The data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the 2007 version of which is rolling out over the next month, is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is that for areas such as all of New York City or Brooklyn, we get data on a wide range of social and economic population characteristics every year, rather than just once a decade as part of the census. The bad news is that the long form of the census, which had been sent to one-in-six households every decade, has been eliminated, and while the Bureau has promised ACS data for small areas such as census tracts (based on averaging a whole bunch of years together), I have yet to see it. The small number of questions on the “short form,” which was and is sent to everyone every ten years, is now all we are assured of knowing about ourselves with a high level of geographic detail. So what are the questions deemed important enough to ask everyone? Administrative questions to compile the number of people in a housing unit, whether the housing unit is owned or rented, the age and sex or each person, the relationship of each person to the person filling out the form, and one other thing. Race and Hispanic Origin, according to “the requirements of standards issued by the Office of Management and Budget in 1997 (Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity).”
The questions proposed for the Census and 2010 American Community Survey were announced in this report to Congress earlier this year. The Congress and administration are playing games with the Census again, not providing the funding needed to do the job right, so a half-assed job can be funded as an “emergency” and not count as part of the Bush fiscal record. Appropriate since the entire administration has been an “emergency.”
Race, Hispanic Origin, and Ancestry (the latter is not in the Census short form but is in the ACS) are attempts to assign people to social or cultural groups, as determined ahead of time by the government. But what do what do “race,” “Hispanic Origin,” and “Ancestry” really mean?
The Race question is:
“What is Person 1’s race? More than one box may be checked.”
The choices are “White; Black, African Am., or Negro; American Indian or Alaska Native — Print name of enrolled or principal tribe; Asian Indian; Chinese; Filipino; Other Asian — Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on; Japanese Korean Vietnamese Native Hawaiian Guamanian or Chamorro Samoan Other Pacific Islander — Print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan, and so on.”
According to the Bureau “race is key to implementing any number of federal laws and is a critical factor in the basic research behind numerous policies,” including anti-discrimination policies such as Title 20, the Civil Rights Act, the Public Health Service Act, and the Voting Rights Act.
The Hispanic Origin question is:
“Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?”
The proposed answers are “No, not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin; Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano; Yes, Puerto Rican; Yes, Cuban; Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin — Print origin, for example, Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.”
According to the Bureau “Hispanic origin is used in numerous programs and is vital in making policy decisions. These data are needed to determine compliance with provisions of antidiscrimination in employment and minority recruitment legislation. Under the Voting Rights Act, data about Hispanic origin are essential to ensure enforcement of bilingual election rules.”
From the ACS, the Ancestry question “What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?”
“(For example: Italian, Jamaican, African Am., Cambodian, Cape Verdean, Norwegian, Dominican, French Canadian, Haitian, Korean, Lebanese, Polish, Nigerian, Mexican, Taiwanese, Ukrainian, and so on.)”
According to the Bureau: “ancestry identifies the ethnic origins of the population. Federal agencies regard this information as essential for fulfilling many important needs. Ancestry is required to enforce provisions under the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based upon race, sex, religion, and national origin.”
Note the overlap between the categories. According to the examples the Census Bureau uses to give clues to the respondents, “African Am.” is both a race and an ancestry. So is “Korean.” “Mexican” is both an ancestry and a Hispanic origin. Are these categories really different?
At one time, the term “race” was used to refer to physical features, according to the belief that adapting to different environments people had evolved into the equivalent of different breeds of dog. That’s what White and Black are, referring to skin color. But it was never that neat. In early censuses, people could identify themselves as White or Italian, the latter distinguished by darker skin. Later, when a global distinction between Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid races was asserted, Arabs and Asian Indians were grouped with White, and Native Americans were grouped with Chinese. Back then intermarriage was not discussed in polite company, but it further confused things, although in the south there were separate words for various percentages of skin color and in Latin America mixed-race people, far more common, were considered a race unto themselves. It is only in the most recent census in 2000 that people were allowed to check more than one box for their “race,” a much ballyhooed change in the question at the time.
At one time ethnicity was based on tribal groups, which in most of the world have been distinguished by language or dialect — hence French and Germans. Since those in the same tribe could talk to each other more easily than with those of other tribes, the theory went, they also developed other shared characteristics, such as much, literature, cuisine, and fashion, and were more likely to associate with others in the same tribe. Ethnicity evolved into ancestry some generations after the great wave of European migration, when everyone was American and spoke English, but they had ancestors that came from different places.
