Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T07:56:55.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WHAT LIES BENEATH: EQUALITY AND THE MAKING OF RACIAL CLASSIFICATIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2015

Debra Thompson
Debra Thompson*
Affiliation:
Political Science, Ohio University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Spring 2015 , pp. 114 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edition (London and New York: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar; Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

2 Fredrickson, George M., Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

3 Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edition (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 55.Google Scholar

4 Fields, Barbara, “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review, 181 (1990): 95–118Google Scholar; Hesse, Barnor, “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: the Postracial Horizon,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 1 (2011): 155–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 55; Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, “Once More, with Feeling: Reflections on Racial Formation,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 123, no. 5 (2008): 1565–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Porter, Theodore, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Stigler, Stephen M., The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Woolf, Stuart, “Statistics and the Modern State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 3 (1989): 588–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 81–82.

8 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, 1921. Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1921).

9 Canada, Fourth Census of Canada, Instructions to Chief Officers, Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1901), 14.

10 Giokas, John and Groves, Robert K, “Collective and Individual Recognition in Canada: The Indian Act Regime,” In Who are Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples? Recognition, Definition and Jurisdiction, ed. Chartran, Paul L. A. H. (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar; Andersen, Chris, Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2014).Google Scholar

11 Brian Titley, E., A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1986).Google Scholar

12 Van Kirk, Sylvia, “From ‘Marrying-In’ to ‘Marrying-Out’: Changing Patterns of Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Marriage in Colonial Canada,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23, no. 3 (2002): 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Valverde, Mariana, The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925, with a new introduction, (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2008).Google Scholar

14 Thompson, Debra, “Racial Ideas and Gendered Intimacies: the Regulation of Interracial Relationships in North America,” Social and Legal Studies 18, no. 3 (2009): 353–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Canada, Instructions to Commissioners, 1921.

16 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1931); Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators, (Ottawa, ON: King’s Printer, 1941).

17 McLaren, Angus, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945, (Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

18 Stoler, Ann Laura, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 15.Google Scholar

19 NAC RG31 vol. 1517 file 123, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician (Walter Duffet) 1961 Census — Origin or Ethnic Question. Letter from Herbert Marshall, Dominion Statistician to M. W. Mackenzie, Deputy Minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 10 March 1950.

20 Dominique Clément, Canada’s Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937–1982. (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2008); Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany, (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2012).

21 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, 1951. Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa, ON: King’s Printer, 1951), emphasis added.

22 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ninth Census of Canada, 1951, Volume X, General Review and Summary Tables, (Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer, 1956), 138.

23 Ibid., 128.

24 Haque, Eve, Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2012).Google Scholar

25 Canada, Equality Now! Report of the Special Committee on Visible Minorities in Canadian Society (Ottawa, ON: Supply and Services Canada, 1984); Canada, Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (Ottawa, ON: Supply and Services Canada, 1984).

26 Boxhill, Walton O., Limitations to the Use of Ethnic Origin Data to Quantify Visible Minorities in Canada (Ottawa, ON: Minister of Supply and Services, 1984).Google Scholar

27 See “We’re Canadian, Eh?” Toronto Sun, 26 May 1991, p. 4; “Really Count Yourself In,” editorial, Toronto Sun, 26 May 1991, Comment 1; “This Time, REALLY Count Yourself In: Say Count Me Canadian,” Toronto Sun, 2 June 1991, Comment 16; “Let’s Count on Canadians,” Toronto Sun, 4 June 1991, p. 2.

28 Statistics Canada, 1991 Census, Content of the Questionnaire (Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada, 1991).

29 Boyd, Monica, “Canadian, Eh? Ethnic Origins Shifts in the Canadian Census,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 31, no. 3 (1999): 1–19.Google Scholar

30 Richard Gwyn, “Census focus on race a step backward.” Toronto Star, May 19, 1996, F3.

31 Fellegi, Ivan P., “Chief Statistician: Why the census is counting visible minorities,” Globe and Mail, April 26, 1996, A21.Google Scholar

32 Canada, Content of the Questionnaire, the 1996 Population Census (Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada, 1996).

