How many races are there in the us

Second, when policy treats Americans differently depending on what race they belong to, it should make use of this government classification. The second premise depends on the first. Without a limited number of bounded groups, it is difficult to fashion policy with race as a criterion.

This is easily seen in comparison. Since there have been policies based on age — who can vote, own property, be drafted, buy alcohol, and claim social security.

These policies use a small number of age groupings with fixed and knowable boundaries. Though policy can draw the age boundaries differently as conditions change eligible to vote at eighteen rather than twenty-one there is no dispute about who is in a given age group. Using race as a criterion to define groups was never this straightforward, a fact implicitly acknowledged by the government as its census added and subtracted categories from one decennial to the next and as different federal agencies used different taxonomies.

Acting under the influence of civil rights legislation, the Office of Management and Budget OMB directed all federal agencies to follow uniform standards in collecting racial data. Changing political considerations led to major revisions only two decades later, when the logic of identity politics, with its stress on diversity, began to destabilize the older and more deeply entrenched American division between white and nonwhite.

What do these developments mean for racial and ethnic divisions in America, both today and in the future?

In the context of census , I witnessed the demographic changes and the associated political pressures that make it difficult to define and refine categories focused solely on redressing past injustices rooted in race — the policy purpose that emerged after the Civil Rights Act of In response to newer political pressures, the U.

So where should we go from here? To address that question, it will be useful to recall how the United States ended up with such a complicated set of racial and ethnic categories in the first place. The initial classification was implicit in two civil status distinctions: free or slave, taxed or untaxed. Applying these distinctions in the census generated a count of three ancestry groups European, African, and [untaxed] Native American , which set the foundation for all racial classifications to come.

From that starting point, the division of the population by race has been repeated in every decennial census, down to the most recent in Across two centuries, particular categories have come and gone in response to an ever-shifting mix of political, scientific, and demographic considerations.

In , influenced by a pseudo race-science, the census separately counted mulattoes, a category it retained until In Chinese were first counted, and in , Japanese. In Filipinos, Koreans, and Hindus appeared on the census form.

Subcontinent Indians were counted as Hindu in three censuses — , but as white in the next three censuses. In they were counted as Asian, a status they retain today. Until when they got their own census category, Mexicans were counted as white. The government of Mexico contested that change, and Mexicans went back to being counted as white until , when Hispanic origin became a separate category — this time defined in terms of language and ethnicity rather than race.

These standards held that all federal statistics on race should, at minimum, include those four groups as well as one ethnic group, Hispanic, whose members would also belong to one of the four racial groups. In , slaves were included in the census count the three-fifths clause because slaveholding states had made this a nonnegotiable condition for joining the Union. The result was a power bonus for Southern states in the new Congress and in the Electoral College.

This modification allowed citizenship and related civil rights to hinge on color rather than on condition of servitude, a policy that heralded nearly a century and a half of race-based policies focused on making it difficult, if not impossible, for nonwhites to vote, own property, marry across racial lines, enter various professions, seek advanced education, or do much else.

Permissive immigration policies supplied factory, farm, and mine workers from China, Japan, and eastern and southern Europe. The newcomers were grudgingly tolerated, and policies were designed to keep them in their place. The low point came in the s, when the eugenics movement convinced the government to stop immigration of the racially undesirable. Census data were used to design the restrictive immigration laws.

The long practice of applying racial and ethnic categories to policies of civic exclusion began to crumble with World War II, when members of every racial and ethnic group in America fought side by side to defend democracy. Remarkably, however, this monumental policy shift from exclusion to inclusion did not alter the two premises noted at the outset of this essay.

Sorting the population into discrete racial groups to make policy still made sense — the trick was to turn the classification to the advantage of those minorities who previously had suffered from its imposition. Across every sector of American life two political questions began to push forward: Which racial groups are underrepresented?

Does underrepresentation point to discriminatory barriers targeted at racial, ethnic, or national origin groups? When statistical proportionality came of age in the s, a new policy era was born.

Social justice policies formulated in response to statistical findings were widely accepted by the end of the s, as the ideal of equal opportunity fueled a demand for more equal outcomes, and as the negative goal of nondiscrimination turned into the proactive policy of redress that came to be called affirmative action. Civil rights court cases were argued on the basis of racial differences in employment patterns, wage rates, college enrollments, and electoral outcomes.

In a pivotal employment discrimination case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co. This was formalized by OMB when, in the Standards, it directed that Hispanic be considered an ethnicity. Other racial, ethnic, linguistic, descent, and national origin groups for example, Korean, Haitian, Arab would appear in official statistics only as subcategories of the primary races in this example, Asian, black, and white, respectively.

The classification adopted in and used in the and censuses seemed secure and capable of discharging its purposes in policy arenas. But by the middle of the s, the political landscape was transformed by demographic changes, by the rise of multiculturalism, and by the multiracial movement. New political demands called into question the existing racial and ethnic categories — and also the public purposes they were thought to serve. The persistent Senator Daniel Akaka from Hawaii and the constituency he led saw matters otherwise.

They felt the census should recognize Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders as a separate racial category. After the OMB held public hearings and examined research showing that Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders did differ from Asians more generally, it agreed to the separate category. This decision was in keeping with the rationale that classification should facilitate racially just policies. And so in the mid- s the official primary race groups went from four to five. They have been developed in response to needs expressed by both the executive branch and the Congress.

Is five the right number? Why not six or seven? And what is the right number of ethnic groups? Why only one? Leading up to the census there was pressure to reclassify persons of Middle Eastern origin from white to their own primary race category.

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The ideal entry-level account for individual users. Corporate solution including all features. Statistics on " Demographics of the U. Part I " The most important statistics. The most important statistics. Further related statistics. Inner London UK : population , by ethnic group Outer London UK : population , by ethnic group United Kingdom UK : population size by ethnic group Population of Ireland , by ethnicity Mexico: indigenous and Afro-descendant population and households Population distribution of Idaho by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Montana by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Rhode Island by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Alaska by race and ethnicity Scotland: ethnic breakdown Estimated 21 and over U.

Further Content: You might find this interesting as well. Statistics Inner London UK : population , by ethnic group Outer London UK : population , by ethnic group United Kingdom UK : population size by ethnic group Population of Ireland , by ethnicity Mexico: indigenous and Afro-descendant population and households Population distribution of Idaho by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Montana by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Rhode Island by race and ethnicity Population distribution of Alaska by race and ethnicity Scotland: ethnic breakdown Estimated 21 and over U.

Learn more about how Statista can support your business. US Census Bureau. July 23, Resident population of the United States by race from to in millions [Graph]. In Statista. Accessed November 14, Resident population of the United States by race from to in millions.

As China continues to increase its economic might and influence, its languages will proliferate as well. At the same time, 26 African countries are projected to double their current size , many of which speak French as a first language. Could French provide a certain je ne sais quoi that no other world language can quite replace? This post was first published in We have since updated it, adding in new content for Connect with us.

Visualizing the U. Growing Diversity in America As of , here is the current distribution of the U. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Sign up. Related Topics: data visualization united states race diversity US black-white inequality racial inequality minority Black populations White populations Asian populations Hispanic populations. Click for Comments. You may also like.

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