Mixed Race Studies

Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study

Macmillan
Ninth Edition
2014
732 pages
Paper Text ISBN-10: 1-4292-4217-5; ISBN-13: 978-1-4292-4217-2

Paula S. Rothenberg, Senior Fellow; The Murphy Institute, City University of New York
Professor Emerita; William Patterson University of New Jersey

Like no other text, this best-selling anthology effectively introduces students to the complexity of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the United States and illustrates how these categories operate and interact in society. The combination of thoughtfully selected readings, deftly written introductions, and careful organization make Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Ninth Edition, the most engaging and balanced presentation of these issues available today.

In addition to including scholarly selections from authors like Beverly Tatum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Annette Lareau, and Jonathan Kozol, Rothenberg includes historical documents like the Three-Fifths Compromise, firsthand narrative accounts of how these issues have affected the lives of individuals, and popular press pieces reporting on discrimination in everyday life.

This edition includes 28 new selections considering such relevant topics as the citizenship and immigration, transgender identity, the 2010 census, multiracial identity, the 99% and the occupy movement, the tragic story of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, South Asian Identity post 9/11, multiracial identity, disability, sexual harassment in the teenage years, and much more.

Table of Contents ^*Articles new or revised for this edition

• Part I THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
  • 1 Racial Formations / Michael Omi and Howard Winant
  • 2 The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch / Richard Wright
  • 3 Constructing Race, Creating White Privilege / Pem Davidson Buck
  • 4 How Jews Became White Folks / Karen Brodkin
  • 5 “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender / Judith Lorber
  • 6 The Social Construction of Sexuality / Ruth Hubbard
  • 7 The Invention of Heterosexuality / Jonathan Ned Katz
  • 8 Masculinity as Homophobia / Michael S. Kimmel
  • 9 Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History / Douglas C. Baynton
  • 10 Deconstructing the Underclass / Herbert Gans
  • 11 Domination and Subordination / Jean Baker Miller
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part II UNDERSTANDING RACISM, SEXISM, HETEROSEXISM, AND CLASS PRIVILEGE
  • 1 Defining Racism: “Can We Talk?” / Beverly Daniel Tatum
  • 2 Color-Blind Racism / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
  • 3 Smells Like Racism / Rita Chaudhry Sethi
  • 4 Oppression / Marilyn Frye
  • 5 Patriarchy / Allan G. Johnson
  • 6 Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism / Suzanne Pharr
  • ^*7 The 10 Percent Problem / Kate Clinton
  • 8 White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack / Peggy McIntosh
  • ^*9 Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class, and Family Life / Annette Lareau
  • ^*10 Class in America—2012 / Gregory Mantsios
• Part III Complicating Questions of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
  • 1 A Nation of None and All of the Above / Sam Roberts
  • 2 A New Century: Immigration and the US / MPI Staff, updated by Kevin Jernegan
  • ^*3 Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of America / Mae Ngai
  • 4 Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves / Evelyn Alsultany
  • ^*5 For many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color / Mireya Navarro
  • ^*6 Testimony / Sonny Singh
  • 7 Asian American? / Sonia Shah
  • 8 The Myth of the Model Minority / Noy Thrupkaew
  • 9 Personal Voices: Facing Up to Race / Carrie Ching
  • Suggestions for Further Readings
• Part IV DISCRIMINATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
  • 1 The Problem: Discrimination / U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
  • 2 Abercrombie Settles Class-Action Suit
  • 3 Apparel Factory Workers Were Cheated, State Says / Steven Greenhouse
  • 4 Women in the State Police: Trouble in the Ranks / Jonathan Schuppe
  • ^*5 Why Transgender Identification Matters / Rebecca Juro
  • 6 Where “English Only” Falls Short / Stacy A. Teicher
  • 7 Blacks vs. Latinos at Work / Miriam Jordan
  • 8 Manhattan Store Owner Accused of Underpaying and Sexually Harassing Workers / Steven Greenhouse
  • 9 Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State / Matthew Rothschild
  • 10 Tennessee Judge Tells Immigrant Mothers: Learn English or Else / Ellen Barry
  • ^*11 Tucson’s Ousted Mexican-American Studies Director Speaks: The Fight’s Not Over / Julianne Hing
  • 12 My Black Skin Makes My White Coat Vanish / Mana Lumumba-Kasongo
  • 13 The Segregated Classrooms of a Proudly Diverse School / Jeffrey Gettleman
  • 14 Race and Family Income of Students Influence Guidance Counselors’ Advice, Study Finds / Eric Hoover
  • 15 College Choices Are Limited for Students from Needy Families, Report Says / Stephen Burd
  • 16 Wealthy Often Win the Race for Merit-Based College Aid / Jay Mathews
  • 17 On L.I., Raid Stirs Dispute over Influx of Immigrants / Bruce Lambert
  • 18 More Blacks Live with Pollution / Associated Press
  • ^*19 National Study Finds Widespread Sexual Harassment of Students in Grades 7-12 / Jenny Anderson
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part V THE ECONOMICS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
