Interracial Brooklyn

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2012-09-14 03:13Z by Steven

Interracial Brooklyn

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
September 2012

Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Intermarriage has been rising in the United States steadily since about 1960. Before 1960 there were so few interracial marriages in the United States that Interraciality was really invisible. Prior to 1960, the idea of marrying someone from another race in the US was so unusual that social pressure, family pressure, and in some states the law made such marriages impossible.

So what explains the rise in interracial marriage?

One answer is that the law changed. In 1967, the US Supreme Court, in a brief but powerful and unanimous decision (Loving v. Virginia), struck down all the state laws that had made interracial marriage illegal. Overnight, Americans had the right to marry anyone from the opposite sex regardless of race. New York, however, was one of the states that had never had laws against interracial marriage. Take a look at this map of US states to see which states had laws against interracial marriage and when.

In the above graph (click to enlarge), you can see that intermarriage had a similar rise in the US, in Brooklyn, and in New York, starting near zero, and peaking at between 5% and 7% of all marriages in 2010. The trajectory of interracial marriage was so similar in Brooklyn and in the US as a whole that the blue US line is hidden underneath the green Brooklyn line in parts of the graph above. Since interracial marriage was always legal in Brooklyn but often illegal in the rest of the US before 1967, something other than the law (which never changed in Brooklyn) must explain the rise of intermarriage.

Even though interracial marriage has risen a great deal, Americans and Brooklynites still have a strong tendency to marry people from their own racial group…

…What explains the rise of Intermarriage?

  • The US had a big immigration reform in 1965, which led to a sharp rise in immigration from Asia and Latin America. As the US population became more racially diverse, there was more opportunity for Americans to meet (and fall in love with) people from other races. Immigrant destinations like New York City tend to have more intermarriage as a result of having more racial diversity.
  • The age at first marriage has been steadily rising since the 1960s. Age at first marriage in the US is now 27 or 28 years of age. In the past, age of first marriage was typically about 21 years. The later age at first marriage means that young people are more likely to travel away from home before they marry. Travel away from home increases the chances of meeting (and falling in love with) someone who is different from you.
  • Attitudes have changed. Interracial marriage is not very controversial for people who were raised in the post- Civil Rights and post- Loving v. Virginia era. As interracial marriage has become more common and more visible, more Americans have gotten used to the idea that interracial couples are part of the panorama of American families. Opposition within families to intermarriage has declined, but has not disappeared…

…In order to figure out how many interracial couples there are, one must first divide people into separate and mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories. In dividing people into mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories, one immediately confronts a series of definition problems that have no unique solution.

The fact is that race exists in America only because we Americans believe in race and invest the categories with meaning…

Read the entire article here.

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The Lure of Whiteness and the Politics of “Otherness”: Mexican American Racial Identity

Posted in Census/Demographics, Dissertations, Identity Development/Psychology, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Texas, United States on 2012-09-13 00:30Z by Steven

The Lure of Whiteness and the Politics of “Otherness”: Mexican American Racial Identity

University of Texas, Austin
2004
185 pages

Julie Anne Dowling

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the The University of Texas at Austin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Using a “constructed ethnicity” (Nagel 1994) approach, this project employs multiple methods to explore the racial identification of Mexican Americans. The U.S. Census has grappled with appropriate strategies for identifying the Mexican-ancestry population for over a century, including the use of a “Mexican” racial category in 1930. I examine historical documents pertaining to the 1930 Census and the development of the “Mexican” racial classification, as well as how Mexican Americans in the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) constructed “White” racial identities in their efforts to resist such racialization. I then explore contemporary Mexican American identity as reflected in current racial self-reporting on the U.S. Census. Finally, I conduct fifty-two in-depth interviews with a strategic sample of Mexican Americans in five Texas cities, investigating how such factors as socioeconomic status, racial composition of neighborhood, proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, social networks, nativity/migration history, Spanish language fluency, physical appearance, and political attitudes affect their racial and ethnic identifications. Results indicate a complex relationship between personal histories and local community constructions of identity that influences racial identification.

