Classifying Race & Ethnicity in the United States

Information about race and ethnicity in the United States is derived from the Census of Population that is administered every 10 years (Figure 7-3). The U.S. census shows the difficulty in distinguishing between ethnicity and race. The three most numerous U.S. ethnicities—Asian American, African American, and Hispanic American—illustrate the complexity. The census regards Hispanic American as an ethnicity, but it regards Asian American and African American as races even though the two are also logically place-based ethnicities.

Sharing Information About The Census

Race & the U.S. Census

Since 1997, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required the U.S. Bureau of the Census to classify people living in the United States into the following races:

• White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

• Black or African American: A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.

• American Indian or Alaska Native: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.

• Asian: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.

The 1997 government guidelines permit people to select more than one of the above races.

Hispanics and African Americans face special challenges in completing the census. Because the census considers Hispanic to be an ethnicity, Hispanics also get to identify with any race they wish. In 2010, 53 percent of Hispanics picked white, 37 percent some other race, 6 percent more than one box, and 4 percent one of the 13 other categories.

African Americans also face a distinctive challenge in responding to the census (see Doing Geography feature). Although African American is an ethnicity—for a person whose ancestry can be traced to Africa—the 2010 census grouped “Black, African Am., or Negro” as a race. Most black Americans are descended from African immigrants and therefore also belong to an African ethnicity. Some American blacks, however, trace their cultural heritage to regions other than Africa, including Latin America & the Caribbean, Asia, and Pacific islands.

The term African American identifies a group with an extensive cultural tradition, whereas the term black in principle denotes nothing more than dark skin. Because many Americans make judgments about the values and behavior of others simply by observing skin color, black is substituted for African American in daily language.

An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. The 1997 OMB standards permit the reporting of more than one race. Today, many Americans are of mixed ancestry and don’t choose to identify with a single race or ethnicity. Other Americans trace their heritage to places in Europe, such as Ireland and Italy, that are not included in the two race and ethnicity census questions.

A question about race has appeared on every decennial U.S. census of population since the first one in 1790. However, the categories of races have changed nearly every decade. The constant change is a reflection that race is a social construct that is evolving in American society.

The first three censuses, conducted in 1790, 1800, and 1810, had only three so-called races: free whites, other free people, and slaves. The next three censuses, in 1820, 1830, and 1840, retained the three races but changed “other free” to “free colored.” Into the twentieth century, the census included a race called “mulatto,” which it defined as a mix of black and another race. People defined by the census as American Indians were added in the mid-nineteenth century, Chinese and Japanese in the late nineteenth century, other Asian so-called “races” in the early twentieth century, and various so-called “races” from Central and South America in the mid-twentieth century. The 1960 census was the first that permitted people to select their own race rather than have it selected for them by the census taker, and the 1980 census was the first to classify some Americans as Hispanic.

The Pew Research Center displays the changing census question about race in a chart. The table below shows some of the changes in defining persons who are currently classified as Black, African, or Negro. How have changes in race relations in the United States affected changes in this classification?

Changing U.S. Census definitions of race

Race and Ethnicity on U.S. Census Form

Pause & Reflect 7.1.2

1. What might be the benefits and challenges of changing the census questions about ethnicity and race from multiple choice to short answer format?

2. Nearly 10 million Americans changed their answer to question 8 or 9 between 2000 and 2010. The most frequent changes involved Hispanics who changed their race from white to something else or from something else to white. Why might that be the case?