The Census and Race—Part II—Slavery (1790-1860)

The Official Medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society--1795

This is the second post in a six-part series dealing with the race questions on the census. Just as the concept of race differs from one culture to another, it changes over time within a single culture--and has done so in the United States. Another way of putting this is to say that American culture at the time of the 2010 census is not the same culture as it was at the time of the first census in 1790. The Constitution calls for a census every ten years; and this post discusses the first eight of the 23 censuses which took place during the period of institutionalized slavery.

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The government's official census website justifies asking individuals to list their race by saying that the question has been "Asked since 1790." This is not an accurate statement.

In fact, the term "race" didn't appear on the census until 1900, and with the exception of 1950 it has been the sole descriptor (as opposed to "color or race") for this census item only since 1990. This is scientifically bizarre.

In 1941 the anthropologist Ashley Montagu first proposed that the human species had no races in the biological sense; by the 1960s this was the dominant view in biological anthropology and evolutionary biology; and it has been the consensus view in those fields for decades. Scientists now agree that all that exists is gradual variability in what people look like, and in their genetic makeup, as one travels around the planet. In other words, while scientific knowledge has been moving away from race, census terminology has been reifying it.

The first census in 1790 had only six questions, and counted males and females as free whites, other free persons, and slaves. From then until 1860--the last census before the Civil War--these were more or less the categories used, though the number of questions asked on the census increased from 6 to 23. The additional questions were aimed at getting information about age, occupation, and other characteristics such as "Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict." They also asked about the number of slaves that were fugitives, the number manumitted (freed), and the number of slave houses.

The term "color"--not "race"-- first appeared in the 1850 census, with three options: white, black, or mulatto; and these options were repeated in 1860. Whatever folk beliefs about "race" Americans may have held prior to the Civil War, they were of secondary importance. Instead, the census questions were organized around the institution of slavery, and were aimed at getting the information needed to apportion taxes and allocate congressional representation.

The key to understanding these questions is political, not biological. The Three-Fifths Compromise, was the deal that made possible the formation of a national government consisting of both free states and slave states; and it did so by counting each slave as 3/5 of a person. (The constitution euphemistically avoided the words "slave" or "slavery" by referring to "other Persons.") The interrelatedness of the three critical issues of congressional representation, the distribution of taxes, and the creation of the census is embodied in the way they are bound together in just two sentences. Here is the relevant part of Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

(After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment changed this section.)

Image Source: The Official Medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society--1795
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BLAKE10.JPG

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