Are There Really Just Five Racial Groups?

Our modern racial-classification system is far from the first in U.S. history. The federal government asked about race indirectly (are you a slave or a free man?) in the inaugural census from 1790?although more for the purposes of the ?Three-Fifths Compromise" than to prevent discrimination. In addition, early American law limited citizenship to whites, so the census had to distinguish between whites and everyone else. (African-Americans became eligible for citizenship in 1868, Native Americans in 1924, and Asian-Americans in 1954.) As people of different backgrounds intermarried and interbred, the government's attempts to delineate people by race became increasingly tortured. For example, the 1890 census categories were white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. (Census takers carried detailed instructions on how to explain the groupings.) Race categories continued to vary for most of the 20^th century. The 1920 census listed the races as ?White, Black, Mulatto, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Hindu, Korean, and Other.? The 1960 census used different terminology, listing ?White, Negro, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Other.?

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