Table of Contents

  • List of Tables
  • List of Figuresxii
  • Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race
  • Chapter 2: Modernity and Texas Racial Politics in the Early Twentieth Century, LULAC and the Construction of the White Mexican
  • Chapter 3: The “Other” Race of Mexican Americans: Exploring Racial Identification in the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
  • Chapter 4: “Where’s Hispanic?” Mexican American Responses to the Census Race Question
  • Chapter 5: What We Call Ourselves Here: Mexican American Racial and Ethnic Labeling in Texas
  • Chapter 6: Just An(other) Shade of White? Making Meaning of Mexican American
  • Whiteness on the Census.
  • Appendix A: Census 1990 Race Question
  • Appendix B: Census 2000 Race Question
  • Bibliography
  • Vita

Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race

Introduction

The roots of this dissertation can be traced to a qualitative study I began as an undergraduate, interviewing persons of “biracial” mixed Mexican-Anglo heritage like myself. During the course of this research that became the basis for my master’s thesis, I discovered that according to the U.S. Census, Latinos are not a racial group. This did not fit my experience growing up in Texas where I found myself torn between two different worlds, one white and one brown.

This disjuncture between government classification and self-identification, between federal definitions and regional definitions of race, is at the heart of my project. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the historical roots of the census classification of Mexican Americans as “White,” and to examine who rejects this classification, identifying as “Other” race. Are there significant differences between these groups? What factors play into how Mexican Americans label themselves? And what are the meanings of these labels?

The most common “other race” response given on the racial identification question of the 1990 U.S. Census was a Hispanic identifier—Hispanic, Latino or a nationality such as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban (U.S. General Accounting Office 1993). While approximately 51% of Mexican Americans in the 1990 census identified as “White” on the racial identity question, an almost equal proportion (47%) identified as “Other.” In 2000, the numbers were similar with 48% of Mexican Americans identifying as “White” and 46% as “Other.” It is clear that a substantial number of Mexican Americans view themselves as a racial group outside of the current census classifications of White, Black, Native American, and Asian American…

Read the entire dissertation here.

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The United States Census in Its Relations to Sanitation

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, United States on 2012-09-12 23:42Z by Steven

The United States Census in Its Relations to Sanitation

Public Health Paper Report
Volume 15 (1889)
pages 43-46

John S. Billings, Surgeon, U.S.A. (1838-1913)

I have several times inflicted upon this patient and long-suffering Association papers relating to statistical matters and methods, which, it must be confessed, were better fitted to serve for occasional reference than to occupy any of the scanty time available for listening at our annual meetings. To-day, however, I have a very short discourse on the same subject which I want you to listen to, because, if the suggestions in it have any value, some of them should be acted on before the paper will probably appear in the volume of our proceedings.

Theoretically, we all agree that vital statistics are the foundation of public medicine, but, practically, I suppose that the majority of sanitarians and physicians think that they are not essential to the work of a health officer or board of health, although they may be desirable; that the main objects in sanitary work are to see that the water-supply is pure; that garbage and excreta are promptly removed or destroyed; that no filth is allowed to accumulate in the vicinity of habitations; that contagious diseases are controlled by isolation and disinfection; that plenty of fresh air be provided in schools, churches, etc.; and that all this can and should be done whether death-rates are known or not.

This is not my own view, because my observation of the progress of public health work in this and other countries for the last twenty years leads me to believe that this progress, in any locality, for any considerable length of time, depends upon the completeness of its vital statistics and the use that is made of them; because upon such completeness and use depend mainly the amount and regularity of appropriations from state or municipal funds for the payment of the expenses needed to secure the objects of the health department. Occasionally it is possible to get up a cholera, or yellow-fever, or small-pox, or typhoid fever scare, and to then get a little money for sewerage, or for street and alley cleaning; but these spasmodic reforms do not last long, and in most cases do not amount to much. You have got to produce constant, undeniable evidence that the work is needed, and is useful, evidence that will convince the press and the majority of the community; and this evidence must be mainly death-rates, to which should be added all the sickness rates that can be obtained…

…In investigating the details of the records of deaths kept in different cities, I have noted deficiencies in a few of them to which I wish to call the attention of all who have to do with the registration of vital statistics.

First. All deaths occurring in hospitals should be charged to the ward or district of the city from which the patient was taken to hospital, when this can be ascertained. Otherwise the death-rate in the ward in which the hospital is located will be too high, and in the other districts it will be too low.

Second. The birthplace of the parents of the decedent should be reported. We want to know the race of the decedent, whether he was Irish, German, Italian, or American, and to give merely his own birthplace is not sufficient.

