Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation

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Paul Schor (Associate Professor of American History, Associate Professor of American History, Université Paris Diderot)

Counting Americans

How the US Census Classified the Nation

Paul Schor (Associate Professor of American History, Associate Professor of American History, Université Paris Diderot)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
21 September 2017

History of the Americas; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Slavery & abolition of slavery

How could the same person be classified by the US census as black in 1900, mulatto in 1910, and white in 1920? The history of categories used by the US census reflects a country whose identity and self-understanding--particularly its social construction of race--is closely tied to the continuous polling on the composition of its population.

By tracing the evolution of the categories the United States used to count and classify its population from 1790 to 1940, Paul Schor shows that, far from being simply a reflection of society or a mere instrument of power, censuses are actually complex negotiations between the state, experts, and the population itself. The census is not an administrative or scientific act, but a political one. Counting Americans is a social history exploring the political stakes that pitted various interests and groups of people against each other as population categories were constantly redefined. Utilizing new archival material from the Census Bureau, this study pays needed attention to the long arc of contested changes in race and census-making. It traces changes in how race mattered in the United States during the era of legal slavery, through its fraught end, and then during (and past) the period of Jim Crow laws, which set different ethnic groups in conflict.

And it shows how those developing policies also provided a template for classifying Asian groups and white ethnic immigrants from southern and eastern Europe--and how they continue to influence the newly complicated racial imaginings informing censuses in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups and on immigrants, and on the troubled imposition of U.S. racial categories upon the populations of newly acquired territories, Counting Americans demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation and discrimination.

By: Paul Schor (Associate Professor of American History Associate Professor of American History Université Paris Diderot)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 155mm, Width: 236mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 640g
ISBN: 9780199917853
ISBN 10: 019991785X
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 21 September 2017
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Paul Schor is an associate professor of history at the Université de Paris.

Reviews for Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation

[T]here is plenty of meat there to satisfy the most voracious 'clio-vore.' This reading will appeal especially to social scientists, who, like this reviewer, have made use of postwar census data in their own work, but are likely to know little of the fascinating history and evolution of the Census Bureau's own development and its ever-changing questionnaires and published reports from earlier times. --John Graham, H-Socialisms For scholars who consult the US Census in their research, historian Schor's outstanding book is invaluable....The research is impeccable, especially Schor's use of congressional archives to determine political thinking over a period of almost a century and a half. Most revealing is the author's discussion of the division between the North and South concerning blacks during slavery and Reconstruction....Essential. --CHOICE