{"id":30845,"date":"2013-05-06T21:51:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T21:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=30845"},"modified":"2013-05-06T21:51:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T21:51:01","slug":"how-to-update-census-race-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=30845","title":{"rendered":"How to update census’ race question"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to update census’ race question<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chicago Tribune<\/a>
\n2013-05-05<\/p>\n

Clarence Page<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page prefers an America where diversity and unique ethnicities are celebrated, not homogenized.<\/em><\/p>\n

A notable example of how Americans fall through the cracks in census data-gathering caught my eye recently. It appeared on the black-oriented TheRoot.com<\/em> website under this intriguing headline: “I found one drop; can I be black now?”<\/p>\n

The “one drop” is a reference to the old oddly American racial rule that one drop of “black blood” in your veins makes you black<\/a>. As a full-fledged black American, I wondered who is so eager to join the club?<\/p>\n

The answer turned out to be a white woman who had written to The Root’s<\/em> “Race Manners” advice column. Through genealogical records she uncovered an African-American ancestor who long ago had passed<\/a> for white. Now faced with census forms, among other documents that ask us Americans for our race, she was wondering which box to check.<\/p>\n

“Do I check both, and come across as a liar to those who don’t know my history?” she asked. “Or do I check just white, and feel like a self-loathing racist?”<\/p>\n

I sympathize with the woman’s confusion. In changing times, government forms are often the last to catch up.<\/p>\n

It has only been since 2000, for example, that mixed-race people are allowed to check more than one racial box on the U.S. census. And that’s just one area of government forms not keeping up with America’s changing demographics…<\/p>\n

…More extensive questions of ethnicity and ancestry have been asked since 2000 by another set of longer forms, the American Community Survey. Unlike the 10-year census, the survey is conducted among a sample of 250,000 people every month.<\/p>\n

That’s a good model, some experts, say, for how the 10-year census could give a more complete and realistic picture of America’s changing demographic landscape.<\/p>\n

“We shouldn’t be governing in the 21st century by a race classification given us by a German doctor in 1776<\/a>,” former Census Director Kenneth Prewitt wrote to me in an email…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to update census’ race question The Chicago Tribune 2013-05-05 Clarence Page Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page prefers an America where diversity and unique ethnicities are celebrated, not homogenized. A notable example of how Americans fall through the cracks in census data-gathering caught my eye recently. It appeared on the black-oriented TheRoot.com website under this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,394,20],"tags":[2805,14617,11554],"class_list":["post-30845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-chicago-tribune","tag-clarence-page","tag-the-chicago-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}