Word: census
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...seems like a stretch that the Census would have such grand influence, take a moment for a little history. The first Census, in 1790, explicitly asked about only one race: white. Blacks, for the most part, fell into the slave category. Race was about civil status. In the 19th century, concerns about keeping the white race pure led to the addition of the "mulatto" category in 1850 (and "quadroon" and "octoroon" in 1890), a process traced by Harvard political scientist Melissa Nobles in her book Shades of Citizenship. With rising immigration, Chinese and Japanese were added as categories...
...civil rights era of the 20th century, Census data took on a whole new meaning. The antidiscrimination laws written in the 1960s and the affirmative-action policies that followed relied on Census data to determine if minorities were underrepresented in any number of realms, from home sales to small-business loans. One of the largest leaps in the Census' racial scheme came in 2000 when, for the first time, respondents were allowed to check more than one race box. The change was celebrated by those hoping to usher in an era of postracial America and assailed by those fearing...
...turns out, neither extreme came to pass - partly because only 2.4% of the population checked more than one race. Nonetheless, the instruction to "mark one or more boxes" signified a major turning point in how the Census sets the parameters for national discussion. In the words of former Census director Kenneth Prewitt, we are now moving from "a justice-based classification system" to "an identity-based classification system." If not revolution, that is at least evolution. (See the world's most influential people in the 2009 TIME...
...continues today. One of the possible changes the Census is testing during the 2010 count is allowing respondents to check more than one box not just for race but for Hispanic origin as well. A popular rally cry during the push to allow multiple races was, Why should a person with one black parent and one white parent be forced to choose between them? Indeed, why should a person with a Hispanic mother and non-Hispanic father be any different...
Another change under review is letting people who check "white" or "black" to write in more specific information afterward. In recent years, groups representing a number of backgrounds, including Afro-Caribbean and Arab, have lobbied to be included separately on the Census instead of being confined to broad categories (black for people of Afro-Caribbean decent; white for those with Arab ancestry). By trying out additional write-in blanks, the Census is attempting to see what other designations it might be able to reliably collect data about...