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Contact: Debra Liese (215) 718-7427 debra_liese@press.princeton.edu

WHAT IS YOUR RACE?

The Census and our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans
Kenneth Prewitt
"Race may be socially constructed, but alleles are not. The question is not if biology matters, but how does itand will itmatter? How will biology be called upon to define or confine us in the twenty-first century? Kenneth Prewitt forcefully urges caution in the recuperation of biology, especially when biology is called upon to justify genomic medicine's uncontested adoption of a census taxonomy that is itself based on eighteenth-century pseudoscience. He also effectively deconstructs the pretense by census takers that this taxonomy itself is firmly anchored in science. In one of the most original aspects of this important new book, Prewitt shows in fine historical detail that 'social science and social policy share a common starting point'ultimately, in American slavery and Jim Crow racial relations. Prewitt's analysis, even when I disagree with him, is timely, thoughtful, eloquent, and learned, and we would all do well to heed his warnings." Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University

America is preoccupied with race statisticsperhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different "race" linethe nativity lineseparating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government's "statistical races." Not likely, observes Kenneth Prewitt, who shows why the way we count by race is flawed. In WHAT IS YOUR RACE? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Pub date: June 26, 2013), Kenneth Prewitt calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenthcentury race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical "Asian race." One that once tried to divide the "white race" into "good whites" and "bad whites," and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains four hundred years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated twenty years ago. Contrary to common sense, (more)
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the classification says there are only two ethnicities in AmericaHispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better? WHAT IS YOUR RACE? clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It's not an overnight taskparticularly the explosive step of dropping today's race question from the censusbut Prewitt argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

"This is an important and passionately written book. Prewitt traces the historical origins of what he calls the 'statistical races,' arguing that race and ethnicity questions on federal censuses and surveys should ultimately be dropped. His policy recommendations are provocative and well explicated and deserve wide consideration. As a former census director, his proposal carries weight." Margo Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

About the Author: Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

WHAT IS YOUR RACE?

The Census and our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans
Kenneth Prewitt
Cloth | ISBN13: 978-0-691-15703-0 | $29.95 / 19.95 E-book | ISBN13: 978-1-400-84679-5 296 pp. | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 5 line illus. 3 tables. Pub date: June 26, 2013

In North America: Contact: Debra Liese Phone: (215) 718-7427 Fax: (609) 258-1335 debra_liese@press.princeton.edu

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