Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The 1850 census marked a watershed in census-taking in several ways. For our purposes, a large part of its significance rests in the introduction of the “mulatto” category and the reasons for its introduction. This category was added not because of demographic shifts, but because of the lobbying efforts of race scientists and the willingness of certain senators to do their bidding. More generally, the mulatto category signaled the ascendance of scientific authority within racial discourse. By the 1850s, polygenist thought was winning a battle that it had lost in Europe. The “American school of ethnology” distinguished itself from prevailing European racial thought through its insistence that human races were distinct and unequal species. That polygenism endured at all was a victory, since the European theorists to abandon it. Moreover, there was considerable resistance to it in the United States. Although most American monogenists were not racial egalitarians, they were initially unwilling to accept claims of separate origins, permanent racial differences, and the infertility of racial mixture. Polygenists deliberately sought hard statistical data to prove that mulattoes, as hybrids of different racial species, were less fertile than their pure-race parents and lived shorter lives.

Melissa Nobles, “History Counts: A Comparative Analysis of Racial/Color Categorization in US and Brazilian Censuses,” American Journal of Public Health, Volume 90, Number 11 (November 2000): 1738-1745.

Media Advisory — Census Bureau Director to Discuss Redistricting Data, Center of Population and 2010 Census Briefs

Posted in Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2011-03-24 12:23Z by Steven

Media Advisory — Census Bureau Director to Discuss Redistricting Data, Center of Population and 2010 Census Briefs

National Press Club, 13th floor
First Amendment Lounge
529 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20045
2011-03-24, 18:00-19:00Z (14:00-15:00 EDT)

Robert M. Groves, Director
U.S. Census Bureau

Nicholas A. Jones, Chief, Racial Statistics Branch, Population Division
U.S. Census Bureau

Marc J. Perry, Chief, Population Distribution Branch, Population Division
U.S. Census Bureau

U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves will brief the media on 2010 Census news, releases and products. Groves will discuss quality indicators and the completion of all releases of 2010 Census redistricting data, and he will announce the site of the new national mean center of population. The briefing will include the release of the first two 2010 Census briefs—population distribution, and race and ethnicity—and a question-and-answer session.

Online Press Kit:
Event materials will be posted online shortly after the event begins and can be accessed by clicking on the 2010 Census Operational Press briefing at http://2010.census.gov/news/press-kits/operational-press-briefing/.

Webcast:
There will be a live webcast of the briefing, accessible at at 2 p.m. EDT on event day. At: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=77517.

For more information, click here.

Tags: Marc J. Perry, Nicholas A. Jones, Robert M. Groves

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Mixed Race Studies

Media Advisory — Census Bureau Director to Discuss Redistricting Data, Center of Population and 2010 Census Briefs

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