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The ambiguity of racial categories

- June 16, 2015

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 allegation lit up the Internet, fueled by Ms. Dolezal’s 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.

What does it mean to be white, or black, or mixed-race?
These questions are not going away. Richard Perez-Pena reports:

The number of American adults with mixed-race backgrounds is three times what official census figures indicate . . . The Pew Research Center survey 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’s descriptions of themselves or others in their households. (Hispanics are considered an ethnic group, not a race.) . . .

Relevant to this discussion is a book from two years ago, “What is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans,” by former Census Bureau director Ken Prewitt recommends taking the race question off the decennial census. As I summarized 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 “race” question by a “race or origin” question, with the instruction to “Mark one or more” of the following boxes: “White,” “Black, African Am., or Negro,” “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,” “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian,” “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,” and “Some other race or origin.” 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 “Hispanic” is an ethnic group but “White” and “Black” are races, is both confusing and unnecessary.
Ultimately, Prewitt’s point is that ethnic and racial classifications are not fixed in time; rather, they exist in response to particular social conditions in the world. And these conditions continue to change, as the statistics show and the case of Rachel Dolezal illustrates.