NEXT YEAR, for the first time, the US Census will permit Americans to identify themselves as members of more than one race. Tiger Woods, the "Cablinasian" golf phenom, will no longer have to choose between identifying with his Thai mother or his black father, or among his father's white, black, and American Indian progenitors. When he answers Question 6 on the 2000 Census — "What is this person's race?" — he can check off four separate racial categories: white, black, American Indian, and Asian.
 What sense does it make to treat every South Pacific island as the homeland of a different race? |
But wait. Question 6 doesn't provide an "Asian" box to check off. Instead it lists six discrete Asian races — races, mind you, not nationalities: Asian, Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Presumably Woods will choose the seventh box — "Other Asian" — and print "Thai" on the line underneath.
Is this progress? Certainly it never made sense to lump (for example) Chinese, Filipinos, and Koreans — who do not share the same appearance, language, history, or culture — into a catchall race called "Asian." But it also makes no sense to treat Americans of Chinese, Filipino, and Korean ancestry as members of three different races. What's next? Treating every South Pacific island as the homeland of a different race?
Well — yes. Question 6 abandons the old "Pacific Islander" designation, replacing it with the Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, and Samoan races. Americans who trace their ancestry back to, say, Fiji, Tonga, or Tahiti will have to check off the box marked "Other Pacific Islander" then follow the instructions for the line immediately following: "Print race." Not island. Race.
Nearly 14 decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, we Americans are less likely than ever to take race into account when forming friendships, falling in love, rooting for athletes, or idolizing entertainers. Meanwhile, the government, mired in racialism, sorts us into so many races that there isn't room to list them all on the Census form.
Curiously, Question 6 recognizes only a single race for whites and a single race for blacks. Americans of Nordic, Slavic, and Mediterranean descent may display pronounced physical differences, but in the government's eyes, they are all white. Americans whose ancestors came from Somalia, Jamaica, and Ghana are all deemed, simply, black. Can it really be the case that each island in the Pacific is associated with a unique race while the entire continent of Africa comprises just one?
Of course not. But Question 6 has little to do with science and a lot to do with ethnic group politics. The better question is, why is it in the Census at all? Anything the government needs to know about Americans' origins is covered by Question 10: "What is this person's ancestry or ethnic origin?" That is the place to record family heritage. There are no boxes to check off, no multiplicity of "races" to choose from; just a question and a blank space for the answer. Americans of Irish, German, Vietnamese, or Puerto Rican extraction have equal freedom to label themselves as they see fit. Tiger Woods can describe his pedigree as white, black, Indian, and Thai. Or he can simply write "American."
Nowhere is it decreed that governments must classify their citizens by race. We are asked about our ancestry; that is enough. The race question serves only to divide Americans and to strengthen those who feed on racial division.
The difference between ancestry and race is that one is real and one is largely fiction. Race is a social construct, not a biological fact. The genes of whites, blacks, and "native Hawaiians" are indistinguishable. Of course there are physical variations among populations that originated at points far apart on the globe. But the idea that those variations are racial is a relatively recent one.
Late in the 17th century, Francois Bernier, a French doctor, first thought of classifying human beings by facial characteristics and body type. On that basis, he enumerated four races: Europeans, Far Easterners, blacks, and Lapps. (Bernier wrote that Lapps have bearlike faces and appear "quite frightful.")
Some time later, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus divvied up mankind into Europeans, Asians, Africans, Americans, and a smattering of fringe races, including dwarfs, troglodytes, and "lazy Patagonians." Later still, Johann Blumenbach counted five human races: European — he called them "Caucasian," theorizing that they had originated in the Caucasus Mountains — Ethiopian, Mongoloid, American, and Malay.
"William Boyd agreed with Johann Blumenbach: There are five races," writes Dinesh D'Souza in "The End of Racism," his 1995 study of race in America. "Louis Agassiz was willing to settle for eight. Carleton Coon maintained that there are nine. Thomas Henry Huxley proposed 11 races, later changing his count to 19. Joseph Birdsell insisted on 32, including 'Hindus,' 'Turkics,' 'Tibetans,' 'Guegians,' 'Neo-Hawaiians,' and 'Negritos.' "
Today such taxonomies seem absurd. So does the view, once not uncommon in white America, that the Irish were an inferior race. So does the Census Bureau's former insistence on enumerating blacks and mulattoes separately, and on subdividing mulattoes into quadroons and octoroons. Be sure of this: Americans in the future will look back at Question 6 in the 2000 US Census and laugh at its absurdity.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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