How Race Categories on U.S. Census Forms Have Evolved
The reality of categorizing people with distinct labels has never been simple.
People with identical lineage may choose different boxes, and the same person may choose different boxes in different years. Former President Barack Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a Black man from Kenya, for example, marked himself as “Black,” even when checking more than one race was an option.
Historically, some edits to census race boxes reflected changes in policy or public sentiment. As the nation’s laws on slavery shifted, the census began phasing out the counting of enslaved people and instead introduced new terms to define the Black population.
Fascinating.
I’ve long struggled with categorization, both self- and not. It’s no wonder we humans attempt to categorize (it is, after all, the basis for all language), but when we attempt to categorize another person, that’s when it all goes to hell.
Recently, the term ‘LGBTQ’ (or ‘LGBTQIA+,’ if you’re feeling radically inclusive) has come into fashion. I hate it. No, I loathe it. As a gay man, my experience has little in common with that of a trans person or someone who is “questioning.” I’m not questioning anything, so why am I grouped with those folks?
I see the LGBTQ label as insulting, created by a hetero-majority that can’t be bothered remembering the specifics of my lived experience. Instead, we’re all just thrown into this alphabet soup of ‘otherness.’