Third. It is very desirable that in all cases of deaths of colored persons it should be stated whether the decedent was black or of mixed blood, such as mulatto or quadroon.

One of the most important questions in the vital and social statistics of this country relates to the fertility, longevity, and liability to certain diseases of those partly of negro and partly of white blood, and the only way to obtain data on this subject is through the registration of vital statistics.

Under the provisions of the law providing for the census, the living colored population is to be enumerated with distinction as to whether each person is black, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon; and we need the same distinctions for all colored persons dying during the census year, to enable us to calculate comparative death-rates. Wherever there is a fairly accurate registration of deaths, which now exists in several states and in over one hundred cities, the next census will afford the means of calculating death-rates with distinctions of color, sex, and age, which will furniish important indications for sanitary work. For all cities of io,ooo inhabitants and upward, it is proposed to collect as complete information as possible with regard to altitude, climate, water-supply, density of population, sewerage, proportion of sewered and non-sewered areas, and other points bearing on the healthfulness of the place, which will permit of interesting comparisons with the death-rates.

Read the entire paper here.

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Latinos may get own race category on census form

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2012-09-05 02:23Z by Steven

Latinos may get own race category on census form

The Seattle Times
2012-08-30

Lornet Turnbull, Staff Reporter

Under proposed changes under consideration by the Census Bureau in its once-a-decade census forms, Latino and Hispanic would be added to the list of government-defined races, rather than being listed separately as an ethnicity. And people from the Middle East and North Africa, now counted as white, would be allowed to write in their country of origin.

U.S. residents of Spanish origin typically have no trouble checking the box on their census form that asks whether they are Latino, Hispanic or Spanish.

It’s a different question — the one that asks their race — that apparently gives some of them pause.

In the 2010 census, well over one-third — perhaps unsure how to answer that question — either checked “some other race” or skipped the question entirely.

Now, in advance of the 2020 count and as part of its ongoing effort to allow Americans to better reflect how they see themselves, the U.S. Census Bureau is researching ways to clear up the confusion by adding Latino or Hispanic to a list of government-defined race categories that includes White, Asian, Pacific Islander, Black and American Indian, along with a “two or more races” option…

Luis Fraga, a political-science professor at the University of Washington who directs its Diversity Research Institute, said, “identifying ourselves by racial grouping is at the very core of who we are as a nation and how we understand political power.”

Results from the decennial survey not only help direct more than $400 billion in federal funds are distributed each year, but they also help evaluate how well government policies are responding to historical disparities among various racial and ethnic groups.

“As much as we hope we become a country where these racial distinctions don’t matter — and that’s a worthy goal — it is central to how we understand ourselves as a people and how we decide who has opportunity, rights, privileges and protection under the law,” Fraga said…

Read the entire article here.

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Households and Neighborhoods Among Free People of Color in New Orleans: A View from the Census, 1850-1860

Posted in Census/Demographics, Dissertations, History, Louisiana, Media Archive, United States on 2012-09-01 17:58Z by Steven

Households and Neighborhoods Among Free People of Color in New Orleans: A View from the Census, 1850-1860

University of New Orleans
2010-05-14
58 pages

Frank Joseph Lovato

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

Historians have debated to what extent the free people of color in New Orleans were members of a wealthy privileged elite or part of a middle or working class in the South’s largest antebellum city. This study steps outside the debate to suggest that analysis of the censuses of 1850 and 1860 shows correlations between neighborhoods, household structures, and occupations that reveal a heterogeneous population that eludes simple definitions. In particular this study focuses on mixed-race households to shed light on this segment of the free colored population that is mostly unstudied and generally misrepresented. This study also finds that immediately prior to the Civil War, mixed-race families, for no easily understood reason, tended to cluster in certain neighborhoods. Mostly this study points out that by the Civil War, the free people of color in New Orleans had evolved into a diverse mostly working class population.

