Why do racial and ethnic categories exist?
You may have noticed that even though science has established that race is not biologically based, the US Census Bureau continues to use the racial categories. Why?
One answer lies in the sociological theory known as the Thomas Theorem. Remember that this theory is if people perceive something as being real then it becomes real in its consequences. Race being based on biology is so intricately connected to everyday life that the average person makes no distinction or effort at understanding.
The Thomas Theorem says that if people perceive something as being real then it becomes real in its consequences.
Most people simply believe the categories to be real. The Constitutional mandate to take a census of the U.S. population so that the people are represented by Congress requires a count of people and their self-reported racial classification. Few argue that we should eliminate the race-biology construct, because it is still very important to the average person.
The chart below displays an estimate of race for 2050. What do you notice about the estimation?
Did you notice that the Native American category is 1% in both 2000 and the projected 2050?
Did you notice that all other categories are projected to increase while "white" is projected to decrease?
Does this chart take into account someone who is of mixed-races?
The U.S. tends to make the race-biology claim a big deal because it is part of our socialization to do so. There are 4 categories of racial traits that the U.S. uses to distinguish people by race:
1. Skin color
2. Facial features
3. Hair color and texture
4. Body shape and size (body morphology)
These 4 simple features have been used as the categorical basis of "us versus them" thinking throughout U.S. history. Most don't realize that there is much more variety within a given racial category than between them.
For example, think about the students in your classes. Pick a few students who might fall into just one of the five basic racial groupings used on the census report. Observe their variations in skin tone, hair texture, color, thickness, or curl. It becomes very obvious that not everyone within one racial group look alike.
So why don't we care about variation in physical features within our own racial groups? It comes back to our culture and socialization. We are socialized to see differences between rather than within racial categories.
This ideal is similar for ethnic groups because socialization tends to see the difference between ethnic groups more than the difference within, but ethnicity is conceptually different than race and has its own complications for categorization.
Ethnicity refers to people, their religion, languages, traditions, and heritage. Much of what we discussed in the culture lessons apply to one's ethnicity as well as one's race. One very important U.S ethnic classification is Hispanic. This category was developed by the U.S. Census Bureau to Describe people of "Latin" origin and their Descendants. Even though Hispanic is listed as a racial category in some studies, by definition, it is more ethnic than racial, because there are no physical characteristics that link Hispanic people together.
Hispanic, as a categorical classification is ambiguous because there are 19 countries between Mexico and South America, including a few Spanish-speaking island nations and one country in Europe (Spain) that could be a nation of origin for Hispanic persons and their ancestors. Consider these examples that complicates the hispanic category:
Brazilians are South Americans, but their national language is Portuguese and their most common ancestral heritage is African. Are they or are they not Hispanic? Also, French speaking Haitians come from the same island nation as Spanish speaking Dominicans.
"Hispanic" as a Census Bureau concept leads to ambiguous conclusions. Even though the concept was created in an attempt to count U.S. citizens with ethnic sensitivity, to assume homogeneity, or very similar cultural traits, among all U.S. Hispanics is a mistake. The same mistake is made when people classify all U.S. whites as being homogeneous. But, there is a reason that Hispanic is an important concept. Basically, it identifies a category of sub-cultures within the mainstream U.S. population of Spanish-speaking members (albeit a very diverse collective).
- Race
- Differences
- Skin
- Hair Color
- Facial
- Body
- Differences
- Ethnicity
- Differences
- Language
- Religion
- Customs
- Traditions
- Food
- Differences