  • ^*1 Imagine a Country—2012 / Holly Sklar
  • ^*2 Dr King Weeps from His Grave / Cornel West
  • ^*3 Rich People Create Jobs! And Five Other Myths That Must Die for our Economy to Live / Kevin Drum
  • ^*4 It’s Official: The Rich Got Richer: Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds / Robert Pear
  • ^*5 Study Finds Big Spike in the Poorest in the U.S. / Sabrina Tavernise
  • ^*6 The Making of the American 99% and the Collapse of the Middle Class / Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich
  • ^*7 Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics Twenty-to-One: Executive Summary / Rakesh Kochhar, Richard Fry, and Paul Taylor
  • 8 The Economic Reality of Being Asian American / Meizhu Lui and others
  • 9 The Economic Reality of Being Latino/a in the U.S. / Meizhu Lui and others
  • ^*10 Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites / Sabrina Tavernise
  • ^*11 Gender Gap on Wages is Slow to Close / Motoko Rich
  • 12 Women Losing Ground / Ruth Conniff
  • 13 Lilly’s Big Day / Gail Collins
  • 14 “Savage Inequalities” Revisited / Bob Feldman
  • 15 Cause of Death: Inequality / Alejandro Reuss
  • ^*16 Undocumented Immigrants Find Paths to College, Careers / Gosnia Wozniacka
  • 17 Immigration’s Aftermath / Alejandro Portes
  • ^*18 Inequality Undermines Democracy / Eduardo Porter
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VI MANY VOICES, MANY LIVES: SOME CONSEQUENCES OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER INEQUALITY
  • 1 Civilize Them with a Stick / Mary Brave Bird (Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes
  • 2 Then Came the War / Yuri Kochiyama
  • 3 Yellow / Frank Wu
  • 4 The Arab Woman and I / Mona Fayad
  • 5 Crossing the Border Without Losing Your Past / Oscar Casares
  • 6 The Event of Becoming / Jewelle L. Gomez
  • 7 This Person Doesn’t Sound White / Ziba Kashef
  • ^*8 In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger / Susan Saulny
  • 9 Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste / Joseph Berger
  • 10 Pigskin, Patriarchy, and Pain / Don Sabo
  • 11 The Slave Side of Sunday / Dave Zirin
  • 12 He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy / Tommi Avicolli
  • 13 Requiem for the Champ / June Jordan
  • ^*14 Against Bullying or On Loving Queer Kids / Richard Kim
  • 15 Before Spring Break, The Anorexic Challenge / Alex Williams
  • 16 The Case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson: Ableism, Heterosexism, and Sexism / Joan L. Griscom
  • ^*17 Misconceptions Regarding the Body / Jennifer Bartlett
  • 18 C. P. Ellis / Studs Terkel
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VII HOW IT HAPPENED: RACE AND GENDER ISSUES IN U.S. LAW
  • 1 Indian Tribes: A Continuing Quest for Survival /U.S. Commission on Human Rights
  • 2 An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves, South Carolina, 1712
  • 3 The “Three-Fifths Compromise”: The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2
  • 4 An Act Prohibiting the Teaching of Slaves to Read
  • 5 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
  • 6 The Antisuffragists: Selected Papers, 1852–1887
  • 7 People v. Hall, 1854
  • 8 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857
  • 9 The Emancipation Proclamation / Abraham Lincoln
  • 10 United States Constitution: Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments
  • 11 The Black Codes / W. E. B. Du Bois
  • 12 Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873
  • 13 Minor v. Happersett, 1875
  • 14 California Constitution, 1876
  • 15 Elk v. Wilkins, November 3, 1884
  • 16 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
  • 17 United States Constitution: Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
  • 18 Korematsu v. United States, 1944
  • 19 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954
  • 20 Roe v. Wade, 1973
  • 21 The Equal Rights Amendment (Defeated)
  • 22 Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 2003
  • ^*23 Equal Protection Indeed / The Economist
  • ^*24 Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution / Linda Hirshman
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part VIII MAINTAINING RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER HIERARCHIES: REPRODUCING “REALITY”
  • 1 Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes / Mark Snyder
  • 2 Anti-Gay Stereotype / Richard D. Mohr
  • 3 White Lies / Maurice Berger
  • 4 Am I Thin Enough Yet? / Sharlene Hesse-Biber
  • 5 Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse / Sut Jhally
  • 6 The Plutocratic Culture: Institutions, Values, and Ideologies / Michael Parenti
  • 7 Media Magic: Making Class Invisible / Gregory Mantsios
  • 8 Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid / Jonathan Kozol
  • 9 Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex / Angela Davis
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Part IX SOCIAL CHANGE: REVISIONING THE FUTURE AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE
  • 1 Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference / Audre Lorde
  • 2 Feminism: A Transformational Politic / bell hooks
  • 3 A New Vision of Masculinity / Cooper Thompson
  • 4 Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change / Andrea Ayvazian
  • 5 Rethinking Volunteerism in America / Gavin Leonard
  • ^*6 The Most Important Thing in the World / Naomi Klein
  • ^*7 Beyond Elections: People Power / Mark Bittman
  • ^*8 Demand the Impossible / Matthew Rothschild
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index

