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)
After you do the sorting people activity above, click here to learn about traits.
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.
Read one of these posts to examine how a group changed over time:
How Jews became white.
How Asians became "model minorities."
How whites learn to not think about race. (Bonilla-Silva)
