{"id":6417,"date":"2010-04-01T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=6417"},"modified":"2015-09-05T02:24:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T02:24:16","slug":"3-questions-melissa-nobles-on-the-u-s-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=6417","title":{"rendered":"3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on the U.S. Census"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on the U.S. Census<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

MIT News<\/a>
\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology<\/a>
\n2010-04-01<\/p>\n

Melissa Nobles<\/a><\/strong>, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science
\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology<\/em><\/p>\n

As America\u2019s decennial headcount gets under way, an MIT political scientist discusses the history of race and ethnicity in the U.S. Census<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

April 1 marks National Census Day, the official date of this year\u2019s U.S. Census. To help put the census in context, MIT News spoke with Associate Professor of Political Science Melissa Nobles<\/a>, whose teaching and research interests span the comparative study of racial and ethnic politics, and issues of retrospective justice. Her book, “Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics<\/a>” (Stanford University Press, 2000), examined the political origins and consequences of racial categorization in demographic censuses in the United States and Brazil<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q.<\/strong> You\u2019ve noted in your book that the initial impetus for census-taking was political, and yet the earliest censuses also included racial categories. Why are race and ethnicity included in the U.S. Census?<\/p>\n

A.<\/strong> Census-taking in the U.S. is as old as the Republic<\/a>. The U.S. Constitution<\/a> mandates that an \u201cactual enumeration\u201d be conducted every 10 years to allow for representational apportionment<\/a>. The initial impetus for census taking was political. Yet the earliest censuses also included racial categories. The inclusion of these categories offers important insights into the centrality of racial and ethnic identifications in American political, economic and social life. This centrality continues to this day…<\/p>\n

…The 1850 census first introduced the category \u201cmulatto<\/a>,\u201d at the behest of a southern physician, in order to gather data about the presumed deleterious effects of \u201cracial mixture.\u201d Post-Civil War<\/a> censuses, which continued to include the \u201cmulatto\u201d category, reflected the enduring preoccupation with \u201cracial mixing.\u201d..<\/p>\n

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

3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on the U.S. Census MIT News Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010-04-01 Melissa Nobles, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology As America\u2019s decennial headcount gets under way, an MIT political scientist discusses the history of race and ethnicity in the U.S. Census April 1 marks National […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,26,20,25],"tags":[2690,1687,2689],"class_list":["post-6417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","category-women","tag-massachusetts-institute-of-technology","tag-melissa-nobles","tag-mit-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417","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=6417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42562,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions\/42562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}