From Multiracial to Transgender? Assessing Attitudes toward Expanding Gender Options on the US Census

Transgender Studies Quarterly
Volume 2, Number 1, February 2015
pages 77-100
DOI: 10.1215/23289252-2848895

Kristen Schilt, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jenifer Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University, Houston, Texas

In 2000, the US Census Bureau acknowledged multiracial Americans on the decennial census in an attempt to better capture racial heterogeneity and to more closely align what is publicly collected on forms with people’s personal understandings of their racial identity. In this article, we start a discussion of how the census—a major source of political identity recognition and legitimation—could be more inclusive of gender variance. We ask: (1) Is there support for a transgender category on the US census? (2) Who might select a transgender option if it were provided? To answer these questions, we conducted questionnaire research at three transgender and genderqueer conferences and found strong support for the inclusion of a transgender category. Conversely, we found that many people did not currently check “transgender” on forms when given the opportunity. As we show, the decision to check “transgender” varies by what we term gender identity validation. In other words, people who identified as male or female and who felt others viewed them as unequivocally male or female, respectively, were less likely to check “transgender” than people who identified as transgender or who experienced a discrepancy between their self-perceived and other-perceived gender identity. These differences suggest that—similar to the push for adding a multiracial category to the census—the expansion of sex/gender categories is most likely to come from individuals who experience themselves as constrained by the existing possibilities and/or who are stigmatized by others’ conceptions of the appropriate alignment of bodies and genders.

Read or puchase the article here.

Obama has vastly changed the face of the federal bureaucracy

The Washington Post
2015-09-20

Juliet Eilperin, White House Bureau Chief

Friday afternoon announcements in Washington are usually aimed at attracting as little attention as possible, but last Friday was different. President Obama’s decision to nominate Eric Fanning — an openly gay man — to head a branch of the military which only four years ago did not allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, was both historic and attention-grabbing.

And it underscored an often-overlooked feature of the Obama presidency: Obama has presided over the most demographically diverse administration in history, according to a new analysis of his top appointments. The majority of top policy appointments within the executive branch are held by women and minorities for the first time in history.

The transformation partly reflects a broader trend in U.S. society, but it also reflects the results of a calculated strategy by the nation’s first African American president. The shifts are significant enough, experts say, that they may have forever transformed the face of government…

Read the entire article here.

How To Resist White Supremacy In Your Love Life: A 5-Step Guide

Black Girl Dangerous
2015-09-25

Cathy Chen, Co-Founder and Outreach Director
Fab Lab El Paso, El Paso, Texas

“We’re never gonna get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble more or less the economies of attraction of white supremacy.” –Junot Diaz, Keynote Speech at Facing Race 2012

Over the years, I have had many friends, both hetero and LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, trans, queer, intersex, and asexual) people of color, who practiced radical politics in their lifestyle and work but I’ve noticed a curious pattern—that they almost exclusively formed romantic relationships with socially privileged—in other words, mostly white—partners…

Read the entire article here.

