans who viewed themselves as being of more than one racial group, or who had married someone of a different race and had children, felt it was discriminatory to be forced to select only one identity. Black mothers married to white fathers, as well as many other interracial couples, sent photographs of their mixed race children to the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards (where the decision would be made), pleading for the chance to count them for what they were—multiracial. The cause was right, the pressure was intense; eventually, the government agreed that Census 2000 would give Americans the right to check more than one racial category.

Where We Are Now

Although the race question on the 2000 census form seems to allow for as many as 15 separate groups, because of the number of Asian sub-groups listed, in fact the basic classification system recognizes only six categories: White, Black, Asian, Native Indian/Native Alaskan, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Other Race. In terms of basic categories, one difference between 1990 and 2000 is that Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander is treated as a separate racial group rather than as part of a more inclusive Asian group.

It is a second difference that leads to multiple-race responses. In permitting respondents to mark “one or more,” the census sets up the possibility of 63 discrete racial groups. This is the number of permutations that occur when six categories can be combined in any way one chooses. Hispanic/non-Hispanic, an ethnic distinction for the purpose of the census, divides the entire population into two additional categories, allowing for 126 possible racial/ethnic groupings.

The instruction to “mark one or more races” is staggering in its implications. Though not that many persons identified as multiple-race—fewer than 7 million, or 2.4 percent of the population, did so and the rate was twice as high for children as it was for adults—demographers expect the numbers to continue to grow as interracial marriages occur and as people become more comfortable with the multiple-race option.

What is extraordinary is that the nation moved suddenly, and with only minimal public understanding of the consequences, from a limited and relatively closed racial taxonomy to one that has no limits. In the future, racial categories will no doubt become more numerous. And why not? What grounds does the government have to declare “enough is enough?” When there were only three or even four or five categories, maybe “enough is enough” was plausible. But how can we decide, as a nation, that what we allow for on the census form of today—63 racial groups or 126 racial/ ethnic ones—is the “right” number? It can’t be, nor can any other number be “right.” There is no political or scientifically defensible limit.

Moreover, given that there is no scientific basis to support racial divisions, the federal government correctly insists that one’s race is what one decides it is. As far as the census is concerned—and by extension, this also goes for the entire official statistical system—race is a matter of “you are who you want to be.” This invites the politics of identity based on race and ethnicity, or it does as long as benefits are distributed in terms of such identities. Surely, additional groups will soon demand separate recognition and accommodation. Leaders in the Arab-American community, for example, have expressed strong interest in becoming a “racial group” in the census.

The future of racial measurement is uncertain. The taxonomy based on Census 2000 has both too many and too few categories. There are too many to support race-based policies that use statistical proportionality but too few to accommodate the pressures of identity politics. Taxonomies with both too many and too few categories are inherently unstable. The full significance of this must be assessed in the context of the demographic transformation now underway in our country. To develop a picture of these trends, we must return, briefly, to our immigration narrative.

Late 20th Century Immigration

After the passage of restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s, immigration dropped off sharply; and those who were allowed into the U.S. were primarily from northern and western European countries. These patterns began to shift in the 1960s when, influenced by the civil rights movement, new and more liberal immigration laws were enacted, including those based on the moral claim of family reunification and the humanitarian cause of admitting political refugees. Immigrants from Southeast Asia and, later, from Central America, who owed their refugee status to American military action, began arriving in large numbers. Additional changes in immigration law, responding, in part, to the need for farm labor and service workers, offered legal status to significant numbers of undocumented aliens. Under pressure from universities and technology companies, Congress also increased selected categories of employment-based immigration to encourage hi-tech workers to come to this country.

Taken together, these new criteria have massively shifted the routes of world immigration flowing into the U.S. In 1850, more than nine-out-of-ten foreign-born residents were from Europe, and this pattern held well into the 20th century. As late as 1960, Europeans still comprised three-out-of-every-four foreign-born Americans. But by 1997, more than half of the foreign-born cohort of the U.S. population was from Latin America and more than a quarter from Asia. Foreign-born Europeans have dropped to fewer than one-in-five and will soon be a tiny fraction of the foreign born.

