{"id":41498,"date":"2015-06-21T01:40:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T01:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41498"},"modified":"2015-06-21T01:41:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T01:41:29","slug":"census-considers-new-approach-to-asking-about-race-by-not-using-the-term-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41498","title":{"rendered":"Census considers new approach to asking about race \u2013 by not using the term at all"},"content":{"rendered":"

Census considers new approach to asking about race \u2013 by not using the term at all<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Pew Research Center<\/a>
\n2015-06-18<\/p>\n

D\u2019Vera Cohn<\/a><\/strong>, Senior Writer\/Editor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nPossible 2020 census race\/Hispanic question for online respondents, who would click to the next screen to choose more detailed sub-categories such as \u201cCuban\u201d or \u201cChinese.\u201d Credit: U.S. Census Bureau<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The Census Bureau is experimenting with new ways to ask Americans about their race or origin in the 2020 census \u2013 including not using the words \u201crace\u201d or \u201corigin\u201d at all. Instead, the questionnaire may tell people to check the \u201ccategories\u201d that describe them.<\/p>\n

Census officials say they want the questions they ask to be clear and easy, in order to encourage Americans to answer them, so the officials can better collect race and Hispanic data as required by law. But many people are confused by the current wording, or find it misleading or insufficient to describe their identity.<\/p>\n

Census forms now have two questions about race and Hispanic origin. The first asks people whether they are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, and states that \u201cHispanic origins are not races.\u201d A second question asks, \u201cWhat is this person\u2019s race?\u201d and includes a list of options with checkboxes and write-in spaces. The U.S. government defines Hispanic as an ethnicity, not a race.<\/p>\n

The problem with using the word \u201crace\u201d is that many Americans say they don\u2019t know what it means, and how it is different from \u201corigin.\u201d The agency\u2019s focus group research found that some people think the words mean the same thing, while others see race as meaning skin color, ancestry or culture, while origin is the nation or place where they or their parents were born…<\/p>\n

…The content test also will experiment with adding a new Middle East and North Africa category<\/a>. The test represents the bureau\u2019s final major research effort before locking down its proposed 2020 questionnaire wording…<\/p>\n

…\u201cI\u2019m very happy that they are going to test a question which gets away from the language of race and ethnicity because frankly that is just a quagmire, that language,\u201d said Ann Morning<\/a>, an advisory committee member and New York University race scholar. \u201cNo two people seem to be able to agree on what those terms mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

In follow-up comments in an email, Morning said she believes \u201cthe beauty of simply referring to \u2018categories\u2019 is that it avoids that problem of people getting hung up on the terminology. So I would expect this term will allow people to answer the question more quickly, and to feel more free to check more than one box if they wish, and to lead to a lower non-response rate on that question.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Census considers new approach to asking about race \u2013 by not using the term at all Pew Research Center 2015-06-18 D\u2019Vera Cohn, Senior Writer\/Editor Possible 2020 census race\/Hispanic question for online respondents, who would click to the next screen to choose more detailed sub-categories such as \u201cCuban\u201d or \u201cChinese.\u201d Credit: U.S. Census Bureau The Census […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,20],"tags":[562,14187,3122],"class_list":["post-41498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-ann-morning","tag-dvera-cohn","tag-pew-research-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41498","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=41498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}