Mixed Race Studies

A Brief History of Census “Race”

Knol: A unit of knowledge
2010-06-08
4 illustrations

Frank W. Sweet, Independent Research Historian

The U.S. federal census was founded to apportion congressional representation among the states. In order to achieve additional goals, it switched in 1850 from recording households in summary, to recording individuals in detail. It became self-administered in 1960 to reduce costs. It has always been a political instrument of the administration in power. Today, the census encourages identity politics and so wavers between the goal of capturing “race” as a form of ethnic self-identity, and the equally desired but conflicting goal of capturing “race” as involuntary physical trait.

This brief history covers three major topics: The Changes of 1850 and 1960, Politics and Confidentiality, and The “Race” Question. The third topic, the history of the “race” question, is then presented in six sub-topics: Changes in “Racial” Terminology, Changes in “Racial” Categories, Changes in “Racial” Criteria, Changes in Stated “Racial” Goals, The Religion Question Controversy of 1956, and The Legality of Refusal…

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Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule

Backintyme Publishing
2005
542 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780939479238

Frank W. Sweet

• Every Year, 35,000 Black-Born Youngsters Redefine Themselves as White
• About 1/3 of “White” Americans have detectable African DNA

Genealogists were the first to learn that America’s color line leaks. Black researchers often find White ancestry. White genealogists routinely uncover Black ancestry. Molecular anthropologists now confirm Afro-European mixing in our DNA. The plain fact is that few Americans can truly say that they are genetically unmixed. Yet liberals and conservatives alike agree that so-called Whites and Blacks are distinct political “races.” When did ideology triumph over reality? How did America paint itself into such a strange corner?

Americans changed their concept of “race” many times. Eston Hemings, Jefferson’s son, was socially accepted as a White Virginian because he looked European. Biracial planters in antebellum South Carolina assimilated into White society because they were rich. Intermarried couples were acquitted despite the laws because some courts ruled that anyone one with less than one-fourth African ancestry was White, while others ruled that Italians were Colored. Dozens of nineteenth-century American families struggled to come to grips with notions of “racial” identity as the color line shifted and hardened into its present form.

This 542-page book tells their stories in the light of genetic admixture studies and in the records of every appealed court case since 1780 that decided which side of the color line someone was on. Its index lists dozens of 19th-century surnames. It shows that: The color line was invented in 1691 to prevent servile insurrection. The one-drop rule was invented in the North during the Nat Turner panic. It was resisted by Louisiana Creoles, Florida Hispanics, and the maroon (triracial) communities of the Southeast. It triumphed during Jim Crow as a means of keeping Whites in line by banishing to Blackness any White family who dared to establish friendly relations with a Black family. This analysis of the nearly 300 appealed court cases that determined Americans’ “racial” identity may be the most thorough study of the legal history of the U.S. color line yet published.