{"id":41594,"date":"2015-07-01T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T13:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41594"},"modified":"2015-07-02T15:44:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T15:44:28","slug":"the-ambiguity-of-racial-categories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41594","title":{"rendered":"The ambiguity of racial categories"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ambiguity of racial categories<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-06-16<\/p>\n

Andrew Gelman<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Statistics and Political Science
\nColumbia University, New York, New York<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nRacial classification has been in the news lately with the story of Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, the NAACP<\/a> official who is ethnically white but characterized herself as black until the story came out<\/a>:<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The allegation lit up the Internet, fueled by Ms. Dolezal\u2019s<\/a> apparent refusal to give a direct answer about her racial background, and by family photos of her as a blue-eyed teenager with straight blond hair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does it mean to be white, or black, or mixed-race?<\/p>\n

These questions are not going away. Richard Perez-Pena reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The number of American adults with mixed-race backgrounds is three times what official census figures indicate… The Pew Research Center survey<\/a> found that 6.9 percent of adults in the United States were multiracial, based on how they identify themselves or on having parents or grandparents of different races. By comparison, the 2010 census reported 2.1 percent of adults, and 2.9 percent of people any age, as multiracial, based on people\u2019s descriptions of themselves or others in their households. (Hispanics are considered an ethnic group, not a race.)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Relevant to this discussion is a book from two years ago, \u201cWhat is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans<\/a>,\u201d by former Census Bureau director Ken Prewitt<\/a> recommends taking the race question off the decennial census. As I summarized<\/a> last time this came up, Prewitt recommends gradual changes, integrating the race and national origin questions while improving both. In particular, he would replace the main \u201crace\u201d question by a \u201crace or origin\u201d question, with the instruction to \u201cMark one or more\u201d of the following boxes: \u201cWhite,\u201d \u201cBlack, African Am., or Negro,\u201d \u201cHispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,\u201d \u201cAmerican Indian or Alaska Native,\u201d \u201cAsian,\u201d \u201cNative Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,\u201d and \u201cSome other race or origin.\u201d He recommends treating Hispanic as a race or origin, in parallel with white, black, etc., which I agree makes sense. I think the current categorization in which \u201cHispanic\u201d is an ethnic group but \u201cWhite\u201d and \u201cBlack\u201d are races, is both confusing and unnecessary…<\/p>\n

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

The ambiguity of racial categories The Washington Post 2015-06-16 Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science Columbia University, New York, New York Racial classification has been in the news lately with the story of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP official who is ethnically white but characterized herself as black until the story came out: The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,14646,8,394,20],"tags":[20337,20360,2544,20257,20241,19556,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-41594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-andrew-gelman","tag-ken-prewitt","tag-kenneth-prewitt","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-richard-perez-pena","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41594","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=41594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}