- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Illustrations
- List of tables
- Note on Terminology
- Introduction
- Part I The Origins of the US Census: From Enumeration of Voters and Taxpayers to “Social Statistics,” 1790–1840
- 1 The Creation of the Federal Census by the Constitution of the United States
- 2 The First Developments of the National Census (1800–1830)
- 3 The Census of 1840
- Part II Slaves, Former Slaves, Blacks, and Mulattoes: Identification of the Individual and the Statistical Segregation of Populations (1850–1865)
- 4 Whether to Name or Count Slaves
- 5 Color, Race, and Origin of Slaves and Free Persons
- 6 Color and Status of Slaves
- 7 Census Data for 1850 and 1860 and the Defeat of the South
- Part III The Rise of Immigration and the Racialization of Society: The Adaptation of the Census to the Diversity of the American Population (1850–1900)
- 8 Modernization, Standardization, and Internationalization
- 9 From Slavery to Freedom
- 10 From “Mulatto” to the “One Drop Rule” (1870–1900)
- 11 The Slow Integration of Indians into US Population Statistics in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 The Chinese and Japanese in the Census
- 13 Immigration, Nativism, and Statistics (1850–1900)
- Part IV Apogee and Decline of Ethnic Statistics (1900–1940)
- 14 The Disappearance of the “Mulatto” as the End of Inquiry into the Composition of the Black Population of the United States
- 15 The Question of Racial Mixing in the American Possessions
- 16 New Asian Races, New Mixtures, and the “Mexican” Race
- 17 From Statistics by Country of Birth to the System of National Origins
- Part V The Population and the Census: Representation, Negotiation, and Segmentation (1900–1940)
- 18 The Census and African Americans Within and Outside the Bureau
- 19 Women as Census Workers and as Relays in the Field
- 20 Ethnic Marketing of Population Statistics
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Abbreviations
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
Epilogue
Epilogue
The Fortunes of Census Classifications (1940–2000)
- Chapter:
- (p.269) Epilogue
- Source:
- Counting Americans
- Author(s):
Paul Schor
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter reviews developments from 1940 to 2000. Among these is the increased awareness of the census. On the one hand, the Census Bureau itself published for every census an administrative history (called Procedural History) of the census; on the other hand, sociology and political science adopted the goal and, since the 1960s, have focused considerable attention on categories of race and ethnicity, especially the so-called “ethnoracial pentagon”—the five major categories defined by the federal administration as those which government agencies should utilize. In 1980, the creation of an “Ancestry” category reflected the evolution toward more open questions, giving more room for the perceptions that people had of themselves. The 2000 census, after long negotiations, approved the recognition of multiracial families by offering, for the first time, the possibility of checking off more than one race on the schedule.
Keywords: US census, administrative history, Census Bureau, race, multiracial families
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- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Illustrations
- List of tables
- Note on Terminology
- Introduction
- Part I The Origins of the US Census: From Enumeration of Voters and Taxpayers to “Social Statistics,” 1790–1840
- 1 The Creation of the Federal Census by the Constitution of the United States
- 2 The First Developments of the National Census (1800–1830)
- 3 The Census of 1840
- Part II Slaves, Former Slaves, Blacks, and Mulattoes: Identification of the Individual and the Statistical Segregation of Populations (1850–1865)
- 4 Whether to Name or Count Slaves
- 5 Color, Race, and Origin of Slaves and Free Persons
- 6 Color and Status of Slaves
- 7 Census Data for 1850 and 1860 and the Defeat of the South
- Part III The Rise of Immigration and the Racialization of Society: The Adaptation of the Census to the Diversity of the American Population (1850–1900)
- 8 Modernization, Standardization, and Internationalization
- 9 From Slavery to Freedom
- 10 From “Mulatto” to the “One Drop Rule” (1870–1900)
- 11 The Slow Integration of Indians into US Population Statistics in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 The Chinese and Japanese in the Census
- 13 Immigration, Nativism, and Statistics (1850–1900)
- Part IV Apogee and Decline of Ethnic Statistics (1900–1940)
- 14 The Disappearance of the “Mulatto” as the End of Inquiry into the Composition of the Black Population of the United States
- 15 The Question of Racial Mixing in the American Possessions
- 16 New Asian Races, New Mixtures, and the “Mexican” Race
- 17 From Statistics by Country of Birth to the System of National Origins
- Part V The Population and the Census: Representation, Negotiation, and Segmentation (1900–1940)
- 18 The Census and African Americans Within and Outside the Bureau
- 19 Women as Census Workers and as Relays in the Field
- 20 Ethnic Marketing of Population Statistics
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Abbreviations
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
