Asian American Categorization

The United States has a decennial census, which means that every 10 years data is collected about its population. Historically, this information has been used to apportion representative seats within the U.S. House of Representatives, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, article I, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says the following about apportionment:

In 1790 Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, oversaw the first U.S. census. Examination of that first census makes it painfully evident that it was a product of its time. Over the ensuing two and a half centuries, the process has not remained static. The questions asked, as well as the ways in which census workers collect data and enumerate citizens for the decennial census, have continued to evolve. For example, the first eight U.S. censuses included categories for individuals who were slaves or free colored. Meanwhile, American Indians and Chinese only began to be enumerated in the 1860 census, and that was limited: Chinese were counted only in the state of California. It was not until 1870 that the Chinese began to be counted in the U.S. census. The 1890 census was the first time that the Japanese were included in the census. And, it was not until the 1950 census that Filipinos began to be counted.

Since the 1980 census, six detailed Asian response categories have been in use: (1) Asian Indian, (2) Chinese, (3) Filipino, (4) Japanese, (5) Korean, and (6) Vietnamese. In the 1990 census, an “Other” designation was added that complemented an Asian/Pacific Islander (API) category. In other words, census respondents could specify their API category.

Another fact that becomes clear when examining the history of the U.S. censuses is the difficult truth that the census has always had to deal with the public's changing perceptions, attitudes, and social constructions of race, ethnicity, immigration, and citizenship. Until the 1950 census, respondents’ racial classifications were determined foremost by the observational judgment of the census enumerator and not by how they themselves would self-identify. This changed in 1960, when for the first time census data was collected by a combination of self-classification, interview, and observation by census enumerators. Some notable immigration scholars like Charles Hirschman have contended that most citizens would have classified themselves the same way as the census enumerators since race is very much a socially constructed phenomenon.