Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation - Hardcover

Schor, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019991785X ISBN 13: 9780199917853

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

How could the same person be classified by the US census as black in 1900, mulatto in 1910, and white in 1920? The history of categories used by the US census reflects a country whose identity and self-understanding--particularly its social construction of race--is closely tied to the continuous polling on the composition of its population.

By tracing the evolution of the categories the United States used to count and classify its population from 1790 to 1940, Paul Schor shows that, far from being simply a reflection of society or a mere instrument of power, censuses are actually complex negotiations between the state, experts, and the population itself. The census is not an administrative or scientific act, but a political one. Counting Americans is a social history exploring the political stakes that pitted various interests and groups of people against each other as population categories were constantly redefined. Utilizing new archival material from the Census Bureau, this study pays needed attention to the long arc of contested changes in race and census-making. It traces changes in how race mattered in the United States during the era of legal slavery, through its fraught end, and then during (and past) the period of Jim Crow laws, which set different ethnic groups in conflict. And it shows how those developing policies also provided a template for classifying Asian groups and white ethnic immigrants from southern and eastern Europe--and how they continue to influence the newly complicated racial imaginings informing censuses in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups and on immigrants, and on the troubled imposition of U.S. racial categories upon the populations of newly acquired territories, Counting Americans demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation and discrimination.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Paul Schor has written a superb book on the history of population counting in the American census since 1790.  The story is told in depth, systematically and comprehensively, using deep archival exploration of government sources, explication of long-forgotten debates about the supposed inferiority of people from some 'races' or 'national origins' compared to others, and the alleged threats of people from various parts of the world to the true American experiment. It's a cautionary tale in the context of our current policy questions about immigration, citizenship, racism, and the future of American society." 
Margo Anderson, author of The American Census: A Social History, Second Edition.    

"An informed account of the twists and turns in the long history of census efforts to color-code Americans--to get it right. We learn that 'getting it right' has not and probably cannot happen, a deeply instructive lesson about the space in which the census meets politics." 
Kenneth Prewitt, Director of the US Census Bureau (1998-2000)  

"Through the painstaking reconstruction of Congressional debates, internal Census Bureau reflection on racial classification, and the grassroots practices of enumeration, Paul Schor presents a startling insight: that official US racial categories which appear to have been stable over time--because they were used continuously from one census to the next with little overt change--in fact embodied varying meanings and notions of difference depending on their historical context. The result is an unparalleled history of US census racial classification that offers new empirical knowledge and understandings of the categories that Americans live with to this day."  
Ann Morning, author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference

About the Author:

Paul Schor is an Associate Professor of American History at Université Paris Diderot. He specializes in US social history, with an emphasis on questions of race, ethnicity, segregation, and racial inequality.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 019991785X
• ISBN 13: 9780199917853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 376