3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on the U.S. CensusPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States, Women on 2010-04-01 17:55Z by Steven |
3 Questions: Melissa Nobles on the U.S. Census
MIT News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2010-04-01
Melissa Nobles, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
As America’s decennial headcount gets under way, an MIT political scientist discusses the history of race and ethnicity in the U.S. Census
April 1 marks National Census Day, the official date of this year’s U.S. Census. To help put the census in context, MIT News spoke with Associate Professor of Political Science Melissa Nobles, whose teaching and research interests span the comparative study of racial and ethnic politics, and issues of retrospective justice. Her book, “Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics” (Stanford University Press, 2000), examined the political origins and consequences of racial categorization in demographic censuses in the United States and Brazil.
Q. You’ve noted in your book that the initial impetus for census-taking was political, and yet the earliest censuses also included racial categories. Why are race and ethnicity included in the U.S. Census?
A. Census-taking in the U.S. is as old as the Republic. The U.S. Constitution mandates that an “actual enumeration” be conducted every 10 years to allow for representational apportionment. The initial impetus for census taking was political. Yet the earliest censuses also included racial categories. The inclusion of these categories offers important insights into the centrality of racial and ethnic identifications in American political, economic and social life. This centrality continues to this day…
…The 1850 census first introduced the category “mulatto,” at the behest of a southern physician, in order to gather data about the presumed deleterious effects of “racial mixture.” Post-Civil War censuses, which continued to include the “mulatto” category, reflected the enduring preoccupation with “racial mixing.”..
Read the entire article here.