Here is question 9 in the 2010 U.S. Census:
The ‘boxed’ options for race include several different kinds of Asian. “Chinese,” “Vietnamese,” “Korean,” and “Japanese” are fairly predictable Asian nationalities, rightfully listed. The census uses “Asian Indian,” presumably to differentiate from “Native American” or “American Indian,” but interestingly, hints that “Pakistani,” (and by extension, “Bangladeshi” and “Sri Lankan”) would go under “Other Asian.”
Obviously, for Sepia Mutiny, which has always defined itself as an inclusive blog for the “South Asian” diaspora, this divison of the South Asian community is a little frustrating. How am I, whose family all originate from what is now Pakistan, of a different racial background from a Mohajir Pakistani, whose family all originated in what is now India? What does it mean to ask a question concerning “race,” and then lists three definite categories that might be understood as “racial,” only to then list nine further options, most of which are clearly nationalities, not “races”?
This is a discussion post. I am curious whether readers have read any backstory on how the census might have arrived at this rather idiosyncratic way of dividing up the communities from the Indian subcontinent? (The Census has a “Race and Ethnicity Advisory Committee” with an “Asian” sub-group. However, I haven’t been able to find much evidence of discussion over categories at Census.Gov. Most of the committee’s focus, perhaps rightly, seems to have been on making sure everyone has the opportunity to fill out a census form.)
Another discussion-related question: anyone want to speculate on how or whether this division on the census form might matter for the South Asian community down the road?
Finally, for readers from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Sri Lankan backgrounds, who have received the census form — are any of you thinking of checking “Asian Indian”? Since the census allows us to fill out more than 1 box under race, is anyone thinking of filling out both “Asian Indian,” and “Other Asian”?
UPDATE: A nice op-ed by Susan Straight on the evolution of Census race categories is here. She doesn’t focus on the “Asian Indian” question in particular, but it’s a good read.
Don’t you have an option to not disclose your ‘race’ over there? Here in the UK you can skip it on most forms. In any case, this post reminds me of something else that has bugged me about these types of forms: In the UK, you usually have boxes for ‘mixed race’ (which I don’t see on the picture above). I am mixed race, both of my parents, despite being ‘South Asian’ are from different ethnic groups. But apparently this doesn’t count as ‘mixed race’ because I’m still look totally ‘brown’.
In any case, if I were having to fill out the form mentioned in this post, I wouldn’t put either Asian Indian or Other Asian, because a nationality (that I don’t even have) does not in any way, shape or form reflect my race or ethnicity. I would write the ethnicities of both my parents in the “Some other race” section.
What is the issue?
The census is imperfect. What does my Tibetan friend from the punjab label himself as racially? Tibet is part of China. He was born there but raised in India.
What does my Pushtun friend from Pakistan classify himself as? His parents are from Helmand province in Afghanistan?
What do my friends of Indian ancestry from Burma categorize themselves as?
What if you are a South asian born in Kenya, Bahrain, or Thailand?
My Pakistani friends will not be claiming an Indian identity. Even if their families once lived in Lucknow, the Sindh is the place from which they migrated.
Identity is complex, and again Sepia Mutiny forgets about people from Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Tibet, and the Maldives.
** But apparently this doesn’t count as ‘mixed race’ because I still look totally ‘brown’.
If “white” and “black” can be considered as race, why don’t they just call it “brown” for people who are brown? In some other race category just say “BROWN”…. just my 2 cents.
Remy, people can definitely leave the whole section blank, and many do.
Since the 2000 census, the wording also clearly indicates you can check more than one box (“Check one or more boxes”), so multi-racial people do not have to choose only one response. So here, you could put both “white” and “Asian Indian” if you wanted to.
My best guess is that checking any of those nationality boxes automatically assumes the Asian/Pacific Islander race (I thought this time they were making PIs part of the Native American category?) and by including further subdivisions of ethnicity, or really nationality I suppose as almost all the Asian nations listed are multi-ethnic with the exception of Korea and possibly China and Japan. (I know both of these countries have many/several different ethnicities, but I’m pretty sure that almost all of the Chinese/Japanese-Americans are either Han Chinese or Yamoto Japanese) But still I think it would be useful to break up the monolithic Asian/PI group into different ethnicities/cultural groups as still many Asian-Americans have easily traceable connections to one or a few countries, unlike the heavily mixed white, black, and hispanic populations. Breaking Asian-Americans into similar subdivisions can help track trends in the variable Asian-American race, where the sheer diversity of such a people can be more easily categorized if need be. I know that classifying South Asians as part of the Asian race is a relatively new phenomenon, it only started a couple of decades ago, so my best guess is that after putting Asian Indian as a category on the census, some person complained that a Pakistani person or Bangladeshi person is different than Indian, so the government made these new categories, or maybe the census organizers realized this eventual problem before a complaint was even made and changed it. I don’t know of any evidence to support that theory, but I haven’t read anything about how the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, etc categories came up. Well I guess it would be too hard to break down Indian Americans by ethnicity, as then the race box would be like a page long, so the only change I can think of would be if the status of countries changed in South Asia.
