{"id":63962,"date":"2022-08-08T16:15:14","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T16:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63962"},"modified":"2022-08-08T16:15:15","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T16:15:15","slug":"do-conceptualisations-of-mixed-race-interracial-unions-and-races-centrality-to-understandings-of-racism-challenge-the-uks-offi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63962","title":{"rendered":"Do Conceptualisations of \u2018Mixed Race\u2019, \u2018Interracial Unions\u2019, and Race\u2019s \u2018Centrality to Understandings of Racism\u2019 Challenge the UK\u2019s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do Conceptualisations of \u2018Mixed Race\u2019, \u2018Interracial Unions\u2019, and Race\u2019s \u2018Centrality to Understandings of Racism\u2019 Challenge the UK\u2019s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Peter J. Aspinall<\/strong><\/a>, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
\nCentre for Health Services Studies
\nUniversity of Kent, Canterbury<\/em><\/p>\n

Genealogy<\/a>
\nVolume 6, Issue 2 (2022-06-13)<\/a>
\npages 52-74
\nDOI: 10.3390\/genealogy6020052<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A focus on \u2018mixed race\u2019 and mixedness in Britain<\/a> has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing \u2018race\u2019 rather than ethnic group and producing \u2018racial\u2019 outputs. The British practice may seem out of step by some commentators, given that \u2018mixed race\u2019 is the term of choice amongst those it describes, and given scholarly interest in interracial unions. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in \u2018race\u2019 and racisms in the context of the \u2018Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u2019 movement and concern over the down-playing in a UK Government-commissioned report of the role of structural racism has enlivened the debate. However, this paper argues against a shift to \u2018race\u2019 in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable \u2018ethnic group\u2019 in the census question title, the section label \u2018mixed\/multiple ethnic groups\u2019, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels. A measure of socially constructed \u2018race\u2019 is already available in all but name in the pan-ethnic section labels (White, Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other) and the tick boxes under the \u2018mixed\/multiple\u2019 heading. Ethnic group has been the conceptual basis of the question since the field trials for the 1991 Census, and its position has been strengthened by the increasing granularity of the categorisation (19 categories in the 2021 England and Wales Census) and by substantial distributed free-text provision that underpins the question\u2019s context of self-identification. The wider understanding of \u2018race\u2019 identifications invokes ascription, imposition, and social categorisation rather than self-identification and subscription. There is also evidence of the unacceptability of \u2018race\u2019 in the context of the census amongst the wider society.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in PDF<\/a> or HTML<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

However, this paper argues against a shift to \u2018race\u2019 in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable \u2018ethnic group\u2019 in the census question title, the section label \u2018mixed\/multiple ethnic groups\u2019, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,394,10],"tags":[28827,61,1877],"class_list":["post-63962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-genealogy","tag-peter-aspinall","tag-peter-j-aspinall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63962","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=63962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63963,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63962\/revisions\/63963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}