Affiliations: [a] Department of Sociology, University of Victoria,
Victoria, B.C. V8W 3P5, Canada | [b] Judicial Council of California, Center for Families,
Children, and the Courts, 455 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
| 601 West 113th Street, #12G New York, NY 10025, USA | Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Center for Population
Research, University of Mississippi, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848,
USA
Abstract: Racial and ethnic categories in the US census have continually changed. In this
paper, we address the question: How do high levels of immigration and a growing
multiracial population challenge census racial and ethnic categories? We
examined data from the 2000 Census 5 percent IPUMS to compare racial responses
of native- and foreign-born Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners, and
native-born multiracial Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners, by ancestry.
The relationship between race and ancestry can be instructive. If people
understand and identify with census racial categories, we expect considerable
overlap between their reported race and ancestry. For some groups, including
Europeans, Africans, and Middle Easterners (regardless of nativity) and
foreign-born Asians, ancestry and race overlapped well. A serious challenge to
current census racial categories is the large and growing numbers of people who
reported Some Other Race (SOR) alone (primarily non-Cuban Hispanics) or in
combination with another race (a diverse population that includes multiracial
Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and Asians). One way of addressing this problem is
to merge the current race and Hispanic questions, drop the SOR category, and add
the ancestry question to the short-form census, changes that may more
effectively meet statistical, government, and other needs.
