The Social Construction of Race in the U.S.

Census Classification and Racial Subjectivity

Click here to do an activity from PBS's Race Power of an Illusion where you have to categorize people like a census taker would have.  (Use Safari or a browser that enables Flash)

Here is a screenshot of the activity:

This subjective, visual categorization of people is how the US Census operated until 1970.

Not only was racial classification based on this subjective, visual categorization of people, but also the categories have changed over time. This is just one way that institutional policies constructed race differently throughout US history.

• Here is how the US census has changed in how it determines race over the years.
• This graphic from the PEW research center explains how the U.S. census has changed over the years:

The Supreme Court and Race
The Census Bureau is not the only U.S. institution that subjectively affected racial categorization over the years.  Because of the subjective nature of race in general and the census in particular, a number of Supreme Court Cases were forced to determine racial classification and policy.

Bhagat Singh Thind

Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967) was born in Punjab and came to America in 1913.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley and paid for it by working in an Oregon lumber mill during summer vacations. When America entered World War I, he joined the U.S. Army. He was honorably discharged on 16th of December, 1918 and in 1920 applied for U.S. citizenship from the state of Oregon. Several applicants from India had thus far been granted U.S. citizenship. 

He was applying based on the naturalization law at the time which was the 1790 United States Naturalization Law.  It stated the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. The law limited citizenship to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good character".  The census forms allowed Singh to choose from these categories: White, Black, Mulatto, Chinese, American Indian.  His application for citizenship was challenged by the immigration office.  Singh argued that he was white from a state very close to Caucasus Mountains, the region where anthropologists believed that Caucasians emerged from.

As an individual, decide how you would rule:

____Singh is a white man who deserves citizenship. 

____Singh is not white and therefore does not deserve citizenship.

The Court determined that Thind was not white or Caucasoid, even though he did not fit into the other categories of race at the time (Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, American Indian).  Instead, the court ruled that because most people would say that he is not white, then he is not white. The court also ruled that this ruling applied to all Hindus - even though Thind was not Hindu!  He was Sikh.  This was just one way of many  that the legal system that shaped race throughout U.S. history.  Here are some others:

• 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (banned Chinese immigration and limited rights for those already here)
• Pace v. Alabama 1883 (miscegenation law - not overturned until 1967!)
• Ozawa v. U.S. 1922 (Japanese are not white)
• Thind v. U.S. 1923 (If you don't seem white, you are not)
• Lum v. Rice 1927 (Citizens who are Chinese don't have the right to attend white schools)
• Hirabayashi v. U.S. 1943 (Japanese may be imprisoned in camps during WWII)
• Korematsu v. U.S. 1944 (Americans can be held in prison or concentration camps because of their ethnicity and without due process.)

What are the results and evidence of race as a social construct in U.S. history?

From Harper’s Illustration:

“They are distinctly marked – the small and somewhat upturned nose, the black tint of skin…They are ignorant, and as a consequence thereof, are idle, thriftless, poor, intemperate, and barbarian…Of course they will violate our laws, these wild bisons leaping over the fences which easily restrain the civilized domestic cattle, will commit great crimes of violence, even capital offences, which certainly have increased as of late.”

Who are they talking about?





This caption and illustration show the subjectivity of race in the United States.  The Irish were not considered white.  Not only does this not make sense physically/biologically, but the caption reveals how subjective and social race was.  They were looked down on because of the jobs they did (dock labor), because of their religion (Catholic), because of their culture (alcohol use) and their social class (poor).  This subjectivity is just one example throughout the history of the United States.  Over the years, Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans faced discrimination because they were considered less desirable than Northern Europeans, but all of these people are considered "white" by today's standards.

Here are some sociology readings about how different groups have changed over time:

• My post on How Jews became white, which draws on Karen Brodkin's research.
• My post on How Asians became "model minorities" which draws on a number of sociologists including Janelle Wong, Ellen Wu, Min Zhou, and Jen Lee. 
• How whites learn to not think about race (Bonilla-Silva)
• How Italians became white; Vicious Bigotry and Reluctant Acceptance (NY Times)
• How Armenians became white.
• When the Irish weren't white.

For more on how race has changed, see Nell Irvin Painter's book called, "The History of White People." Here is a review on Salon.  All of these are examples of how race has changed over the years in America.  The meaning of being white changes because there is no empirical or objective way to define race.  It doesn't exist in any biological or empirical sense, it only exists as a social construction.

Sociological Mindfulness reflection: Is this new information to you? Is it difficult to process?  Why?

Watch this show making fun of how race is socially constructed.



See Ferris and Stein pages 224-225 for more info.