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Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race

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Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race Citation Hochschild, Jennifer L., and Brenna Marea Powell. 2008. Racial reorganization and the United States census 1850–1930: mulattoes, half-breeds, mixed parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican race. Studies in American Political Development 22: 59- 96. Published Version doi:10.1017/S0898588X08000047 Accessed October 11, 2011 3:18:21 PM EDT Citable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3153295 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA (Article begins on next page) Studies in American Political Development, 22 (Spring 2008), 59–96. ISSN 0898-588X/08 doi:10.1017/S0898588X08000047 # 2008 Cambridge University Press Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race Jennifer L. Hochschild, Harvard University Brenna Marea Powell, Harvard University Between 1850 and 1930, demographic upheaval in the United States was connected to reorganization of the racial order. Socially and politically recognized boundaries between groups shifted, new groups emerged, others disappeared, and notions of who belonged in which category changed. All recognized racial groups—blacks, whites, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and others—were affected. This article investigates how and why census racial classification policies changed during this period, only to stabilize abruptly before World War II. In the context of demographic transformations and their political consequences, we find that census policy in any given year was driven by a combination of scientific, political, and ideological motivations. Based on this analysis, we rethink existing theoretical approaches to censuses and racial classification, arguing that a nation’s census is deeply implicated in and helps to construct its social and political order. Censuses provide the concepts, taxonomy, and substantive information by which a nation understands its component parts as well as the contours of the whole; censuses both create the image and provide the mirror of that image for a nation’s self-reflection. We conclude by outlining the meaning of this period in American history for current and future debates over race and classification. The classification by race or color of individ- These figures are of little value. uals, or even entire populations, is not only —Census Population volume on number of very difficult, but is a very delicate matter to quadroons, octoroons, and mulattoes, 18903 the United States Government. —Census Director, 15 October 19361 Between the Civil War and World War II, the United States underwent a profound process of racial reor- [The Census Bureau should be] the greatest ganization. Officially recognized group categories statistical laboratory of the United States gov- expanded and contracted; socially recognized ernment, worthy to rank with the best statistical boundaries between groups blurred and shifted; offices maintained by European governments. citizens and public actors passionately debated who 2 —Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 1902 belonged in which group. Basic components of the racial order were revised, revisited, and fundamen- Our thanks to Traci Burch and Vesla Weaver for their help; this tally altered. Such debates were highly consequential. article grows out of a book project co-authored by them and Jennifer While whites never lost their position at the top of the Hochschild. Thanks also to K. Miya Woolfalk and Ariel Huerta for status hierarchy, who belonged in this privileged their excellent research assistance, to Rodney Ross for assistance at group was hotly contested. Whether or not a given the National Archives, and to Margo Anderson, Daniel Carpenter, Nancy Foner, David Hollinger, Kenneth Prewitt, Jeffrey Strickland, group or individual was included in the category of and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful suggestions for “white” profoundly affected that group’s or person’s improvement. social standing. Blacks and Chinese were placed into 1. Qtd. in Paul Schor, “Mobilizing for Pure Prestige? Challen- ging Federal Census Ethnic Categories in the USA (1850–1940),” International Social Science Journal 57 (2005): 99. 3. U.S. Census Office, Report on Population of the United States at 2. Qtd. in Hyman Alterman, Counting People: The Census in the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, DC: Government Printing History (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), 232. Office, 1895), xciii. 59 60 JENNIFER L. HOCHSCHILD AND BRENNA MAREA POWELL an ugly contest for the bottom of the status hierarchy, birth),6 or mother tongue. In the only instance of with the “victory” depending a great deal on how racializing religion, immigrants from South Asia public officials defined and bounded the group. were combined under the “Hindoo” category. Simultaneously, whether American Indians were Native Americans were alternately ignored and cate- deemed assimilable, whether Mexican Americans gorized down to tiny fractions of black and white should be subject to Jim Crow laws, and whether “blood.”7 South Asians would be excluded along with Then experimentation abruptly ceased. The 1930 Pacific-rim Asians all depended in part on whether census marked the last stage of the period of racial they were classified in terms that allowed them to be reorganization; after that year, the Census Bureau potential insiders or that defined them as perennially perceived only three races (white, Negro, Indian) outside the status of “American.” Most broadly, over and five Asian nationalities for many decades. It no the course of almost a century, the U.S. government longer explicitly identified racial mixture,8 mixed groped its way through extensive experimentation— parentage, the Mexican race, Hindoos, fractions of reorganizing and reimagining the racial order, with Indian blood,9 or other innovative categories. After corresponding impact on individuals’ and groups’ 1940, it no longer used the term “color” in conjunc- life chances. tion with “race.” The United States entered World All branches of government and all levels of War II with the racial order established and the era governance were involved to a greater or lesser of racial reorganization complete—until it started degree in this process of racial reorganization. For unraveling again toward the end of the twentieth reasons that we explain below, this article focuses century. on the crucial role of the Census Office (after This trajectory raises two empirical questions to be 1902, the Census Bureau).4 Briefly put, we focus on pursued here: why was the Census Bureau’s system of the census because a nation’s census is deeply impli- racial categorization so inconsistent and unstable, cated in and helps to construct its social and political and why did experimentation in reorganizing the order. Censuses provide the concepts, taxonomy, racial order begin and end when it did? Although and substantive information by which a nation others have recognized the importance of these ques- understands its component parts as well as the con- tions, no one has as of yet systematically pursued their tours of the whole. A census both creates the image answers for all groups across the full time period, as and provides the mirror of that image for a nation’s we argue is essential for complete understanding. self-reflection. This analysis also raises broader theoretical In the United States, the social and political order questions about what censuses do, and why they was largely defined by race. In fact, the process of matter politically: How do censuses relate to the eth- simultaneously creating and reflecting group noracial order more generally? When and why do classifications was so important that by 1904, statis- states count their populations by race, and why do tician Walter Willcox could correctly observe that these classification schemes take the particular “there is no country in which statistical investigation forms that they do? What impact do classification of race questions is so highly developed ... as in the systems have? United States.”5 Highly developed it may have Our answer to the first empirical question, why this been—but the American approach to racial particular pattern of experimentation, focuses atten- classification was also peculiar, reflecting the particu- tion on the internal dynamics of a rather mysterious larities of various experiments in racial classification. agency. We show below that three motivations inter- In any single year and across decades, racial acted to produce officials’ choice of categories for categorization was internally incoherent, inconsistent classifying a given group in a given year—contestation across groups, and unstable. Mixture between blacks between Congress and the bureaucracy over political and others was identified, elaborated, and then control, elected and appointed officials’ commitment dropped. Asians were racially identified through to scientific integrity, and the pull of ideological nationality, in finer and finer grained detail. Latin Americans were variously classified as white, mulatto, or racially distinct. Whites were 6. Or even grandparents’ place of birth, if the parent was born elaborately distinguished by country of birth, at sea. “mixed parentage” (referring to parents’
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