Pakistani isn’t a race, it’s a nation state.
Thousands of years of geography driven cultural and biological evolution doesn’t go away because the British drew a line through Wagah. I recently had the opportunity to travel through both India and Pakistan. On the India side, people thought I was an Indian speaking Hindi. On the Pakistan side, people saw me as a Pakistani speaking Urdu. Even now, more than 60 years after Partition, I could barely tell the difference between India and Pakistan.
The census asks people to put the race that they self-identify with. if you feel that ethnically you are Indian, it’s giving you an option to check Asian Indian even though you are born outside India,. If you don’t identify with India, you have the option to check the other box. IMO, that’s the best way they could have kept the form open enough so that people will put down something in there
The problem is that for every 10 people who think that South Asians should be counted together, there is one person who would get pissed off by all South Asians being together. The Census’ job is to count people the most accurate way possible, and not get into the internal politics of various communities. The people who will use the data can always count all South Asians together anyways. What matters for the census is to get the data, and get it as precise as possible.
So let me get this straight – a chinese person is a different race than a korean person? Are people from Alabama a different race than those from Georgia? I suppose that Germans are a different race than the Polish too. That my friend is hilarious. I have also never understood how it is that west asia is completely left out of any “Asian” classification. This seems to be a glaring hole in the US census from a logical perspective. If these classifications dont seem to represent special-interest groups I dont know what does. The truth is that most Americans dont seem to have grasped that “Asian” is not a race or culture – and other than geography doesnt bend itself easily to a classification system.
The real question is – why have a racial census if it doesnt make for anyone except for black and white? I suspect thats the reality of census in America – as something originally intended to tally up black and white, and now being prioritized to fit other needs.
From a researcher’s perspective, question 9 makes a lot of sense: if I’m wondering how being Pakistani affects one’s migration or acceptance into certain segments of society, I really do want to look at only people who self-identify as Pakistani. The self-identification is an important and nontrivial component of the question. In the end, if we want to group people together into coarser categories, we can do that, but we can’t go in the reverse direction.
I think the Census question makes sense from a non-research point of view as well. For example, let’s assume people are to a great extent self-interested. Indian-Americans are on average richer than other South Asians in the US, so perhaps they would like to differentiate themselves in order to gain political favor.
A former professor of mine (who was associated with the Census Bureau) gave a talk about accounting for Asians in the Census. It seems there are all sorts of justifications they have for the way they categorize the different South Asian communities, but it all boils down to researchers wanting access to these categorizations. I remember being surprised that political interest groups didn’t have more to do with it.
Surprisingly wikipedia seems to have really good background on this issue rolled into a larger entry on the racial classification of Indian-Americans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_classification_of_Indian_Americans
this tidbit is especially interesting:
“In 1993 the Arab American Institute proposed that the 2000 US Census make a new Middle Easterner racial category and the AAI wanted Pakistani Americans to be included in it.[15] According to the 2000 US Census, 25% of 2nd generation South Asian Americans marked the white category. (pp. 76)[14] Under the South Asian American umbrella, Pakistani Americans marked white in the 2000 US Census to a greater degree than Indian Americans.”
quaker, i agree with the importance of grouping for statistical (or non-statistical) purposes. but the grouping based on race does begin to fall apart once you leave the white vs black realm, as anon. pointed out. furthermore, what if desis self-identified as caucasian (based, e.g. on certain anthropological theories) and did not further explain in the form – then there is the issue that even if the researchers gather this information to separate by ethnicity, they may have lost many individuals in an ethnic group due to the conflict between definitions based on ethnicity and race. consequently, it may make more sense to have individuals identify more on the basis of ethnicity/nationality – e.g. european, s. asian, etc. but obviously, this, too, presents similar problems.
And “American Indian”? Really? Isnt it about time to sweep that mistake under the rug and move on? Especially when “Native American” exists.
I think the fact that they are telling you to check a “race” is a misnomer… I think ethnicity is really what they are after— they want to know what ethnic-cultural group people identify with, not what they look like. If they just wanted to know what people looked like I suppose it could be: white, brown, black, end of story.
Unfortunately, their categories are totally bizarre, and have obviously resulted from the first accepted “Norms” with tacked on additions to continue to address everybody else. For example, somebody was probably like “hey I wanna know how many Indians live in the U.S. these days… can you make a separate category for them?” As it is, it will only really properly account for certain groups of people, and leave out others.. (like the article said, where are the Arabs? How about newcomers from Europe? They might have a different language/ethic/cultural group than the “norm” of white American, how about people who don’t know their ancestry? Where do we put them?)
Maybe one day they will stop with the silly “old” categories (i.e. black, white) and start using some with some sort of actual categorization– for example, having people just list where all their known ancestors are from. That would be far more interesting and useful.
If people self identify as South Asian or brown or whatever else, could they not fill the boxes?
I haven’t seen the form yet, but why do I not see Hispanic or Mexican or Latino or Mestizo among the options?? I’ve heard Hispanic is not a race (what the heck is it then??), but what are people of Mexican/Spanish origin going to mark themselves under? American Indian??