Locating queer-mixed experiences: Narratives of geography and migration

Qualitative Social Work
Volume 14, Number 5 (September 2015)
pages 651-669
DOI: 10.1177/1473325014561250

Kimberly D. Hudson
School of Social Work
University of Washington

Gita R. Mehrotra, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

Social work scholarship concerned with mixed-race and queer identities is growing and ever-changing, yet often treats race and sexuality as separate experiences independent from context and environment. In addition, in studies of mixed-race people, the legacy of the Black-White/US-based multiracial paradigm and the history of such research using race as the only or primary analytic has left a dearth of studies that seek to understand mixed-race experiences within geographical, transnational and intersectional contexts. In this paper, we extend previous work focused on situational and contextual multiracial identities through an interview-based study of a sample of 12 queer and mixed-race individuals. We employ a narrative analysis to explore how emergent themes of geography and migration are salient to self-making processes of participants. Findings include: (1) diverse geographic and migration histories among participants; (2) interviewees’ use of discursive strategies that draw upon experiences of geography and migration within the narrative structure; and (3) the critical role of geography and migration in expanding and changing participants’ identity discourses and in shaping individuals’ identity and sense of community. Ultimately, this work serves as a call for on-going attention to how geography and migration, as well as intersectional and transnational perspectives, add depth and texture to studies of queer-mixed people while also offering specificity to social work’s broader commitment to context and environment.

Read or purchase the article here.

The problems with Rachel Dolezal and the social construction of race

Nerding Out with Dorian Warren
MSNBC
2015-06-17

Dorian Warren, Host and Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs
Columbia University, New York, New York

Christina Greer, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Fordham University, The Jesuit University of New York

Allyson Hobbs, Assistant Professor of History
Stanford University

Joseph Lowndes, Associate Professor of Political Sciences
University of Oregon

Dorian Warren talks with professors Allyson Hobbs, Christina Greer, and Joseph Lowndes about what the social construction of race does and does not mean in the case of Rachel Dolezal. Plus, writer and advocate Parker Molloy speaks on what the media gets wrong when it compares the experiences of the transgender community to those of Rachel Dolezal.

Watch the interview (00:50:52) here.

The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea by Robert Wald Sussman (review)

Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Volume 46, Number 1, Summer 2015
pages 109-111

Ruth Clifford Engs, Professor Emeritus of Applied Health Science
Indiana University, Bloomington

Sussman, Robert Wald, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).

Sussman’s stated purpose in the introduction to this book is to “describe the history of our myth of race and racism” (3). However, a few pages later, he admits that he has not done archival research himself but instead has “depended upon the published works of many historians, biographers, and philosophers” (9). In other words, he is basing his premises upon secondary sources that may have their own biases. He does not present a hypothesis or even a research question but boldly states what he is trying to find and backs up his thesis with interpretations that support it. This methodology could be considered historiographical research. However, rarely does he compare the interpretation of one historian with that of another in an objective manner or compare interpretations from one time period to those from another, as other historiographical researchers usually do. Researchers in the past, or present, who do not agree with his conclusions are considered “racists” or part of “the eugenic bigot brigade.” The research methods in Sussman’s work cannot be deemed historical precisely because it uses few primary sources.

Sussman suggests that for a number of years, most researchers in the fields of biology, anthropology, and genetics have agreed that biological “races” do not exist among modern humans and that race is a cultural construct, albeit with phenotypical differences among population groups. In this work, you “can’t tell a book by its cover” or, in this case, its title, since the book’s main emphasis is the evolution of the nineteenth-century hereditarian and early twentieth-century eugenics movements and its leaders and detractors into contemporary times. The book focuses on what Sussman perceives to be “racist” researchers and organizations—those who suggest the possibility of biological differences between human population groups. It glorifies the anthropological school of Franz Boas and discusses the hidden agenda of obscure philanthropic groups to re-institute immigration-restriction reform or rescind voting rights from minorities in contemporary American society.

Chapter I introduces two early concepts of race since the Middle Ages that recur throughout the book—the pre-Adamite (polygenism) and degenerate (monogenism) theories. The pre-Adamites believed that races, other than whites, were created before Adam and Eve and that they were biologically fixed. Degenerate theory suggested that environment influenced “racial” characteristics, and that all humans were created by God, though non-whites were inferiors who needed guidance from whites. The chapter discusses the many early eighteenth-and nineteenth-century scientists and thinkers who embraced these various theories, including John Locke, Carl Linnaeus, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Arthur de Gobineau, Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, and Francis Galton, among others.

Chapter 2 and 3 detail the early twentieth-century, American eugenics movement with a focus on various leaders, including Madison Grant, Charles Davenport, Henry Osborn, Harry Laughlin, and Henry Goddard, discussing their influence on the immigration-restriction movement, iq tests, and negative eugenics, characterized by sterilization. Sussman also covers such organizations as the Eugenics Records Office and the Galton Society, as well as international eugenic conferences and related issues. In his opinion, the entire eugenics movement amounts to “blatant racism” (85). He is silent about the fact that many aspects of the eugenics movement were intertwined with early twentieth-century public-health measures that sought to improve the health of the American people—regardless of ethnicity—by raising public awareness of tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, and alcohol/drug abuse and by promoting exercise, clean water, good nutrition, personal hygiene, healthy children, immunization, etc.

