Racial categorization and censuses

Abstract

Race and census-taking occupy, at present, two discrete but related fields of study. Historians, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, legal scholars, theorists, and, of late, cultural critics have taken up the study of race. They seek to explain what race is (and is not), and how, if not why, it matters socially, culturally, economically, and politically. Census-taking has been treated as the domain of demographers and statisticians who examine and study how census-taking, and hence census data, can be made more accurate. Although never hard and fast, disciplinary and conceptual boundaries have kept our understandings of race and census-taking separate, and have thus impoverished our understanding and study of both. Not surprisingly, the parameters that scholarship has managed to erect bear little resemblance to the very real connections between race and censuses in political and social life. Race, however ambiguous, seems a permanent feature of politics in numerous societies. Policymakers, statisticians, scholars, and the general public treat racial census data as important basic facts, and as raw materials for socioeconomic analyses and for public policies. Given the evident importance of race and racial statistical data in public life, explaining the dynamic between race and censuses is both a necessary and illuminating undertaking. This chapter argues that censuses help to constitute racial discourse. Racial discourse, in turn, helps to shape and explain public policy outcomes. In this argument, census-taking contributes to the formation and perpetuation of racial ideas; but it is not the only state process to do so.

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