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Racial and Ethnic Definition as Reflections of Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Bette Novit-Evans  and
Ashton Wesley Welch
Ashton Wesley Welch
Affiliation:
Bette Novit-Evans and Ashton Wesley Welch are, respectively, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Professor of History at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska 68178. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Tenth Annual Conference on Minority and Ethnic Studies, University of Santa Clara, April 1982.
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Extract

Official definitions of race and ethnicity in American law reveal a great deal about public policy in an environment of ethnic pluralism. Despite some ambiguity over who is black, or Hispanic, or an Aleut, relatively few people fall between the wide cracks in the American patchwork of identity classifications. However, those cracks tell us a great deal about the ambivalence of the American polity toward ethnicity.

Laws, regulations, guidelines, and judicial opinions are social artifacts which provide evidence about how a society deals with certain perceived problems. Laws are designed to serve social purposes and change as the purposes change; the specific form they may take reflects a need for congruence between laws as instruments of policy, and the purposes of policy. A survey of laws on race and ethnicity suggests three different policy aims: (1) laws mandating separation and disparate treatment, (2) laws prohibiting disparate treatment, and (3) laws encouraging aggregate changes in ethnic representation. Each purpose had a corresponding form of definition. If the purpose of a law is to mandate diverse treatment of individuals based on race or ethnicity, the law must be quite precise about who falls into which category, because an administrator is expected to make clear distinctions in individual cases.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , December 1983 , pp. 417 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 We have excluded Native Americans from our consideration, because laws and policies regarding them are quite different from other laws regarding law, and diverse tribal customs as well. For an introduction to this subject see Cohen, Felix S., Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971)Google Scholar and Prucha, Francis Paul, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Jordan, Winthrop D., White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 104Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 139.

4 Louisiana courts have taken judicial cognizance of the following categories of color: Negro, ¾ or more Negro blood; griffe, ½ Negro, ½ mulatto; mulatto, ½ Negro, white; quadroon, ¼ Negro, ¾ white; octoroon, ⅛ Negro, ⅞ white. In spite of these distinctions, those having 1/16 or more Negro blood were considered “persons of color”. See Kennedy, Stetson, The Jim Crow Guide to the USA (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1959), p. 50Google Scholar. The Louisiana classification system was adopted from Saint Domingue. For its history see De Saint Mery, M. L. E. Moreau, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l'Île de Saint-Domingue (Paris: Société de l'Histoire des Colonies Françaises, 1958), p. 96Google Scholar.

5 Gunnar Myrdal's classic work makes this point most strikingly. See An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), pp. 113–15Google Scholar.

6 See Wright, Carroll D., The History and Growth of the United States Census (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1900), p. 187Google Scholar.

7 Bahr, Howard M., Chadwick, Bruce A., Strauss, Joseph H., American Ethnicity (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1979), pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Catterall, Helen T., ed., Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1926–1937), 2 168Google Scholar; and Jordan, , White Over Black, p. 168Google Scholar.

9 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896). Albion Tourgee's brief on behalf of Plessy in this case emphasizes this point.

10 Code of Alabama, Title I, § 2, “Meaning of Certain Words and Terms” (1940). This and other state laws regarding race are collected in Murray, Pauli, States' Laws on Race and Color (Cincinnati: Women's Division of the Methodist Church, 1951), p. 19Google Scholar.

11 Georgia Code Annotated, §§79–103 (2177). Persons of color: who are (Acts 1927, pp. 272, 277), in Murray, p. 90.

12 Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 US 78 (1927).

13 North Carolina Revised Code, §§60–97 (1943). Also Louisiana General Statutes §1073 (1939), in Murray, pp. 345 and 193–4, respectively.

14 Doe v. Louisiana, Civ. Dist. Ct. Orleans Parish Civ. Doc. (5) No. 78–9513 (1982). We are grateful to Mr. Brian Begue, attorney for the plaintiff, and to Professor Munro Edmunson of Tulane University for information on this litigation.

