Census usage/racial terms

[Walsh, Barclay]

ADS:



Pew Research Center has a new  2010 Census site which includes the following article. May be of interest in light of the on-going discussion:



Race and the Census: The "Negro" Controversy

January 21, 2010


The topic of racial identification on census forms has a long, fascinating history<http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/ma.html>, which has generated fresh debate as the 2010 Census begins. Why, some ask, does the form include the word "Negro," along with "black" and "African American," among the options that Americans can choose for their self-identification? Isn't that term out of date?
 As you can see from the review that follows here, racial terms have come in and out of favor from one decade to the next. There was a similar debate about "Negro" in the 2000 Census, as there have been about other race terms in previous census years.



http://census.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/race-and-the-census-the-%e2%80%9cnegro%e2%80%9d-controversy





Barclay Walsh

New York Times DC research

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org