What really trashed the “race” idea is the widespread immigration of Latinos and Asians after 1965. Given a choice of “White,” “Black,” or “other” many put down other, regardless of their shade of skin was, considering their ethnic origin to be their cultural group. Earlier, when the “race” question shifted from a choice of White or Non-White to Black or Non-Black, whole groups of people changed sides. The response was the creation of “Hispanic Origin” starting in 1970, so in addition to tabulating White and Black and Hispanic and Non-Hispanic it was possible to divide people into White Non-Hispanic, Black Non-Hispanic and Hispanic. “Asian” was added to the mix, stuffing two-thirds of humanity, with widely different cultures, religions, histories and, yes, physical features into one box based on having ancestors on a continent delineated as such by those on another one.
As it is now, “race” overlaps Hispanic origin which overlaps ancestry in a muddle. Take the debate of whether Barack Obama is “Black.” If “Blacks,” as a social or cultural group, are the descendents of people kidnapped from African into slavery hundreds of years ago, who subsequently lived in legally segregated communities within the United States, the answer is “no.” Based on his physical features, the senator could probably pass as any one of a number of brown-skinned groups of people, from Arab to Asian Indian to Mexican if he wanted to. Perhaps Obama’s “tribe” could best be identified as “Ivy League,” like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W and HW Bush. Is Rock Hackshaw “Black”? Maybe in a crowd of White people, but east of Prospect Park he’s a Caribbean is he not? And in a crowd of Caribbeans he’s a Trinidadian? Maybe Rock would put himself in the “political rebel” tribe. Perhaps he’ll answer the question.
Am I “Italian”? Well, my father’s father wasn’t, obviously, though most of my other ancestors can trace their roots to pre-1890 southern Italy. I make my own tomato sauce and DO NOT put sugar in it. Does that count, even if the only words of Italian I know are the curses my mother and grandmother used to fling at me? Is my wife "Irish" because her favorite band is the Saw Doctors? How about my kids, given that there is no ancestral overlap between my wife and I? Do you have an ancestry if no more than 3/8 of your ancestors came from any one place?
This “Ivy League” gibe gets to another issue: what isn’t used to assign people to social groups as well as what is. Religion, for example. It has been held that under the establishment clause, religion is none of the state’s business, and the state has no right to even ask about it. And given the consequences for Jews of being identified as such during the Holocaust this is perhaps understandable. In reality, however, religion is one aspect of a person’s characteristics that has seldom been used as a reason for widespread, organized persecution in this country (the Mormons being an exception). Other characteristics that are on the census have been used as a basis of discrimination. In the most famous recent example, the Census Bureau faced enormous pressure to violate its 70-year guarantee of anonymity during World War II, when the government sought help identifying Japanese for internment, and did as little as it could (though as was later revealed more than it probably should have). Of course the counting of Blacks as less than whole persons is right in the original draft of the Constitution. Perhaps religion should be the last thing we worry about counting. This isn’t the Sunnis and the Shia.
If one purpose of the census is political — redistricting is the reason the census is in the Constitution after all — then religion certainly seems relevant in New York. Political analysts routinely talk about Mayoral elections in terms of the White Catholic vote (White as opposed to the Hispanic vote) and the Jewish vote. And Jews, in addition to conducting their own attempt at a census, have tried to measure their number by using census data on the number of people of German, Polish, Hungarian, and Russian ancestry in neighborhoods known to have Jews, something putting Ancestry in the lower sample size ACS will frustrate. Of course “Jews” are a muddle all by themselves, a tribe (or group of 12) that also has its own exclusive religion while being split by different languages and country of origin. To the goyim, they’re Jews, but among themselves, they don’t even agree what counts.
How about sexual orientation? Is “gay” a social or cultural group? It certainly seems to be for political purposes, as groups of people who are often have their own organizations and cluster in particular areas. Or some of them do, perhaps those who think of themselves first and foremost as “gay.” There was a big hullabaloo about the fact that the most recent census, and this one, allow the “relationship” question to be answered “unmarried partner.” The idea was that by identifying those of the same sex who had this relationship, at least some of the “gays” could be added up.
What other social and cultural groups could people be put into? What’s your tribe? Yankee? Texan? Redneck? Nerd? Hipster? Hasid? Yuppie? Valley Girl? Yuppie? New Age Vegan? If the idea is to identify people who live and think the same way, who are more likely to associate with each other than those not of their group, and to measure their characteristics or perhaps provide them with collective representation where they are geographically concentrated, are any of these designations less useful that the ones the Bureau has proposed? One might argue that these are categories people can choose to be in, whereas race is an inherent characteristic. DNA mapping, however, has shown it is a characteristic with extremely limited basis, nothing like different breeds of dog at all. Race has historical importance, but history is moving on, and has already turned the question into a mush. Culture? It’s optional.
Who should decide what group a person is in? Historically, discrimination has happened when some else put people in a particular group, not when people assigned a particular identity to themselves. The Census Bureau is asking people to report what groups they themselves are in, not the neighbors — unless a household repeatedly refuses to answer the census, and the enumerator goes to “last resort” procedures and does ask the neighbors.
The problem is that race, Hispanic origin, and ancestry are attempts to assign people to social or cultural groups, as determined ahead of time by the government. Not by people themselves. The government keeps trying to set up the boxes to check. The people keep identifying themselves as something that isn’t in one of the boxes.
Were it up to me, the question would read as follows:
“For many (but not all) Americans, being part of a social or cultural group is an important part of their identity. The group may be based on physical features (White, Black), the part of the world or country where they or their ancestors came from (Puerto Rican, Italian, Texan), the language they or their ancestors spoke, religious affiliation, lifestyle preferences, sexual orientation, or any other factor. For each person over 18, up to three social or cultural groups may be listed, in order of importance.”
These would be three objections to this question right off the bat, one practical, one political, one analytical.
The practical objection is that the little checked boxes are easier for the Census Bureau to code than words that people write in, especially given the way Americans spell. How can you count how many “Whites” and “Blacks” you have when so many people can’t spell either word? The more responses get spit out by the computer and need to be individually analyzed, the more expensive the census will turn out to be (did I say it was under-funded?) My response is that, luckily enough, it appears that there will be lots of people in need of gainful employment in the first half of 2010, just at the right time. Better census work than employment insurance payouts.
The political objection is that if not all members of a disadvantaged group identify themselves as such, the government will not have the facts required to analyze discrimination and ensure fair representation. What if not all “Blacks” identify themselves as “Black?” Won’t that make “Blacks” seem less important? Won’t that make them easier to abuse, or ignore? What about all those laws cited by the Census Bureau?
There would probably be a lot of huffing and puffing about this if a question such as this were proposed. In reality, however, I don’t think that would be a problem. Group identification, in my view, is a disadvantage of discrimination. Jews were Germans and Poles and Russians before the Holocaust stamped them all as Jews. Blacks had to resort to an identity as such because that is how they were grouped, and identified, by Whites. A Black person in America is more likely to brand themselves “Black” than I am to brand myself “White,” because as a member of a racial majority I have the luxury of thinking of myself as an individual first and foremost rather than a member of any social or cultural group. I would never list my skin tone as something worth mentioning about me.
If the goal is to fight discrimination, I think it’s fair to assume that anyone who feels they have been disadvantaged or discriminated against because others perceive them to be in a group would put that group on the list. Or they could be explicitly instructed to do so. And if any Black people might have been tempted to allow skin color to slip to, say, number three in their list of social or cultural groups, I’m sure the Reverend Al would be there to remind them to put it first. I don’t think the problem is getting people who are Black to say they are Black. I think the problem is getting them to answer the census at all, based on comparative response rates in 2000. Perhaps a little kitchen table talk on the subject of the census, which an open-ended question would stimulate, could be helpful in that regard. If the word gets out, I’ll bet this post gets more comment than the 100 or more I’ve made on topics I consider more important.
The third objection is time series consistency. The Census Bureau has asked the race question since the very first census in 1790 (age wasn’t asked until 1800). So we have a long time series of data on how many Whites and Blacks there have been, a time series that would be theoretically broken by my open-ended question. The census, however, has already broken a significant times series recently, when it shifted from the Standard Industrial Classification System to the North American Industrial Classification system for classifying economic activity. The time-series objection was raised. The federal Office and Management and Budget responded that it didn’t make sense to preserve continuity with the past if as a result the categories no longer made sense and were useful in the present.
So what does make sense and is useful now, for purposes of classifying people into groups to measure their group characteristics and be mindful of when redistricting? Rather than have the Federal Office of Management and Budget decide, I think it’s best to allow people to answer that question themselves.