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The Recursive Outcomes of the Multiracial Movement and the End of American Racial Categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2017

Kim M. Williams
Kim M. Williams*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Portland State University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

After a protracted national discussion about racial mixture in the early 1990s, the Office of Management and Budget made the unprecedented decision in 1997 to allow Americans to “mark one or more” racial categories on the 2000 census. A small “multiracial movement” provoked this fundamental change in the way the government collects racial data. This case study shows that even very small and modest social movements can have profound effects on public policy through their unintended consequences. In winning a redefinition of how the U.S. government defines and counts by race, the multiracial movement of the 1990s set in motion a process that has both amplified and been amplified by broader structural and cultural changes in how Americans perceive race. The modest impact of a small social movement can ultimately produce very big consequences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 88 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: Roderick Harrison, Jennifer Hochschild, David Hollinger, Jane Mansbridge, Kenneth Prewitt, and Sidney Tarrow kindly read a draft of this article. I thank them for their insights.

References

1. Williams, Kim M., Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Spencer, Rainer, Spurious Issues: Race and Multiracial Identity Politics in the United States (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999)Google Scholar; DaCosta, Kimberly McClain, Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

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3. On structural change, see Burstein, Paul, Einwohner, R. L., and Hollander, J. A., “The Success of Political Movements: A Bargaining Perspective,” in The Politics of Social Protest, ed. Jenkins, Craig and Klandermans, Bert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 275–95Google Scholar. On cultural change, see Hart, Stephen, “The Cultural Dimension of Social Movements: A Theoretical Assessment and Literature Review,” Sociology of Religion 57 (1996): 87–100 Google Scholar.

4. Office of Management and Budget, Exhibit F: Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, May 3, 1974, rev. May 12, 1977)Google Scholar.

5. Hollinger, David A., Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

6. In earlier eras, starting around 1890, the Manasseh Society formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a support group and community resource for people in interracial relationships. The society was active for over thirty years and eventually expanded to other cities. Later, other groups formed, including the Penguin Society (est. 1936), Club Internationale (est. 1947), the Miscegenation Club (1940s), and the Club of Tomorrow (1950s). See St. Clair Drake and Horace C. Clayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945); G. Reginald Daniel, More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002).

7. Susan Graham, personal interview with Kim M. Williams, April 16, 1998.

8. In 1997–98 I conducted a survey of thirty group leaders across the country and planned to select a few of the affiliates of each umbrella organization (AMEA, Project RACE, and APFU) for case-study analysis. However, further investigation revealed that the only organization with an active network of affiliates at the time of my research was AMEA. Accordingly, the local organizations involved in my case studies—fifty interviews with board members of the four most politically active local groups—were all AMEA affiliates. Altogether, I conducted eighty interviews, including interviews with movement leaders and with board members of the four local groups.

9. Williams, Mark One or More, ch. 5.

10. Tarrow, Sidney, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 9Google Scholar.

11. See Schumaker, Paul D., “Policy Responsiveness to Protest-Group Demands,” Journal of Politics 37, no. 2 (1975): 494 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13. U.S. House Subcommittee on Census, Statistics, and Postal Personnel, Hearings on the Review of Federal Measurement of Race and Ethnicity, 103rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), 128 Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., 214.

15. Ibid., 127.

16. Ibid., 199.

17. In the 2000 census, 874,414 individuals identified themselves as belonging in the NHOPI category.

18. U.S. House, Hearings on the Review of Federal Measurement, 211.

19. Ibid., 192–94.

20. Ibid., 193.

21. Ibid., 192–94.

22. See Choldin, Looking for the Last Percent.

23. The advisability of combining the race and Hispanic-origin questions (thus dropping the distinction between racial and ethnic groups) was another major research focus. Provisions for writing in nationalities/ethnic identities were also studied and tested. See Williams, Mark One or More, ch. 3.

24. H.R. 3920 was an amendment to the Paperwork Reduction Act during the 104th Congress.

25. Williams, Mark One or More, 57.

26. Susan Graham, “Multiracial Life after Newt,” http://www.projectrace.com/about_us/archives/from-the-director.

27. U.S. House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Hearings on Federal Measures of Race and Ethnicity and the Implications for the 2000 Census, 105th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1997), 660.

28. Tarrow, Power in Movement, 81.

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30. With the exceptions of the Michigan House and the Ohio Senate (Williams, Mark One or More, 68).

