Page 55 - The Importance of Common Metrics for Advacing Social Science Theory and Research

The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research: A Workshop Summary
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13034.html

INDICATORS 43

most familiar, because they are based on some sort of administrative or
political agenda.

Constructions of Race in America
Snipp explained that people construct race socially by taking behav-
ioral and physical characteristics associated with human difference and
agglomerating them into a set of traits that are called race or racial distinc-
tions. Three entities are important in terms of determining what race is in
America: legal definitions, the Census Bureau, and the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget (OMB).
With regard to legal definitions, “white” is a default category con-
ventionally understood to have some sort of European continental origin.
Snipp explained that African Americans traditionally have been identified
by the rule of hypodescent, the “one-drop rule,” which has been reinforced
by Supreme Court and federal court rulings. He noted that, in contrast, the
rule of hyperdescent has been applied to American Indians, which requires
minimum ancestry that very clearly restricts the magnitude of federal obli-
gations. Each of the 562 tribes has its own criteria for determining who is
an American Indian. While there is no history of either hypodescent or hy-
perdescent for Asians, Snipp mentioned that there is a history of restrictions
regarding immigration and citizenship that was built into the 1882 Chinese
Exclusion Act. Lately, discussion among the Latino community has centered
around whether “brown” is a separate race, whether Latinos are a separate
race, or whether the idea of Hispanic white makes sense for those who are
of mixed indigenous and European origin, for example, many Mexicans.
Snipp observed that ever since the first census, conducted in 1790, ques-
tions about race have been asked. By the 1970s, there was an enormous
amount of legislation, programs, and operations that required data about
race. To facilitate comparison of race data, OMB-issued Directive No. 15
identifies the categories that federal government agencies should use for
statistical collection and reporting. The directive also notes that these clas-
2
sifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological
in nature. All agencies, grantees, and contractors (with the exception of
small businesses) were required to use this set of categories. The American
people became used to seeing these categories and thus thinking about
them in terms of race and ethnicity. The categories filtered into the social
sciences and were reflected in textbooks about race and ethnicity. Snipp said
that these categories became the foundation for basically everything that is
known about race in this country.

2 The categories included American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander;
black, not of Hispanic origin; Hispanic origin; and white, not of Hispanic origin.

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