33 Fellegi, “Chief Statistician.”

34 Dryzek, John S., Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy, and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

35 Ford, Christopher, “Administering Identity: The Determination of ‘Race’ in Race–Conscious Law,” California Law Review 82 (1994): 1283–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Thompson, Debra, “Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35, no. 8 (2012): 1409–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Edmonston, Barry, Goldstein, Joshua, Lott, Juanita Tamayo, eds., Spotlight on Heterogeneity: the Federal Standards for Racial and Ethnic Classifications, Summary of Workshop (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996), 49–50.Google Scholar

38 Office of Management and Budget, “Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity,” Federal Register 60, no. 166 (1995): 44674–693.Google Scholar

39 Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Reginald Daniel, G., More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Williams, Kim, Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

40 United States, Federal measures of race and ethnicity and the implications for the 2000 census, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 105th Congress, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), 105–6.

41 Ibid., 128.

42 Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Making Multiracials: State, Family and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 30.Google Scholar

43 United States, Federal Measures of Race, 101.

44 AMEA and Project RACE responded angrily: “The multiracial community is no less discriminated against and no less deserving of its rights than any other racial or ethnic community. The interracial community sees the rigidity of these existing categories as a means of shutting out its people from receiving the same benefits, protections, and considerations under the law as the representatives of the ‘coalition’ wish to retain. . . . [Your] stance merely perpetuates the myth that races and ethnic groups cannot mix. It encourages a continued atmosphere of antagonism, elitism, and suspicion which allowed anti–miscegenation laws to stay on record in sixteen states up until 1967. . . . Let there be no doubt, this issue is as much an economic numbers game to the groups resisting the addition of a new category as it is a discussion of lofty socio–political ideals. How are the civil rights of the interracial community being properly served if you continue to ignore these families and their offspring?” Williams, Mark One or More, 47–49.

45 United States, Federal Measures of Race, 302–6.

46 Williams, Mark One or More.

47 Ian Haney Lopez, “Is the ‘Post’ in Post-Racial the ‘Blind’ in Colorblind?” Cardozo Law Review 32, no. 3 (2011): 815–17.Google Scholar

48 Solomos, John, Race and Racism in Britain, 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 PRO HO 376/175, Note on the Home Affairs Committee meeting, n.a., 6 February 1968.

50 PRO RG 26/436, Brief — Statistics of the Immigrant Population, 24 June 1975.

51 Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys, Census 1981: General Report, England and Wales, (London: HMSO, 1990), 9.

52 Ballard, Roger, “The Construction of a Conceptual Vision: ‘Ethnic Groups’ and the 1991 UK Census,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 20, no. 1 (1997): 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: the Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 57.

54 Gilroy, There Ain’t no Black; Sarah Neal, “The Scarman Report, the Macpherson Report and the Media: How Newspapers Respond to Race-Centered Social Policy Interventions,” Journal of Social Policy 32, no. 1 (2003): 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain; Claire Worley, “‘It’s not about race. It’s about the community’: New Labour and ‘Community Cohesion’,” Critical Social Policy 25, no. 4 (2005): 483–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black; Ballard, “The Construction of a Conceptual Vision.”

56 Bhikhu Parekh, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, (London: Profile Books, 2000).

57 Coleman, David and Salt, John, “The Ethnic Group Question in the 1991 Census: a New Landmark in British Social Statistics,” In Ethnicity in the 1991 Census. Volume One: Demographic Characteristics of the Ethnic Minority Populations, ed. Coleman, David and Salt, John (London: Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, HMSO, 1996), 1–32.Google Scholar

58 Interview with Working Group member, April 2009.

59 Peter J. Aspinall, The Development of an Ethnic Group Question for the 2001 Census: The Findings of a Consultation Exercise with Members of the OPCS 2001 Census Working Subgroup (London: United Medical and Dental Schools, 1996).

60 Interview with ONS representative, April 2009.

61 Interview with Working Group member, April 2009.

62 Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Star, Susan Leigh, Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).Google Scholar