Table of Contents

  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • List of Maps
  • List of Census Form
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Origins of the Free People of Color in New Orleans
  • Historiography of the Free People of Color in New Orleans
  • Methodology Used for Data Gathering
  • Economic Role of the Free People of Color in Ante-Bellum New Orleans
  • Community Organizations
  • Neighborhoods and the Free People of Color
  • Free People of Color and the Prelude to the Civil War
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Tables
  • Maps
  • Census Forms
  • Vita

List of Figures

  • Figure 1 – 4th Ward Mixed-Race Couple Distribution
  • Figure 2 – 5th Ward Mixed-Race Couple Distribution
  • Figure 3 – New Orleans Population in 1850 & 1860
  • Figure 4 – New Orleans Colored Population in 1850 & 1860
  • Figure 5 –Population Density of Colored Males in 1850 & 1860

List of Tables

  • Table 1 – 1850 New Orleans Census
  • Table 2 – 1860 New Orleans Census
  • Table 3 – Population Density for Colored, Mulatto and Blacks in the 1850 New Orleans Census
  • Table 4 – Population Density for Colored, Mulatto and Blacks in the 1860 New Orleans Census
  • Table 5 – Property Values of the Free People of Color in 1850 New Orleans
  • Table 6 – Property Values of the Free People of Color in 1860 New Orleans

List of Maps

  • MUNICIPALITIES and WARDS 1847
  • WARDS 1852
  • Neighborhoods in New Orleans

List of Census Forms

  • Title Page 1st and 4th Wards (1st Municipality)
  • 1st Ward, 1st Municipality – 1850
  • 9th Wards -1860

Read the entire thesis here.

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People Can Claim One or More Races On Federal Forms

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2012-09-01 17:29Z by Steven

People Can Claim One or More Races On Federal Forms

The New York Times
1997-10-30

Steven A. Holmes

The Clinton Administration today adopted new rules for listing racial and ethnic makeup on Federal forms, allowing people for the first time to identify themselves as members of more than one race.

The change, which could affect Government policies like affirmative action and the drawing of legislative districts, is the first revision in the Government’s definition of racial and ethnic groupings since 1977. It means that on Federal forms people can identify themselves in a single racial category or a combination.

The Administration rejected a ”multiracial” classification that would have covered all people of mixed racial heritage

…But the Administration has yet to say how people who select this option will be counted in studies like the census. The Administration has not decided how to count someone who lists a racial makeup of black and white. More complicated is what to do with people listing themselves as black, white and Asian. Should such a person be counted as black, white or Asian or some combination?

The counting issue is important because Federal policy under measures like the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and aid for bilingual education is based on the percentage of certain racial groups in a given location. For example, legislative districts must be drawn in such a manner to insure that black residents are adequately represented, and block-by-block census counts are essential to the process…

…Officials at the Office of Management and Budget said they would meet with officials from other Federal agencies, interest groups, demographers, planners and social scientists to work out a policy for counting people who list themselves as members of more than one race. The officials said they hoped to put out recommendations on the issue by the fall of 1998.

The fight over how to count people will be arduous. The Association of Multiethnic Americans will argue that mixed-race residents be counted separately, Mr. Fernandez said.

Such a view is bound to raise concerns among some minority critics who have contended all along that the drive for a changing the racial categories was a way to attack affirmative action and other race-based government programs.

”I believe the same people who are against affirmative action are the same people who are pushing this,” said Robert Hill, the director of the Institute of Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore…

Read the entire article here.

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Racial classifications in the US census: 1890–1990

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2012-08-29 22:56Z by Steven

Racial classifications in the US census: 1890–1990

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 16, Issue 1 (1993)
pages 75-94
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.1993.9993773

Sharon M. Lee, Adjunct Professor of Sociology
University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

This article examines racial classifications on United States population census schedules between 1890 and 1990 to provide insights on the changing meanings of race in US society. The analysis uses a sociology of knowledge perspective which assumes that race is an ideological concept that can be interpreted most productively by relating its definition and measurement to the larger social and political context. Four themes are identified and discussed: (i) the historical and continuing importance of skin colour, usually dichotomized into white and non‐white, in defining race and counting racial groups; (ii) a belief in ‘pure’ races that is reflected in a preoccupation with categorizing people into a single or ‘pure’ race; (iii) the role of census categories in creating pan‐ethnic racial groups; and, (iv) the confusing of race and ethnicity in census racial classifications. Each theme demonstrates the potential or actual role of official statistics, exemplified by census racial data, in reflecting and guiding changes to the meaning and social perceptions of race. A detailed examination of racial classifications from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses shows that the influence of political interests on racial statistics is particularly important. The article concludes with a discussion of whether official statistical recorders such as population censuses should categorize and measure race, given the political motivations and non‐scientific character of the classifications used.

