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

(Hardback)

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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

Reviews

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014 "In one of the best discussions of the social construction of race and the U.S. Census Bureau's role in that social construction that this reviewer has seen, Prewitt goes way beyond the typical discussion by demonstrating the policy implications of the social construction and shifting definitions of race... This detailed history and policy analysis is an absolute requirement for race scholars and policy analysts alike."--J. Hattery, Choice "This book will inform historians on important aspects of what census measurement says about the past, but it also may provide a bridge to what students will write about American society decades from now."--Stephen E. Fienberg, Journal of American History "What Is Your Race is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society."--Ryan Allen, New Books in Education

Author Bio

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include "The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization". He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.