Census racial categories are not so black and white
LANCASTER, Texas—When Gloria Fortner was a little girl, a classmate of black and white parentage claimed to be a “better mix” than her. It was a jarring experience—one that has stayed lodged in her mind over the years.
But now, Gloria, the daughter of a black pastor and a Mexican immigrant who heads a nonprofit, said she’s forgiven if not forgotten.
“It’s OK,” the lanky violinist told The Dallas Morning News on a recent afternoon. “We follow each other on Instagram now, so it’s fine.” Gloria is 13.
And she doesn’t see herself as “mixed up” or “half” anything. Rather, the soon-to-be eighth-grader views herself as
equally of two cultures—both of which she values deeply.
“I consider myself as African-American and also Mexican and also a little Native American?” she said, looking toward her mother for a nod. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
The Lancaster teen is one of a growing number of Americans who are navigating a shifting racial middle ground as the country’s white population ages and interracial coupling becomes more common. Since 1980, for instance, the percentage of marriages between spouses of different races has almost quadrupled.
Those changing demographics—which are even more marked in rapidly diversifying Texas— demand a more nuanced understanding of race and ethnicity.
Discussions have taken on a heightened sense of urgency as disproportionate police violence against black people has brought racial tensions to the foreground—tensions long simmering underneath broader debates about poverty and stubborn housing segregation.
The idea of race as a single box you check on a form is disappearing, said Carolyn Liebler, who has done extensive work with census data as a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota population center.
“I’m a white person, and all of my ancestors are white, from northwest Europe,” she said. “People like me founded the system, and we don’t imagine
that there could be a complication because it’s outside the realm of experience.” But that complexity can be a good thing. “It’s better to have a more complicated view because the world is complicated,” Liebler said, “and what we’re trying to do is understand the world.”
Race, according to sociologists and demographers, isn’t so much a scientifically fixed trait as it is a set of experiences: a complicated, evolving puzzle that fits together the way you see yourself and the way others see you, all set against the backdrop of your place within a fraught history.
U.S. Census Bureau officials say the country’s increasing diversity has prompted the agency’s most significant review yet of the way it asks Americans about their race and ethnicity.
“The Census Bureau is continually researching methods to improve our data on race and ethnicity so that we can provide our country with important information that reflects our growing racial and ethnic diversity and the complexity of our myriad of American experiences,” a Census Bureau official said in a statement. Recommendations from that research will shape the wording on the 2020 survey, which officials hope will lead more people to an accurate description of their ethnicity—not just “some other race.” Rachel Marks, a senior analyst for the agency’s ethnicity and ancestry branch, put it another way: “Does this (wording) help people find themselves better?”
In particular, Marks said, people of Middle Eastern or North African descent haven’t been well-represented in government data. Currently, she said, the federal government considers them white.