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In its first national census, the young American republic not only counted its population; it racially classified it.1 From 1790 to 1990, the nation's demographic base changed from one decennial census to the next, and so too did the racial categories on offer. Always, however, the government held fast to two premises : First, it makes policy sense to put every American into one and only one of a limited number of discrete race groups, with the decennial census being the primary vehicle by which the counting and classifying should take place. 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 1790 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.
Not until 1977 did the government bring order to the country's racial categories. 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.2 This achievement was impressive but shortlived. 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 2000,1 witnessed the demographic changes and the associated political pressures that make it difficult to define and refine...