Tabulating population demographics, including “ethnicity,” “nationality,” and “race,” has long been a mark of the modern state. Achieved through its statisticians, this requires the designation and operationalization of relevant categories. Such category-making practices are commonly “invisible,” as is, consequently, their role in making up race-ethnic identities, especially when conducted through the ordinary “everyday-ness” of registering for public services. In this article, the politics of category-making for counting purposes meets the politics of “ethnicity” and “race.” The article examines the creation of categories to tabulate “race-ethnic” concepts and identities through registration practices, as seen in The Netherlands. Registration form questions and answers show how “race,” “ethnicity,” and related ideas are being constructed, implicitly, through commonplace, everyday activities. What makes this case unusual is that these activities take place within an explicit policy restriction on the use of “race.” The article concludes with implications for policy-making with respect to the actuarial, “calculating” state and for theorizing the play of race-ethnic categories in policy practices for tabulating populations.

Adoration for fair skin color and bias against dark skin color are strong in Indian society. The theory of colorism suggests that, irrespective of a voter’s own phenotype, voters prefer lighter- to darker-skinned candidates. And yet, a substantial number of dark-skinned politicians get elected into office in India. In the first systematic study of voter preferences for candidate skin color in India, we conducted a survey experiment in which respondents were randomly administered one of three treatments based upon candidate skin tone: fair, wheatish (medium-brown), and dark. We find only weak evidence for colorism in the sample as a whole—the fair candidate is supported more than the dark and wheatish candidates, but at only marginal significance levels. This is because color preferences are heterogeneous amongst respondent groups. Dalits and the poor, groups that are darker relative to other groups and have been politically mobilized, exhibit much stronger support for dark candidates than other groups, consistent with a desire for descriptive representation. Amongst those who do not belong to these two groups, including dark respondents, the fair candidate finds more support than the dark candidate. This shows that even in the absence of skin color-based electoral appeals, skin color can emerge as an implicit marker of politically mobilized identities, and that this mobilization can undercut colorism.

Past research shows that candidates' racial identities influence the assumptions that voters draw about how they will behave in office. In a national survey experiment examining televised candidate advertisements, we find evidence that stereotypes differ both in their potency and how vulnerable they are to disconfirmation. Consistent with previous work, black candidates are broadly assumed to be more liberal than white candidates, although the effect is notably small in magnitude. Yet when it comes to more specific stereotypes—how black candidates will behave on individual issues—effects are not only much larger, but also more contingent on what information is available. We find that by providing a small bit of ideological information, black candidates can overcome the assumption that they will enact liberal policies as concerns taxation and non-racialized aspects of social welfare policy. But it is much more difficult for them to overturn the assumption that they will prioritize aid to minorities while in office.

Conventional theories of presidential representation suggest that presidents avoid courting African Americans for fear of alienating white voters, leading to the underrepresentation of “black interests.” We argue that presidential representation of black interests is conditional: when (1) African Americans prioritize issues other than economic redistribution and civil rights and (2) when these priorities overlap with those of whites, presidents should provide considerable representation of those interests. We test our theory using two new sources of data: a dataset of black and white perceptions of the US's most important problem between 1968 and 2012; and a quantitative content analysis of over 200 major presidential speeches from 1969-2012. We find that presidents provide substantial representation of black interests, but only when these interests center on non-racialized concerns and overlap with the priorities of whites. We also find that presidential priorities are often independent of the chief concerns of both African Americans and whites.

The literature examining the effect of residential integration on political behavior primarily focuses on how whites react to the entrance of non-whites into their communities. Over the past few decades however, the process of “white return” to urban centers throughout the nation has created the opportunity to invert the standard approach to studying racial context by exploring how minorities react to the entrance of whites into their communities. We adapt realistic conflict theories to the case of gentrification, and offer a model of the effect of white in-migration on social capital (SC) and political engagement in black communities. We demonstrate that white population growth erodes SC in black neighborhoods only where the larger surrounding community is majority black, and where such growth is accompanied by rising housing costs. Further, we find that residing in a gentrifying context, by eroding social capital, ultimately results in the political demobilization of black citizens.

Our understanding of the politics of race, indigeneity, and ethnicity is informed not only by the work of scholars, but also by the work of leaders and practitioners, many of whom are pioneers in their respective fields. The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (JREP) is proud to continue our Q&A series with Christine Chen, executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote). Our hope is that forums like these will help advance our collective scholarship by better informing our research agendas, validating some of our claims, and building more bridges between the worlds of research, politics, and policy.