FROM ISSUE NUMBER 149 - FALL 2002 GO TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Do we need the census race question?
A FEW years ago, asked to comment on the controversy over the demand of so-called multiracial advocacy groups for a “multiracial” category in the census, I made a brash and wildly unrealistic proposal. I will describe the proposal in a moment, but first I will explain what I find troublesome about the existing questions on race, Hispanicity, and ancestry in the census. By the 1990 census, these questions had evolved in a way that, to my mind, was false to American racial and ethnic reality. Also, as formulated, they were incapable of eliciting coherent responses, to the extent that coherence is possible in a census.
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