The idea of race and ethnicity have been a rather complicated topic for centuries. Multiple groups underwent changes in classification in accordance with the US Census throughout the country’s history. What makes the issue difficult is that race is a social construct and society’s perception of the matter changed with time. The following paper will review the classification of two groups and how it changed before and after the Civil Rights Movement.
During the development of the classification, there were only two groups, whose perception has been stable throughout the entirety of American history: white and black people. However, the other ethnicities varied in reference to the country’s social, economic and political concerns. Native Americans were only considered in case they lived with whites and were required to pay taxes. They were not classified in accordance with the one drop rule, as opposed to black people, and were labeled by the dominant ethnicity in their residence (Strmic-Pawl et al., 2018). The twentieth century marked their inclusion to the five main groups alongside black, white, Hispanic and Asian people. The ethnicity’s existence was first acknowledged in Directive 15 of 1977 as American Indians and Alaskan Natives, and they were included in the census of 1980 as Indigenous. In the 21st century, Natives were given the opportunity to specify their tribes. The last change helped abolish the homogenisation of Indigenous people, acknowledging the multiple cultures and groups that exist within their community.
Asians have had a more unusual history of classification. They were not mentioned until 1860 and were then labeled as Chinese. This group was first featured because of the concerns surrounding immigration numbers. As mentioned earlier, Asians were featured with Pacific Islanders in Directive 15 and then were included in the census of 1980. The latter, however, erased the distinction between the two ethnic groups. The 21st century granted the ethnic group with six options to specify their identity. Moreover, since that time, Asians were no longer homogenized with Pacific Islanders like they were in 1980. Thus, the classification has become more detailed and more considerate of various nationalities and tribes within the same racial or ethnic group.
Reference
Strmic-Pawl, H. V., Jackson, B. A., & Garner, S. (2018). Race Counts: Racial and Ethnic Data on the U.S. Census and the Implications for Tracking Inequality. SagePub. Web.