It is these census numbers that give rise to the recent flood of media stories announcing that by mid-century, America will be a minority-majority nation. As convoluted—and misleading—as that phrase is, it still points to the fact that the U.S. is now more demographically diverse than ever in its history.

This, I suggest, is why the nation must yet again confront the questions, How can we live together? How can we live together justly?

An Uncertain Future

Census 2000 marks a demographic turning point. A radical change in how we count and sort by race is interacting with immigration patterns that are producing escalating diversity. Either of these two factors taken by itself has large and uncertain consequences.

For example:

We rely upon local, state and federal government to lead the way in eliminating discrimination in areas such as education, employment, housing and health care; to protect voting rights; to stop racial profiling; and to safeguard our civil liberties in dozens of other ways. Equity in these areas, however, has often depended upon the use of statistical proportionality, a tool that is being weakened as racial groups are divided into more and more subcategories. What methodology will we use in its place?
Until recently, the economy has been strong and unemployment low. Has this created a national optimism about the future that has outweighed the forces of nativistic politics, or has the concept of multiculturalism become so thoroughly entwined with our image of the U.S. that anti-immigration policies are now largely discredited? We may not know the answer to these questions until there is a significant economic downturn and increased competition for low-end employment opportunities.
The nation’s often celebrated religious tolerance was originally based on differences within Protestantism, and only grudgingly extended to include Catholics and Jews. There are now swiftly growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others. Will religious tolerance be easily extended, or will we repeat one of the darker chapters in our history?
Historically, immigrants arrive from world regions that are poor or in turmoil. But with the advent of globalization and internationally interdependent economies, there are new reasons to emigrate and new needs on the part of the U.S. to welcome skilled immigrants. Might educated technology workers from more developed countries come to dominate immigration flows to the disadvantage of poorer workers from poorer countries? If so, there are implications not only for our economy but for the countries of origin which may educate and then lose their most skilled people.
Americans of European ancestry are not reproducing at replacement levels; neither are the native populations of western European nations. If this trend continues, the competition among wealthier nations for foreign labor may be fierce; in the struggle to find workers to support growing economies, nations that are hospitable to immigrants will have an advantage. Under these conditions, might how we can live together turn out to be as much about gaining an economic edge as about social justice? There are any number of such issues, but as complicated as they are they do not begin to tell the whole story. What makes the future much more challenging is our uncertainty about the interaction between the two transformations discussed in this essay�the radical change in racial measurement and classification and the displacement of a European immigrant stream with one that is Asian and Latin. There is no historical reference point for this dynamic. For example:
The pressure on previous immigrant groups was to assimilate, to become �American,� when that meant to accept that getting ahead depended on individual effort and merit�not group rights. Identity politics have now been put into the mix, primarily as a way to compensate for the fact that some groups, because of race or ethnicity, were denied the normal routes of upward mobility. Will new immigrants find that asserting group rights is an avenue to success, or will they assimilate in a manner that blurs rather than sharpens boundaries between different groups?
More generally, as today�s new immigrants gain citizenship and become politically active, will they want more or less to focus on their separate identities? If the former, they will expect to find their own place in the racial and ethnic classification that has marked our politics for two centuries. And that classification will get more fine-grained and less usable. But if they seek to escape being measured as separate groups, they risk antagonizing other groups that still rely on statistical proportionality as a tool to redress earlier wrongs. For example, will new African immigrants from Somalia or Ghana want to be separately measured, not measured at all, or be included as African Americans?
For such questions there is no crystal ball. We cannot know if the changes that are now inevitable will be marked by tolerance and social order or by turmoil and violence. History offers ample evidence for both possibilities, suggesting that we are likely to have some of each. How can we live together justly? is the question we again must ask.
A century hence, historians will record of the early 21st century whether churches showed moral leadership or retreated to dogma; whether universities provided intellectual clarity or argued about disciplinary turf; whether civic organizations went boldly into new territory or hewed to the safe and familiar; whether businesses recognized the claims of social justice or saw only the next quarter�s earnings; whether foundations were visionary or irrelevant; whether the political class was courageous or succumbed to intimidation; and, mostly, whether the public demanded of itself and its leaders an honest go at figuring out how we can, in fact, live together�justly.

Next page: As far as the government is concerned, race is a matter of “You are who you want to be.”

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