31. Faye Fiore, “Multiple-Race Choices to Be Allowed on 2000 Census,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 30, 1997.

32. See Appendix A for details on the most seriously considered tabulation options.

33. Office of Management and Budget, Guidance on Aggregation and Allocation of Data on Race for Use in Civil Rights Monitoring and Enforcement: Bulletin 00–02 (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, 2000).

34. Interestingly, the OMB's creation of the NHOPI category in 2000 also stemmed from both identity and civil rights claims. See Prewitt, Kenneth, What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 131 Google Scholar.

35. Office of Management and Budget, Provisional Guidance on the Implementation of the 1997 Standards for the Collection of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, 2000)Google Scholar.

36. Almost all of these people reported as “Hispanic” on the Hispanic origin question, suggesting that a large majority of Hispanic people view “Hispanic” as a racial rather than an ethnic designator.

37. Harrison, Roderick J., “Inadequacies of Multiple-Response Race Data in the Federal Statistical System,” in The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, ed. Perlmann, Joel and Waters, Mary (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), 137Google Scholar. Other scholars who voiced similar concerns about racial reassignment include Goldstein, Joshua R. and Morning, Ann J., “Back in the Box: The Dilemma of Using Multiple-Race Data for Single-Race Laws,” in The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, ed. Perlmann, Joel and Waters, Mary (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002) 119–36Google Scholar.

38. Davis, F. James, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991/2001)Google Scholar.

39. See Farley, Reynolds, “Identifying with Multiple Races: A Social Movement That Succeeded but Failed?” in The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, ed. Krysan, Maria and Lewis, Amanda E. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004) 123–48Google Scholar. Farley claims the movement failed because it provoked neither litigation nor bitter redistricting controversies.

40. See, for example, Bernstein, Mary and de la Cruz, Marcie, “Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement,” Social Problems 56, no. 4 (2008): 722–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Renn, Kristen, Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity and Community on Campus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

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43. See for example, Dzidzienyo, Anani, “Coming to Terms with the African Connection in Latino Studies,” Latino Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 160–67Google Scholar; Root, Maria P. P., ed., Racially Mixed People in America (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992)Google Scholar; Torres-Saillant, Silvio, “Inventing the Race: Latinos and the Ethnoracial Pentagon,” Latino Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 123–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zack, Naomi, ed., American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995)Google Scholar.

44. Humes, Karen R., Jones, Nicholas A., and Ramirez, Roberto R., Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011)Google Scholar.

45. Multiple-race responses in 2000 and 2010 involving “some other race” (SOR) were subject to editing and assignment decisions based on complicated algorithms. If a respondent marked SOR and wrote in a phrase that indicated a Spanish origin, that person remained in the SOR group. If the person marked SOR and the write-in involved a country of origin, the race of that country's largest group was used. For example, someone from a 90 percent black African or Caribbean nation might be coded to black, while someone from Europe, Australia, or Canada might be coded to white (unless they indicated First Peoples or Aboriginal identities). Those indicating national origins where populations were more evenly divided remained in SOR.

46. Kenneth Prewitt, “Fix the Census' Archaic Racial Categories,” New York Times, August 21, 2013.

47. Compton, Elizabeth, Bentley, Michael, Ennis, Sharon, and Rastogi, Sonya, 2020 Census Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013), 3 Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., vi.

49. Ibid., 38–44.

50. Ibid., 43–44.

51. Ibid., 44.

52. Even if Hispanic origin is kept separate in 2020, it is likely that the Census Bureau will recommend that the OMB allow multiple Hispanic reporting. (In 2000 and 2010, it was not possible for an individual to identify as both Cuban and Mexican, for example.) This stems in part from bureaucratic decisions made in the late 1990s. In keeping with the 1997 standards, “agencies cannot collect multiple responses and then report and publish data using only the five single race categories. Agencies are expected to provide as much detail as possible on the multiple race responses” (Office of Management and Budget, Provisional Guidance on the Implementation of the 1997 Standards, 7). Fifteen years later, soliciting greater detail in race reporting—now an institutionalized agency objective (see Compton et al., 2020 Census Race and Hispanic Origin)—has become the main justification that the Bureau offers for including write-in lines for all groups in 2020.