15 The two cases are Ozawa v. US, 260 US 178 (1922) and US v. Thind, 261, US 204 (1922). For an excellent dicussion of the role of race in naturalization and immigration law seeKonvitz, Milton R., The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1946)Google Scholar, andKonvitz, Milton R., Civil Rights in Immigration (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1953)Google Scholar, and Bennett, Marion T., American Immigration Policies: A History (Washington D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

16 Morrison v. California, 291 US 82 (1934).

17 Legal discrimination against aliens is discussed and excellently documented in Konvitz, Alien and Asiatic. On the particular legal issues surrounding the Japanese see Peterson, William, Japanese Americans (New York: Random House, 1971)Google Scholar, and on the Japanese internment see Broek, Jacobus ten, Barnhart, Edward, and Matson, Floyd, Prejudice, War, and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

18 See Brebler, Leo, Moore, John W., and Guzman, Ralph C., The Mexican American People: The Nation's Second Largest Minority (New York: The Free Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

19 42 USC 2000a et seq.

20 EEOC Guideline on Discrimination Because of Race, Fair Employment Practices Manual (Washington: Bureau of National Affairs).

21 The 1980 US Census definitions, for example, indicate that: “origin and descent can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage, or country in which the person or the person's parents or ancestors were born before their arrival in the United States”. 1980 Census of Population: Supplementary Report on Age, Sex, Race and Spanish Origin of the Population PC80-s1-1 (May 1981), p. 2.

22 See, for example, Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co., 414 US 66 (1973); Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 US 88 (1976); and Ambach v. Norwick, 441 US 68 (1979).

23 Reprinted in Schlei, B. and Grossman, P., Employment Discrimination Law (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Affairs, 1976), note 2, supra, p. 246, n. 5Google Scholar.

24 EEOC Guidelines on Discrimination Because of National Origin, 20 CFR 1606. 1 (1974).

25 See, for example, remarks of President Johnson at Howard University, Washington, D.C., June 4, 1965. Quoted in full in Franklin, John Hope and Star, Isidore, ed., The Negro in Twentieth Century America (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 225Google Scholar. In the field of education, the notion of race-conscious solutions is first suggested in Green v. School Board of New Kent County, 391 US 430 (1968) and more explicitly in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 403 US 913 B1971.

26 See Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 401 US 424 (1971) and Washington v. Davis, 426 US 229 (1976). This procedure, originally judicially formulated, is now incorporated into the Federal Uniform Guidelines on Employment Selection: ‘Procedures having adverse impact on members of any race, sex, or ethnic group will be considered discriminatory unless the procedure has been validated.’ Uniform Guidelines on Emplyee Selection Procedures (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), p. 21Google Scholar.

27 42 USC §1971 (1976) and Voting Rights Act of 1965 Amendments, June 23, 1982, Pub. L. No. 97–205. See also The Voting Rights Act: Ten Years After (Washington: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1975)Google Scholar. On discriminatory impact, see White v. Register, 412 US 755 (1973); City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 US 100 (1980); and Rome v. United States, 446 US 156 (1980).

28 1980 Census of Population: Supplementary Reports: Race of the Population by State, PC80-S1–3.

29 Federal Contract Compliance Manual (Washington: Bureau of National Affairs) 1:0004 §§1–60. The Manual suggests that this information can be obtained either by personal knowledge of the employer, or self-identification of the applicant.

30 See, for example, Jones, J. S., “How Different are Human Races?” Nature, 239 (09 1981), 188–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The classic statement of this argument appears in Dunn, L. C. and Dobzhansky, T., Heredity, Race, and Society (New York, Mentor Books, 1956, 2nd edn.)Google Scholar.

31 Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 US 189 (1973).

32 Alegretti, Joseph, “National Origin Discrimination and the Ethnic Employee”, The Employee Relations Law Journal, 6, 4 (Spring 1981), 546Google Scholar.

33 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 US 144 (1977) An argument suggesting aggregate voting rights is made in Yale Law Journal Note, “United Jewish Organization v. Carey and the Need to Recognize Aggregate Voting Rights”, 87 Yale Law Journal 571 (1978)Google Scholar This notion is refuted in “Note, Proportional Representation by Race: The Constitutionality of Benign Racial Redistricting”, 74 Michigan Law Review 820 (1976)Google Scholar.

34 Board of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 US 265 (1978).