4 ms·

and ethnicity does all of that? I’m not sure that is or was the purpose of including race in the census…

• defrost 4y ago
  Ethnicity? The statement quoted is about race being a silly non scientific concept. What was the purpose of the US including race in the census in the first instance - I'm guessing it was some throw back to tracking former slaves post Civil War?
  • ztrww 4y ago
    Nobody above was implying that race was a scientific concept (at least not in the way it is defined in the US). And most other countries generally only include ethnicity rather than race in their censuses. Which is even worse in that regard. However statistical socio-economic differences between racial groups remain significant. While it’s obviously very imperfect, tracking those differences without including race in the census would be quite difficult. It’s much older than the civil war though. Race was already included in the first census in 1790. Obviously counting white and ‘other’ people separately was important because people in the ‘other’ category almost never had full civil rights even if they were technically free.