53. The exact wording of the question was as follows: “Which of the following describes your race? You can select as many as apply. White, Black or African-American, Asian or Asian-American, or some other race.” The question also included a “Hispanic/Latino” option, but it was provided separately. Pew Research Center, A Year after Obama's Election Blacks Upbeat about Black Progress, Prospects (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

54. The exact wording of the question was as follows: “Please tell me which of the following, if any, apply to you. Do you consider yourself to be black; white; Asian, some other race; of mixed race?”

55. Note, too, the rise of DNA ancestry kits (Hochschild et al., Creating a New Racial Order, 99–100) that allow Americans to discover on an individual level what geneticists have already established: Genetic variations within “races” are greater than those between (see Natalie Angier, “Do Races Differ? Not Really, Genes Show,” New York Times, August 22, 2000).

56. See, for example, Bonastia, Christopher, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Patashnik, Eric and Zeilzer, Julian E., “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits on Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1071–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57. See, for example, Campbell, Andrea L., “Politics Makes Mass Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 15, no. 1 (2012): 333–51Google Scholar.

58. Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 195.

59. Ibid., 200.

60. Ibid.

61. To provide second-generation statistics, Prewitt would also add “parental place of birth” to the immigration questions.

62. Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 197.

63. Ibid., 200.

64. Ibid., 198.

65. Ibid., 200.

66. In an important exception, Prewitt would “retain the option of a separate question for African Americans and/or for American Indians … if analysis on racial disparities seems to require that” (Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 207). Prewitt's plan is predicated on a reduction in racial and ethnic differentials as a necessary condition before he would eliminate racial categories altogether. This stands in stark contrast to the position of Republican conservatives like Gingrich and Petri who would have eliminated racial categories irrespective of ongoing racial and ethnic differentials.

67. Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 207.

68. Ibid.

69. Demographers and other social scientists have long insisted that the majority of the American population descends from more than one of the classical categories still employed by the census. Thus, despite Americans' longstanding attachment to the fictions of nonmixture, the fact is that all racial categories now in use are political artifacts. See, for example, Webster, Yehudi O., The Racialization of America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Zuberi, Tukufu, Thicker Than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

70. U.S. House Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security, 2010 Census: A Status Update of Key Decennial Operations, 111th Cong. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2009).

71. See Humes, Karen and Hogan, Howard, “Measurement of Race and Ethnicity in a Changing, Multicultural America,” Race and Social Problems 1, no. 3 (2009): 111–31Google Scholar; Prewitt, What Is Your Race?

72. Margulies, Joseph, What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

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74. Moran, Rachel F., Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 19 Google Scholar.

75. Judi McGee, personal interview with Kim M. Williams, June 12, 1998.

76. Fernández, Carlos, “Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People,” in The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, ed. Root, Maria P. P. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 16 Google Scholar.

77. See Hart, “The Cultural Dimension of Social Movements,” 88–89. Also see Earl, Jennifer E., “The Cultural Consequences of Social Movements,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. Snow, David, Soule, Sarah, and Kriesi, Hanspeter (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 508–50Google Scholar.

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79. Ibid., 21.

80. Frank Newport, “In U.S., 87 Percent Approve of Black-White Marriage, vs. 4 Percent in 1958,” http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx.

81. Forty-four percent of Americans said it made “no difference,” and 11 percent said it had been a change for the “worse.” Taylor et al., The Rise of Intermarriage, 33.

82. Hochschild et al., Creating a New Racial Order, 113–38.

83. Sam Roberts and Peter Baker, “Asked to Declare His Race, Obama Checks ‘Black’,” New York Times, April 2, 2010.

84. The exact phrasing of the question was as follows: “Do you mostly think of Obama as a black person or mostly as a person of mixed race?” Pew Research Center, A Year After Obama's Election.

85. Davis, Who Is Black?

86. Root, Maria P. P., ed., The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 7 Google Scholar.

87. Over two-thirds of the respondents (69 percent) said they had always thought of themselves as belonging to two or more races. Pew Research Center, Multiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

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91. Today, however, the world of children's literature remains a bastion of whiteness. See Christopher Myers, “The Apartheid of Children's Literature,” New York Times, March 15, 2014. For related data, which, unfortunately, does not include a category for children's books by or about multiracial people, see Kathleen T. Horning, “Children's Books by and about People of Color Published in the United States,” Cooperative Children's Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2014, http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp.

92. Gallagher, Charles A., “Color-Blind Egalitarianism as the New Racial Norm,” in Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, ed. Murji, Karim and Solomos, John (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 48 Google Scholar.

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97. Pew Research Center, Multiracial in America, 6–7.

