Category Controversies

Terminology

Defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Census Bureau, “race” and “ethnicity” in the U.S. Census are self-identification data items. This means that residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify and indicate whether they are of Hispanic or Latino origin. (Hispanic and Latino are presently the only categories for ethnicity).

For census purposes, the OMB defines the concept of race as not “scientific or anthropological” and takes into account “social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry,” using “appropriate scientific methodologies” that are not “primarily biological or genetic in reference.”

The race categories include both racial and national-origin groups. Race and ethnicity are considered separate and distinct identities; the question of whether a respondent is of Hispanic or Latino origin is a separate question. Thus, in addition to their race or races, all respondents are categorized by membership in one of two ethnicities—Hispanic or Latino and not Hispanic or Latino.

Promoting and Enforcing Civil Rights

Civil rights law and enforcement remain the motivation behind the development of the data standards. Among the changes related to civil rights law (which have been in effect since the 2000 census), is the instruction to “mark one or more races.” The OMB added that option after noting evidence of increasing numbers of interracial children and wanting to capture the diversity in a measurable way. It also received requests from people who wanted to be able to acknowledge their own or their children's full ancestry rather than identify with only one group.

Before this decision, the census and other methods of government data collection asked people to report only one race. On its reasoning, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that “data on ethnic groups are important for putting into effect a number of federal statutes (i.e., enforcing bilingual election rules under the Voting Rights Act; monitoring and enforcing equal employment opportunities under the Civil Rights Act). Data on ethnic groups are also needed by local governments to run programs and meet legislative requirements (i.e., identifying segments of the population who may not be receiving medical services under the Public Health Act; evaluating whether financial institutions are meeting the credit needs of minority populations under the Community Reinvestment Act).”

2010 Controversies

Some groups continue to object to the counting of undocumented persons who are in the United States. Republican senators David Vitter and Bob Bennett tried unsuccessfully to add questions on [Page 26]immigration status to the newest census form. Organizations such as the Prison Policy Initiative argue that the census counts of incarcerated men and women as “residents of prisons,” rather than of their preincarceration addresses, skewed political clout and resulted in misleading demographic and population data.

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