by Fiona Boler, Digital Communications Assistant

Bound by boxes: The need for multiracial (and all) Americans to be visible. and whole.

There is a lot of trauma that comes with being multiracial in the United States. My existence is a statement. But my existence is also uniquely my own: I have a strong Irish heritage from my father and a resilient multiracial heritage from my mother, who claims Norwegian, Jamaican, and Puerto Rican roots.

Growing up I never felt like I belonged anywhere. My racial ambiguity met with questions such as, “What are you?”—the last thing a middle schooler trying to assimilate to the masses wanted to answer. Because, without saying it, this question implied that I was something else and therefore I must explain myself.

To this day I still have trouble answering that question, whether it be from the mouth of a curious stranger or from forms that still have those curious boxes that say, “mark only one.” There is a thumping anxiety and lonely confusion about race that only multiracial people know. We are forced to explain ourselves and choose boxes in which none of us fit, feeling bound by the data resulting from society’s simplification into a racial organization.

The first time Americans were able to check more than one box in the race category on the census questionnaire was in 2000.

Up until this point if you were multiracial in America you were either “othered,” or forced to choose one category. In fact, until 1960 you didn’t even self-identify; a census worker would guess for you! The new “choose all that apply” approach is still not perfect, but obviously much preferred.

Data on its lonesome is neither inherently helpful nor harmful; it is what we decide to do with the data that gives it purpose and meaning.

The beautiful thing about data, however, is the way it can be transformed. Taken from a dark place and shown the light. That is how I felt when my team assembled the data for our Roots Beyond Race project, a multicolored mosaic of 198 different heritage groups across the entire United States. In it, people who identify as multiracial show up fully in each category they selected. For example, like 80,000 other Americans, I am both White and Jamaican; like 34,000 Americans I am both Black and Norwegian; and like 435,000 Americans I am both Irish and Black.

This gave me pause. I am whole? My entire life I have seen my race through the lens of the “other” box, never fully represented in any category, only parts. To grasp this, you have to understand the painful history of the census and empathize with how multiracial Americans have been counted.

The decennial census throughout history

In 1790 George Washington was in the second year of his first term as President. Rhode Island had just become the last of 13 original colonies to ratify the Constitution, which called for a national decennial census (i.e., every 10 years). President Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the many others who contributed to the formation of this new nation were aware of the necessity of gathering demographic data on their citizens. How were they to collect taxes with no data on households? How were they to know the needs and abilities of their citizens? And how were they going to keep track of the nation’s slave (and eventually) Indigenous populations?

Enter the first U.S. census.

In 1790, U.S. Marshals (who had received little training) went door to door to take the first tally of our young nation, counting just under 4 million people. The questionnaire required the name of the head of the family and the number of persons in each of these categories:

1. Free White males of 16 years and upward (to assess the country's industrial and military potential)

2. Free White males under 16 years

3. Free White females

4. All other free persons

5. Slaves

Table showing results of the first decennial census, in 1790. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

How have multiracial people been counted on the census, and why?

Over time, as society has changed, our census questions have reflected that—especially how we track race and multiracial people in the United States. Jennifer L. Hochschild, Professor of Government and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, writes:

“Censuses both create the image and provide the mirror of that image for a nation's self-reflection.”

Before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, many of the multiracial people the census counted were slaves. Indigenous people living off of tribal lands were not counted until the 1860 census, and for those living on tribal land, not until 1890. No Asian category existed on the census questionnaire until the introduction of Chinese on the 1870 form.

By examining how race data was collected on the U.S. census, one can begin to understand how that society stratified itself through the lens of race, and what it meant when a person had White and non-White roots. The historical traumas that have accompanied a multiracial identity require a trigger warning for readers of this article: for much of early U.S. history, to be multiracial meant one had traveled a dimly lit, unpaved, twisting road in which rape lurked behind every tree.

The 1850 census was the first time the categories “mulatto” and “mulatto slaves” appeared. (Mulatto is a term used for mixed race people, generally with White and Black heritage, derived from the word mule. Yes, it is offensive). From there the societal obsession with racial mixing deepened, reaching its apex in the census of 1890, with the addition of “quadroon” and “octoroon” (still dehumanizing) as categories—both based on the perceived percentage of “Black blood.”

You may be wondering, as I was, why collect this data on mixed-race people? What purpose did it serve the government?

In a time when eugenics was an accepted science, some scientists wanted to prove that the White race was superior and racial mixing—especially with those who had African blood pumping through them—was a threat to their supremacy. Mixed people were studied and tracked.

For example, census data was sought to construct life insurance tables, with the notion that people who were mixed had poor fertility, were more prone to disease, and overall lived shorter lives. By the 1930 census there were no more official categories to track mixed-race people. Thus, the “other” category became our home—or whatever census takers guessed us to be.

Today, more than 1 in 20 Americans identify as Black and White, and our country will only become more diverse in the decades to follow. Americans who identify as Black and two or more races or ethnicities make up almost 3% of the population, and the younger you are, the more likely you are to be multiracial. In our ever diversifying nation, it is important that we honor people’s ways of identifying themselves in our presentation of data about them.

Data illuminates the frame in which we see our society and ourselves

Data is powerful: it shapes perception. Data has also stood the test of time. It has been over 4,000 years since the Egyptians began collecting census data, transforming individuals into numbers and categories, to create a functioning, organized society.

Census data is necessary for determining Congressional representation. But it was also used by U.S. military leaders to identify and incarcerate Japanese American residents during World War II. (Today, federal law protects census respondents, and no identifiable information can be shared for any purposes, including to any law enforcement agency or court.) Census data was instrumental in our nation’s 1965 Voting Rights Act, illustrating through data how systemic racism suppresses the Black vote, and it is pertinent to ongoing debates around immigration and countless other policy issues.

In spring 2020, our nation will be counted in the next decennial census. Among many things that 2020 census data will inform include the redistribution of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, state and congressional legislative district boundaries, and electoral votes given to each state. On the monetary side of things, the census and complementary annual American Community Survey data will determine how $900 billion in federal and state funding will be spent per year on areas including health, social, transportation, and education programs.

Data on its lonesome is neither inherently helpful nor harmful; it is what we decide to do with the data that gives it purpose and meaning. To me, Roots Beyond Race is an example of how malleable census data and even the definitions of race really are. Constructed through the lens of intersecting identities, Roots Beyond Race transforms data into a completely new space where people who identify as multiracial and those who claim many heritages can finally feel whole—instead of ripped apart, erased, or forced to choose.

-Fiona (@fifibeme00)

EXPLORE ALL THE DATA IN ROOTS BEYOND RACE NOW.

Special thanks to Dana Amihere, current Data Editor at KPCC and formerly of Pew Research, for her work designing this helpful interactive of Census race categories through the years that we relied upon for this piece.

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Bound by boxes: The need for multiracial (and all) Americans to be visible. And whole.