Post by Mestemia on Feb 18, 2008 19:53:31 GMT -5
Question: How does the Census Bureau define race and ethnicity?
Answer: Census Bureau complies with the Office of Management and Budget's standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race, which were revised in October 1997. They generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria.
In accordance with the Office of Management and Budget definition of ethnicity, the Census Bureau provides data for the basic categories in the OMB standards: Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. In general, the Census Bureau defines ethnicity or origin as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person 's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race. According to the revised Office of Management and Budget standards noted above, race is considered a separate concept from Hispanic origin (ethnicity) and, wherever possible, separate questions should be asked on each concept.
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Scientists have actually been saying for quite a while that race, as biology, doesn't exist - that there's no biological basis for race. And that is in the facts of biology, the facts of non-concordance, the facts of continuous variation, the recentness of our evolution, the way that we all commingle and come together, how genes flow, and perhaps especially in the fact that most variation occurs within race versus between races or among races, suggesting that there's no generalizability to race. There is no center there; there is no there there in the center. It's fluid.
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Less prominent in this debate has been a discussion of
what is meant by racial groups and whether such groups
are, in fact, discrete, measurable, and scientifically meaningful.
The consensus among most scholars in fields such
as evolutionary biology, anthropology, and other disciplines
is that racial distinctions fail on all three counts—
that is, they are not genetically discrete, are not reliably
measured, and are not scientifically meaningful.
Source
Answer: Census Bureau complies with the Office of Management and Budget's standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race, which were revised in October 1997. They generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria.
In accordance with the Office of Management and Budget definition of ethnicity, the Census Bureau provides data for the basic categories in the OMB standards: Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. In general, the Census Bureau defines ethnicity or origin as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person 's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race. According to the revised Office of Management and Budget standards noted above, race is considered a separate concept from Hispanic origin (ethnicity) and, wherever possible, separate questions should be asked on each concept.
Source
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Scientists have actually been saying for quite a while that race, as biology, doesn't exist - that there's no biological basis for race. And that is in the facts of biology, the facts of non-concordance, the facts of continuous variation, the recentness of our evolution, the way that we all commingle and come together, how genes flow, and perhaps especially in the fact that most variation occurs within race versus between races or among races, suggesting that there's no generalizability to race. There is no center there; there is no there there in the center. It's fluid.
Source
-----------------------------------------------------------
Less prominent in this debate has been a discussion of
what is meant by racial groups and whether such groups
are, in fact, discrete, measurable, and scientifically meaningful.
The consensus among most scholars in fields such
as evolutionary biology, anthropology, and other disciplines
is that racial distinctions fail on all three counts—
that is, they are not genetically discrete, are not reliably
measured, and are not scientifically meaningful.
Source