What Is "Your" Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans

A historical overview of the census race question—and a bold proposal for eliminating it

America is preoccupied with race statistics—perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different "race" line—the nativity line—separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer thes...