Read or purchase the article here.

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American Indians in Chicago struggle to preserve identity, culture and history

Posted in Arts, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2012-08-28 03:38Z by Steven

American Indians in Chicago struggle to preserve identity, culture and history

Chicago Tribune
2012-08-13

Dahleen Glanton, Reporter

Recession, social service funding cuts hinder efforts

Susan Kelly Power was 17 when she boarded a train to Chicago, a place that seemed a world away from the Indian reservation she grew up on in North and South Dakota.

In the 70 years since she left her family’s home on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Power has carved out a distinctive place for herself in Chicago’s youthful American Indian community. The oldest Native American in Chicago, she is the memory keeper in a community where history is sacred.

From the controversial Battle of Fort Dearborn, which marks its 200th anniversary this week, to Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois mascot who was forced into retirement five years ago, activists such as Power have made it their mission to set the historical record straight. While the Battle of Fort Dearborn is considered a pivotal part of the city’s history, American Indians living in Chicago have become, for the most part, an invisible population that is struggling.

With few financial resources and no political muscle, the community of about 49,000 American Indians in the Chicago area has struggled to find a voice in a region where they are outnumbered by almost every ethnic group. Once tucked away in Uptown and now scattered throughout the city and suburbs, they could virtually go unnoticed if not for a small but vocal group of elders who refuse to back down from a good fight…

…Wiese said the economic condition of American Indians is more dire than the 2010 census indicates, largely because she believes the figures are skewed. The census form allows anyone to identify themselves as American Indian, whether they have official tribal papers or not, she said. Without those who identified themselves as mixed race, the number of American Indians in Chicago would be cut in half, to just over 13,337, the census shows.

East Indians, whites, African-Americans and Hispanics who do not have tribal documentation are identifying themselves as Native American, Wiese said, driving up the economic status of Indians to artificial levels. Meanwhile, an equal number of tribal-recognized Indians, who like many poor people living with multiple families in a residence, were not counted in the census, she said.

“We call them ‘box checkers,’ the thousands of people who say they are American Indian” but don’t have legal status, said Wiese, whose agency provides educational services for children and adults. “It hurts us when the demographics look higher than they are.”…

Read the entire article here.

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Time to drop racial categories in census

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2012-08-16 17:09Z by Steven

Time to drop racial categories in census

The Chicago Tribune
2012-08-16

Arthur Caplan, Director of Division of Medical Ethics
Department of Population Health
New York University

The U.S. Census Bureau announced that it wants to make a number of changes in how it counts membership in a race. The change is based on an experiment the bureau conducted during the last census in which nearly 500,000 households were given forms with the race and ethnicity questions worded differently from the traditional categories. The results showed that many people who filled out the traditional form did not feel they fit within the five government-defined categories of race: white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native. If Congress approves, the bureau says it plans to stop using the word “Negro” as part of a question asking if a person was “black, African-American or Negro.” There are a number of other changes planned for counting Hispanics and Arab-Americans.

These changes may seem like improvements. They are not. The bureau and Congress ought to be considering a more radical overhaul of the census — dropping questions about race entirely. There are a lot of reasons why.

First, the concept of “race” makes no biological sense. None. The classifications Americans use to divide people into groups and categories have nothing to do with genetics or biology…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

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Susan Graham Discusses Project RACE

Posted in Audio, Census/Demographics, Interviews, Live Events, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2012-08-15 23:22Z by Steven

Susan Graham Discusses Project RACE

Mixed Race Radio
2012-08-15, 17:00Z (12:00 EDT, 09:00 PDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Susan Graham, Executive Director
Project RACE

Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) members are the national advocates for multiracial children, teens, adults, and our families. Project RACE was started in 1990, so we are in our 22nd year! Susan Graham, the mother of two multiracial children and Chris Ashe, the mother of a multiracial child began Project RACE because of their own frustration with their own children being forced to pick only one race on forms in America. That meant, very simply, that a child had to choose to be her mother’s race or her father’s race. Susan and Chris planned to start a grassroots movement to pass State legislation, mandate the US Census Bureau and federal agencies to add the term “multiracial” to forms, or in some way accommodate the needs of multiracial people.

Play in your default player here.

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