1. How many different races would you have been in the censuses above?
From The Society Pages, here is how the US census has changed in how it determines race over the years. Also worth reading the comments section.
The timeline below is from the PEW research center and it explains how the U.S. census has changed over the years. Click here for a more detailed look at the timeline of racial census categories.
2. Based on the changes in the census can you hypothesize why one change came about? What were the social, political or cultural dynamics were that resulted in a changing census? (You can try to examine the graphic or use the Society Pages link above for a guided explanation)
When the first census was issued in 1790, note that the categories were "free whites", "other free persons" or "slaves" but by 1820 those categories changed to "free whites" "free coloreds" and "slaves."
Why does that matter? What is the binary created by the first census?
Immigration Laws: Citizenship and Voting Rights
Look at these images and the text below.
Who do you think is being represented above?
This caption and illustration show the subjectivity of race in the United States. The writer was referring to the Irish who were emigrating in large numbers in the 1840s and 50s. 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 of how race was both a social construction - a subjective, changing label and a way to justify discrimination.
Over the years, Jews, 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. In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic growth and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called the Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers. Nell Irvin Painter’s book, The History of White People, details the the concept of whiteness — and explains how many ethnic groups now regarded as white, from Irish, Jews, Italians were once excluded from mainstream American society, explained and excerpted on NPR here.
Here are some sociology readings about how different groups have changed over time:
All of these are examples of how race has changed over the years in America. Who is considered white changes because there is no empirical or objective way to define race. Race doesn't exist in any biological or empirical sense, it only exists as a social construction. Race changes over time based on the social and political dynamics of the time. And race is used to justify unequal power arrangements.
Why does “Chinese” show up in 1870?
The Supreme Court and the Institutionalization of 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.
Here are some other ways that the legal system (legislation subsequently reinforced by Supreme Court) constructed race in the U.S.:
Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 (Black Americans could never be citizens of the United States.)
Chae Chan Ping v. United States 1889 (Limited rights for Americans who had Chinese ancestry.)
Pace v. Alabama 1883 (miscegenation law allowed criminalizing interracial marriage - not overturned until 1967!)
Ozawa v. U.S. 1922 (Japanese are not white.)
United States V. Thind (1923)
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 the 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 the Caucasus Mountains, the region where anthropologists believed that Caucasians emerged from.
3. 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 even Hindu! He was Sikh. This was just one way of many that the legal system that shaped race throughout U.S. history. For more information about Thind, checkout the Scene on Radio podcast. It has a whole season on race and a whole episode about Thind (embedded below) as told through his son, who, surprisingly, had no idea about the case and everything that his dad went through! I really want to emphasize the significance of the Thind case - It represents another example of the nagging racial idea that complicates race relations in the U.S. in so many ways: For many Americans, being "American" means being White. In Thind's case it is quite literally being considered not a citizen; After the Thind ruling one-third of all Americans with Indian descent leave the country!
Lum v. Rice 1927 (Citizens who are Chinese don't have the right to attend white schools.)
Korematsu v. U.S. 1944 (Americans can be held in prison or concentration camps because of their ethnicity and without due process.)
Citizenship Law Part 2 - The 1965 Immigration Act
The 1965 immigration law was another institution that played a pivotal role in shaping the U.S. and making it the multicultural nation that it has become. This 2019 episode of NPR's Fresh Air highlights Tom Gjelten's 2016 book, A Nation Of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story.
The 1965 law opened the U.S. to countries all over the world, and it also created a demand for cheap labor that lead to the illegal immigration crisis from Central America. This was the beginning of marked change in the U.S. that resulted in the immigration challenges and criticisms that the U.S. has had for the last 50 years. Here are three important dynamics that emerged from this law:
The U.S. became more diverse. The law prioritized what immigrants could offer to the U.S. over what ethnicity they were. This led to a much more diverse population coming to the U.S.
The ethnic diversity did not bring labor and educational diversity. Instead, many of the diverse people were emigrating with advanced degrees and skills that allowed them to climb the U.S. social class ladder. This had the unintended result of white middle and working class citizens resenting the new diversity that seemed to be climbing the social class ladder faster than them.
Lastly, this new immigration that favored skilled labor over unskilled dried up the cheap European labor that bolstered the economic growth through industrialization. In other words, businesses who relied on cheap labor could not find the workers that they once did. This resulted in a demand that pulled easily accessible labor from over the border - especially from Mexico and Central America.
