What Is “Your” Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans

America collects race statistics more extensively than most nations, yet Kenneth Prewitt argues these statistics may obscure rather than clarify social reality and policy. He examines whether the United States still has a color line, and whether a nativity line—separating native-born from foreign-born residents—functions as a separate dividing factor. Prewitt demonstrates that the government's racial classification system is fundamentally flawed. It originates from discredited eighteenth-century biological race science and produces inconsistent results: Japanese and Chinese were once classified as separate races but are now combined as "Asian"; the system once attempted to divide "white" populations into categories but cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought to America four centuries ago from recent Ethiopian immigrants. The classification recognizes only two ethnicities: Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Prewitt calls for radical reform, including the controversial step of removing the race question from the census. He outlines concrete steps toward change and argues that while transformation will not occur quickly, it is technically feasible, politically achievable, and morally necessary.