You probably recognize those little postcards you get from the government asking you to fill out some survey questions about your race, income, age, etc. You fill out those little cards and then send them on their way. Now, imagine yourself living in 1940, when census enumerators would come to your house instead and ask you those questions.
And, prior to 1940, that's exactly what they did. So, instead of conducting survey's via mail-in cards, the government actually sent representatives to go door-to-door and conduct the surveys.
You might think that information collected by enumerators would be just the same as if it were collected by postcard, as it was after the 1970's. However, statistics show there's a big difference between these two collection methods. In one, the enumerators guessed on your nationality, based on their training and instructions. However, on the mail-in surveys, people were asked to self-identify which race they belonged to. The discrepancies between the two methods of identification were striking.
One of the biggest changes was that the the Native American population went up 110%. Secondly, nearly 80% of Puerto Ricans identified themselves as white, as compared to the enumerator-method where only 40% of Puerto Ricans were classified as white.
As Lisa Wade puts it, "Switching from enumerators to surveys meant literally shifting our definition of what race is from a matter of appearance to a matter of identity...The very demographics of the population underwent a fundamental unsettling because of the logistical difficulties in collecting information from a large number of people. Nevertheless, this change would have a profound impact on who we think Americans are, what research about race finds, and how we think about race today"
So readers, how do you think of race? Do you think the way you define yourself and your race is different than how someone else might see you? How so?
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