How does the US Census Department determine a person’s race?
The reason I am asking this is because it is a question on a research project for college. It goes beyond them “just asking” or just looking at skin color. There is a determining factor of percentage. I have tried googling and am currently browsing the census.gov, but have had no luck finding that statistic.
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It’s one of the questions on the census form. The person filling it out volunteers the information. If a census taker disagrees, they can mark that on their records.
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When the U.S. government takes a census, it is up to those filling out the census forms to check their race. If they refuse to check a box designating race, then a census worker goes to the house and picks a box based on the person’s appearance. I’m sorry, but it’s not more sophisticated than that.
Percentage is used in some areas of government. For example, CA cities must publish their materials in an additional language based on the number of surnames that seem to be in that language. For example, if a city has a certain percentage of “Hispanic” surnames, the materials will need to be printed in Spanish as well as English (even if many of those with “Hispanic” surnames don’t actually read Spanish).
Isn’t bureaucracy great?!
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The person filling out the Census, marks the “race” area.
If a Census Taker is present, they might agree/disagree. Census Takers visiting a home is a very low percentage event.
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