98. Ibid., 9.

99. Ibid., 58.

100. See, for example, Bean and Lee, “Plus ca Change…?”; Bonilla-Silva, “We Are All Americans!”; Gans, Herbert J., “‘Whitening’ and the Changing American Racial Hierarchy,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 9, no. 2 (2012): 267–79Google Scholar; Hochschild et al., Creating a New Racial Order; Korgen, Kathleen Odell, ed., Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar; Lee, Jennifer and Bean, Frank, The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010)Google Scholar.

101. See Lee, Jennifer and Bean, Frank, “A Postracial Society or a Diversity Paradox? Race, Immigration, and Multiraciality in the Twenty-First Century,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 9, no. 2 (2012): 419–37Google Scholar; Pew Research Center, A Year after Obama's Election; Taylor et al., The Rise of Intermarriage.

102. Cohn, D'Vera, Millions of Americans Changed Their Racial or Ethnic Identity from One Census to the Next (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

103. Hope Yen, “Census Seeks Changes in How It Measures Race,” The Seattle Times, August 9, 2012.

104. See, for example, Hochschild, Jennifer L. and Powell, Breanna Marea, “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race,” Studies in American Political Development 22 (2008): 90 Google Scholar.

105. However, the shift away from single race measurement was one aspect of a larger set of political disputes about the Census Bureau that date back to the 1970s. Put differently, the bureau has many other problems that do not revolve around race. For example, the political opposition to any detailed survey collection on the social and economic status of the population has grown sharply over the past 15 years. The last long-form census was taken in 2000. It was replaced by the ACS, which has faced repeated defunding threats from Congress.

106. Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 134–35.

107. Roderick Harrison disagreed with me on this point. He told me that most “professionals at the Census Bureau and the overwhelming majority of social scientists believe that data on race and ethnicity is absolutely necessary for understanding the unequal socio-economic, health, etc. conditions of populations that have historically been excluded from full and equal participation in society on the basis of socially defined race.” He added that the “civil rights community … will guarantee substantial, if not fierce, resistance to visions like Prewitt's” (Roderick Harrison, email message to author, August 19, 2015). I concur that opposition would be fierce in some quarters, but I am not convinced that fierce opposition, particularly if it comes predominantly from black people, would make a difference in the long run. Qualitative research on the OMB and Census Bureau would help us better understand current and future bureaucrats' dispositions.

108. But Jones has been “faithful to the need to preserve the standard categories for civil rights and social trend measurements. I doubt he'd want to pursue Prewitt's vision either” (Roderick Harrison, email message to author, August 19, 2015).

109. Prewitt, What Is Your Race?, 200.

110. Pew Research Center, Multiracial in America.

111. See, for example, Hochschild et al., Creating a New Racial Order; Susan Saulny, “Black? White? Asian? Young Americans Choose All of the Above,” New York Times, January 29, 2011.

112. Compton et al., 2020 Census Race and Hispanic Origin.

113. Passel, Jeffrey S. and Cohn, D'Vera, U.S. Population Projections: 2005–2050 (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

114. See, for example, Haney-Lopez, White by Law; Jacobson, Matthew F., Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Perlmann, Joel, Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 to 2000 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005)Google Scholar.

115. Bell, Derrick A., Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), 189 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116. But see, for example: Haney-Lopez, White by Law; Hochschild et al., Creating a New Racial Order; Hollinger, Postethnic America; Perlmann, Joel and Waters, Mary, eds., The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002)Google Scholar; Prewitt, What Is Your Race?

117. The end of government racial statistics would not necessarily mean the end of racial statistics altogether. University researchers and private survey organizations, using their own nationally representative data sets, will probably continue to collect racial data even after the government ceases to do so. In this way, and surely in others, ongoing controversy about the significance of race in the U.S. seems likely to persist even in the absence of official government racial data.

118. Roderick Harrison, email message to author, August 19, 2015.

119. One example of this seeming eagerness to ignore racial inequality took place during Obama's first campaign, when whites chanted “Race doesn't matter!” on the night of the 2008 South Carolina primary, just blocks from where the Confederate flag then flew over the capitol.

120. Saulny, “Black? White? Asian?”; see also Lin, Ken Hou, Curington, Celeste, and Lundquist, Jennifer, “Positioning Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Treatment of Multiracial Daters in an Online Dating Website,” American Sociological Review 80, no. 4 (2015): 764–88Google Scholar.