14 THENEWYORKER,MARCH23, 2020
Indians grew during the era of west
ward expansion that followed the Civil
War, leading to the establishment of an
“Indian Division” of the census. The in
structions grew elaborate as the govern
ment, pursuing remorseless military
campaigns against Plains and Western
Indians, sought to subject much of the
Native population to U.S. rule by way
of forced assimilation. The census be
came an extension of that policy, as
similation by classification:
“Where persons reported
as ‘Halfbreeds’ are found
residing with whites, adopt
ing their habits of life and
methods of industry, such
persons are to be treated
as belonging to the white
population. Where, on the
other hand, they are found
in communities composed
wholly or mainly of Indi
ans, the opposite construction is taken.”
After the Thirteenth Amendment
abolished slavery—and, with it, the
threefifths clause and the distinction
between “free persons,” persons “bound
in service,” and “all other persons”—the
Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed the
equal protection of the laws to “any per
son” within the jurisdiction of the United
States. In 1869, preparing for the first
postemancipation census, the Ohio Re
publican James A. Garfield, chair of the
House Special Subcommittee on the
Ninth Census, hoped to use the census
to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment.
He proposed adding a question, directed
to all male adults, asking whether they
were “citizens of the United States being
twentyone years of age, whose right
to vote is denied or abridged on other
grounds than rebellion or crime”; his
idea was to use the results to reduce the
congressional apportionment of South
ern states that could be shown to have
denied black men their right to vote.
This measure was not adopted.
Garfield’s committee did make some
changes, including adding another “color”
category, marking out people from China,
or those descended from people from
China, as Chinese when, before, they’d
been “white.” The 1870 census issued new
instructions, abandoning the early if
white, leave blank: “Color.—It must not
be assumed that, where nothing is writ
ten in this column, ‘White’ is to be un
derstood. The column is always to be
filled.” Soon, with the rise of the latenine
teenthcentury cult of eugenics, “M” for
“mulatto” disappeared for a time, and
“color” became “color or race,” as reflected
in a new set of instructions: “Color or
race. Write ‘W’ for white; ‘B’ for black
(negro or negro descent); ‘Ch’ for Chi
nese; ‘Jp’ for Japanese; and ‘In’ for Indian,
as the case may be.” That provision cre
ated a body of data cited by advocates
for the Chinese Exclusion
Act, the first federal law re
stricting immigration, which
was passed in 1881.
The rise and influence of
eugenics was made possible
by a growing capacity to
count people by way of ma
chines. The 1890 U.S. cen
sus, the first to ask about
“race,” was also the first to
use the Hollerith Electric
Tabulating Machine, which, turning every
person into a punched card, sped up not
only counting but also sorting, and
crosstabulation. (Herman Hollerith, the
census analyst and M.I.T. professor who
invented the machine, founded the com
pany that later became I.B.M.)
For the 1910 census—a census accel
erated by the latest calculating machines,
and capable of still more elaborate tab
ulations and cross tabulations—Con
gress debated adopting an even more
extensive taxonomy for “color or race,”
a classification scheme initially devised
by Edward F. McSweeney, the assistant
commissioner of immigration for the
Port of New York. On the passenger
manifests for incoming ships, immi
grants to the United States had by the
eighteennineties been required to pro
vide answers to a long list of questions,
most of which were intended to predict
the likely fate of the immigrant:The full name, age, and sex; whether mar-
ried or single; the occupation; whether able to
read or write; the nationality; the last resi-
dence; the seaport of landing; the final desti-
nation; whether having ticket through to such
destination; who paid his passage; whether in
possession of money; and if so, whether up-
ward of $30; whether going to join a relative;
and if so, his name and address; whether ever
before in the United States; whether ever in
prison or an almshouse; whether under con-
tract to perform labor; and what is the immi-
grant’s health, mentally and physically, and
whether deformed or crippled.McSweeney, who was appointed by
Grover Cleveland, spent three days
coming up with a different way to pre
dict where an immigrant would settle,
and how an immigrant would fare, by
way of a shorthand for the immigrant’s
origins, a “List of Races and Peoples.”
McSweeney explained:This is not intended to be an ethnological
classification. It is not intended as a history of
the immigrant’s antecedents but as a clew to
what will be his immediate future after he had
landed. It is merely a grouping together as far
as it seems practicable to do so of people who
maintain recognized communities in various
parts of the country where they settle, who
have the same aptitudes or industrial capaci-
ties or who are found here identified with cer-
tain occupations.As Joel Perlmann points out, in “Amer
ica Classifies the Immigrants: From
Ellis Island to the 2020 Census” (Har
vard), McSweeney conflated four then
current ideas about divisions among hu
mans: “race,” “people,” “stock,” and “na
tionality.” One of the “races” on his list
was “Hebrews.”
When Congress debated an amend
ment to the 1910 census bill that would
have mandated using McSweeney’s
scheme, the strongest objection came
from the American Jewish Committee
in New York. “Their schedule of races
is a purely arbitrary one and will not be
supported by any modern anthropolo
gists,” the committee wrote to Senator
Simon Guggenheim, of Colorado.
“American citizens are American citi
zens and as such their racial and reli
gious affiliations are nobody’s business.
There is no understanding of the mean
ing of the word ‘race’ which justifies the
investigation which it is proposed the
Census Bureau shall undertake.” In the
Senate, Guggenheim declared, “I was
born in Philadelphia. Under this cen
sus bill they put me down as a Hebrew,
not as an American.” The amendment
was defeated.
The color and racial taxonomies of
the American census are no more ab
surd than the color and racial taxono
mies of federalgovernment policy, be
cause they have historically been an
instrument of that policy. In 1924, the
Indian Citizenship Act declared all Na
tive peoples born in the United States
to be citizens of the United States, and
the federal government established the