America is preoccupied with race statistics--perhaps 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" line--the nativity line--separating the native

List of Figures and Tables ix Preface xi Part I What Are Statistical Races? Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview 3 Chapter 2 Classification before Counting: The Statistical Races 14 Part II Policy, Statistics, and Science Join Forces Chapter 3 The Compromise That Made the Republic and the Nation's First Statistical Race 31 Chapter 4 Race Science Captures the Prize, the U.S. Census 45 Chapter 5 How Many White Races Are There? 61 Part III When You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail Chapter 6 Racial Justice Finds a Policy Tool 83 Chapter 7 When You Have a Hammer: Statistical Races Misused 105 Part IV The Statistical Races under Pressure, and a Fresh Rationale Chapter 8 Pressures Mount 129 Chapter 9 The Problem of the Twenty-first Century Is the Problem of the Color Line as It Intersects the Nativity Line 151 Part V What We Have Is Not What We Need Chapter 10 Where Are We Exactly? 171 Chapter 11 Getting from Where We Are to Where We Need to Be 183 Appendix: Perspectives from Abroad--Brazil, France, Israel 209 Notes 221 Bibliography 251 Index 263

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014 "In one of the best discussions of the social construction of race and the U.S. Census Bureau's role in that social construction that this reviewer has seen, Prewitt goes way beyond the typical discussion by demonstrating the policy implications of the social construction and shifting definitions of race... This detailed history and policy analysis is an absolute requirement for race scholars and policy analysts alike."--J. Hattery, Choice "This book will inform historians on important aspects of what census measurement says about the past, but it also may provide a bridge to what students will write about American society decades from now."--Stephen E. Fienberg, Journal of American History "What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society."--Ryan Allen, New Books in Education

"Race may be socially constructed, but alleles are not. The question is not if biology matters, but how does it—and will it—matter? 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"This is the best book ever written about the federal census of the United States."—David A. Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley"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"Few people are better placed than Prewitt to comment on the role of racial classification in U.S. policy. As both a scholar and public servant, he brings a unique insider perspective to the 'sausage making' of race-based data. Although lots of scholars and bureaucrats grumble about our existing race categories, no one else has put together a call for change that is as detailed, extensive, and historically researched."—Ann Morning, author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference