Racebox.org - The Census since 1790
racebox.org
racebox.org
"Information on race is required for many federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks."
The original purpose of the race box was to skew the distribution of congress critters in a certain way (unfair) way. From what the Census says, it sounds as if they are still doing that.
In other words, some racists tried to screw over minority groups, the courts slapped them down, and race data is needed to verify ongoing compliance.
Say you have a region predominantly party X, but party Y is in power at the time of gerrymandering. The redistricting process will split the region amongst several districts, so that instead of getting 4 Y districts and 1 X district, you get 5 districts which are 60% Y and 40% X.
This process is completely legal, except when the region is also significantly represented by some politically favored racial groups. I.e., we give some races special legal protection from gerrymandering, but not others.
http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/7/404
"Overemphasizing the genetic contribution to complex human disease or behavioral traits can promote not only racism, but also a naive genetic essentialism - the notion that genes determine health status or behavior [28-30]. Such essentialism is particularly dangerous in clinical translation, where a focus should be maintained on the individual rather than the group [31]."
Probably not, actually, as there have always been black freemen in the United States.
I don't think this is correct. While the vast majority of slaves were black, some were not, and some blacks were free. Can you cite a source justifying your claim about "the original purpose" of the census?
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years,
Second of all, as you can clearly see at racebox.org, the race box was originally used to count free people, indians, and slaves.
It is? Are you sure it isn't shorthand for "native peoples that live in the US but are not citizens"? Do you think that children of indians and white folk who lived amongst the colonists would have been counted as indians in 1790?
the race box was originally used to count free people, indians, and slaves.
Perhaps I am missing it, but I don't see a "race box" in the 1790 form. And even if it was there, it still wouldn't change the fact that the constitutional text mandating census is phrased in terms of slaves and free people without any mention of color. So again, I can't see how your cite is relevant to your original claim.
It is starting to seem anachronistic to worry over race (thank god!), but that history is really very recent; think about bussing riots in the 1970s, etc. Also, a huge number of government programs have a mission to try to fix racial disparities (successfully or not), and they need information on basic racial population composition.
That said, I can't wait until nobody cares about race anymore. The litmus test on this will be whether ("inter") marriage matters; in coastal cities among college educated people, it isn't really news if one's parents are asian and white, or latino and white, but it still elicits comment and introspection if they are black and white...
I think the big dividing lines today depend on education and family cultural background, but I am not sure how a decennial census might track that.
The Census Bureau also continually sends out the American Community Survey to a subset of the population. It asks much more detailed questions, so the data may already exist.
From the original source code...
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States which may be included within
this Union, according to their respective Numbers,
which shall be determined by adding to the whole
Number of free Persons, including those bound to
Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not
taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The
actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years
after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United
States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years,
in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.
So, if you wanted to ask if somebody was indian or not, that's fair, since they are, legally, still considered in many ways to be a sovereign people from the United States (which is why you have casinos and fireworks stands on reservations)
Asking any other question regarding race, in my opinion, is inappropriate. Our government should be color blind.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/92721...
"The concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects self-identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature."