Word: censuses
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...word Negro to describe a black person has largely fallen out of polite conversation - except on the U.S. Census questionnaire. There, under "What is this person's race?" is an option that reads, "Black, African Am., or Negro." That has raised the ire of certain black activists and politicians as the Census Bureau gears up to mail out its once-a-decade questionnaires. The controversy has been cast by many as an instance of a tone-deaf agency not keeping up with the times. In actuality, the flash point represents a much larger theme: the often contentious way the Census...
...immediate reason the word Negro is on the Census is simple enough: in the 2000 Census, more than 56,000 people wrote in Negro to describe their identity - even though it was already on the form. Some people, it seems, still strongly identify with the term, which used to be a perfectly polite designation. To blindly delete it is to risk incorrectly counting the unknown number of (presumably older) black Americans who identify with the term. (See rare photos at home of Martin Luther King...
...Census Bureau is aware that times are changing - and not just when it comes to the word Negro. As part of the 2010 Census, the bureau will test 15 major changes to questions about race and Hispanic origin. For each, approximately 30,000 households will receive a slightly different questionnaire so that demographers and statisticians can use data - along with follow-up interviews - to decide if the modification helps or hurts the accuracy and consistency of information collected. "We hope this will help us better understand the way people identify with these concepts," says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census...
Those modifications could have a lasting impact on how Americans think about race. Census data underpin broad stretches of society, from federal regulations to corporate marketing strategies, and how data are framed when collected speaks to our collective worldview (both contemporary and historical). Consider that in a 2006 study of 138 censuses from around the world, New York University sociologist Ann Morning found that only 15% of those asking about ancestry or national origin used the term race. Almost all of those that did were former slave economies. (See a video of perspectives in Harlem on President Obama's first...
...succumb to the same backlash that propelled Republican Scott Brown to his upset victory in the Massachusetts Senate race this week. The stakes are particularly high in Michigan, because whoever is elected governor will play a crucial role in redrawing legislative districts in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Census, which is expected to show significant population declines here during the past decade. (See the top 10 everything...