Chapter 4, in which Sussman shows the interlinking of American with German eugenics, portrays the various leaders of the German eugenics movement, including Ernst Rüdin, Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, and Otmar von Verschurer, through the end of Nazi Germany and World War II. Chapter 5 treats Boas’ development of the concept of culture and its effect on human populations. Chapter 6 goes into greater detail about cultural anthropology and covers the conflict between various schools of thought, each side accusing the other of not doing true science.

The remainder of the book examines the downfall of the eugenics movement in the United States and the acceptance of culture…

Jennifer Lisa Vest to explore ‘post-racial present’ at Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium

Report: Faculty/Staff Newsletter
Illinois State University
2015-04-02

Rachel Hatch, Editor

Performing artist and scholar Jennifer Lisa Vest will be the keynote speaker for the 20th annual Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Symposium.

Vest will present Black Lives Matter: [Trans]Gender Violence, Disability, and Women in a ‘Post-racial,’ ‘Post-Sexist’ Present at 1 p.m. Friday, April 17, in the Bone Student Center. The talk is free and open to the public.

In celebration of the event, there will be a poetry reading at 7 p.m. Thursday April 16, at the University Galleries, 11 Uptown Circle, Normal.

Vest is a self-described “mixed-race queer feminist philosopher, poet, and artivist whose philopoetic works combine philosophy, poetry and feminist theories to provide intersectional analyses of social justice issues by explicating raced, gendered, and sexualized components of privilege, ablelism, and oppression.”…

Read the entire article here.

Gordon Fox Pleads Guilty in Rhode Island Corruption Case

The New York Times
2015-03-03

Richard Pérez-Peña

The climb took decades, but the fall was swift. Less than a year removed from his reign as speaker of the Rhode Island House, Gordon D. Fox pleaded guilty on Tuesday to taking bribes, wire fraud and filing a false tax return.

Mr. Fox, 53, took $52,500 in bribes to help a bar and restaurant get a liquor license and illegally diverted $108,000 in campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. He made the admissions in Federal District Court in Providence as part of a plea agreement that calls for a three-year prison sentence — though a judge will ultimately decide the penalty — and will almost certainly cost him his law license.

Outside the courthouse, when asked by reporters whether he felt remorse, Mr. Fox said, “Absolutely, absolutely, without question.”…

…Mr. Fox, a Democrat, was the first openly gay person and the first mixed-race person to lead either of the state’s legislative chambers, and he led the drive to legalize same-sex marriage in 2013.

He grew up as one of six children in a blue-collar family, with a black mother and a white father, and he liked to recall how he had worked in an ice cream shop to help pay his way through law school. He became a lawyer and part owner of a nightclub, and in 1992 he was elected to the House. He became the majority leader in 2002 and the speaker in 2010…

Read the entire article here.

Census Bureau’s Plan to Cut Marriage and Divorce Questions Has Academics Up in Arms

The New York Times
2014-12-31

Justin Wolfers, Senior Fellow
Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C.

also: Professor of Economics and Public Policy
University of Michigan

If the Census Bureau proceeds with a recently released plan, then in a few years’ time, we will know very little about how the contours of family life are changing.

We will not even know whether marriage and divorce rates are rising or falling. For all the talk of evidence-based policy, the result will be that important debates on issues including family law, welfare reform, same-sex marriage and the rise of nontraditional families will proceed in a statistical void.

Much of what I, an economist who has studied family issues, and my colleagues in this field have learned about recent trends in marriage and divorce has come from questions in the American Community Survey. It asks people whether they have given birth, married, divorced or been widowed in the past year. Their answers allow demographers to track marriage and divorce rates by age, gender, race and education.

These data have revealed many important social trends, including the rise of sharply different marriage and divorce patterns between rich and poor, and the increase in divorce among older Americans, even as it has fallen for younger people. And they have provided the only statistical window into the adoption of same-sex marriage.

The Census Bureau is proposing to eliminate these questions. It would follow a series of steps taken over recent decades that have collectively devastated our ability to track family change. This isn’t being done as a strategic policy choice but rather is the result of a series of isolated decisions made across several decades by statisticians scattered across various government agencies who have failed to understand the cumulative effect of their actions…

Read the entire article here.