Atul, Hispanic identity is so complex that it gets a whole separate entry (Question 8), which I didn’t refer to in this post.
I haven’t seen the form yet, but why do I not see Hispanic or Mexican or Latino or Mestizo among the options?? I’ve heard Hispanic is not a race (what the heck is it then??), but what are people of Mexican/Spanish origin going to mark themselves under? American Indian??
yes, it’s race and ethnicity. hispanics are an ethnicity, not a race. they’re an ethnicity created in 1970 due to various political reasons. in any case, in the 2000 census 50% of hispanics labelled themselves white, 40% “other” (this is higher in california, so what you’re seeing are mixed race mestizos who don’t identify as white or indigenous, but both), and 10% black, mixed, etc. also, as everyone tells me, hispanics/latinos/chicanos have claimed the race color “brown,” so people from the indian subcontinent are just confusing everyone. i remain skeptical, but resigned, to this argument. basically, latinos seem really greedy for ethnic/race labels 🙂
i identified as “asian indian” in the 2000 census. i would probably have checked “bangladeshi” if there was a box for it. racially i identify as “brown” or “indian” or “south asian.” ethnically i identify as bengali. i have weak bangladeshi self-identity because the nation is very young and i barely lived there. though in general from what i can gather south asian geopolitics vex or concern me very little compared to most other SM people i have met in “real life” (part of the issue here is the existential aspect of the pakistan-india conflict i guess). in any case, no problem if you’re fixated on kashmir or the war which led to the creation of pakistan. i might feel differently if my family were bihari refugees in bangladesh (though i have half-bihari cousins and they never talk about geopolitics either) or hindus who fled to india from what became bangladesh.
some of the confusion here is pretty obviously the fact that there are ethnicity aspects to the asian races. there’s been a fair amount of genetic work done on china recently, and it seems pretty clear that some chinese dialect groups, like the cantonese ones, are closer to vietnamese than they are to the chinese of shandong. but this is genetics, not self-identity and culture. in that case case the dialect groups of southeast china are clearly han identified (in fact, many of the greatest intellects of the past 1,000 years of chinese history come from the shangai delta south to fujian).
here’s one post on east asia: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/12/genetic_map_of_east_asia.php
also, you can omit that field if you want i think.
p.s. not to paint a false picture of how history passed my family by t he way, my mother was shot by pakistani soldiers in 1971. but my parents seem more focused on their life in the united states than past history, and the only time i’ve seen them get engaged about south asian politics is when pakistani friends try to make the case for why east pakistanis really should have been forced to learn urdu….
Race is entirely fiction. It is an intellectual device used for war & conquest in the colonial days & now for managing people – a forced or voluntary club that most people end up belonging to through direct & subtle manipulation by others, gov, businesses, religion, etc. (if they – each individual – don’t look closely at race theory). There is very little valuable truth/facts to ideas that support race theory (i would go as far as to say that race is a lie – an evil one at that). I’ll include that note (or somehting like it) when I fill out my census form.
Pakistan was created with the aid of Muslims who knew that in a unified India, Hindus would be the majority and Muslims would be a minority. The tribal regions of Pakistan form the heartland of Afghanistan which was severed by the British. Baluchistan was once a prvince of Iran and severed from that country by the British.
Pakistan is a hybrid Indo-Iranian country where some people there are “white” and not phenotypically “brown.”
Race is a fiction and non-scientific category. India and Pakistan will never reunite in the forseeable future. The wounds of partition are still too fresh. Historically, India ends at the Sindh and Punjab (heartland of Pakistan). The western regions are Persianized with some Indic overtones.
It is good that there is a distinction between India & other south-Asian. I don’t want to be in the same group as Headley for sure. Also we don’t have to share the credit of ‘spelling bee’ wins 🙂
We look same – Brown but when it comes to politics, economy…No. Specially the thinking of the younger generation is poles apart. India & Pak choose different paths after partition. One moves towards a secular democracy (although not perfect) & the other gets engulfed more & more in religious fundamentalism.
I identify as South Asian though I am not Desi but Afghan Pushtun and Iranian Kurd and Iranian Azeri. Do to the conflicts between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Durand Line divides the Pushtun clans and peoples from one another. Afghans are present in significant numbers throughout Iran and Pakistan.
The current boundaries which divide the subcontinent are artificial and separate communities from one another. But the politics of the region are too fresh to ignore in the confines of the Diaspora.
Akashi,
you are right! There are major cleavages among South Asian nationalities.
again, don’t you think if enough people wrote South Asian or Brown in the boxes it can change in the future? I think people can chose whatever they self identify as and if there are not happy with the choices they can use the boxes to indicate their preference.
remember that there’s a strong political reason for these categories: affirmative action. this is why black political leaders were really hostile to the ‘multiracial’ category in 2000, they thought it would result in switching of people who were black to multiracial. in california many southeast asians are not happy that they’re lumped together with chinese, koreans and japanese, because the social demographics of these groups vary so much.
that being said, this stuff was easier in a black-white country. we’re turning into brazil.
When I fill up the form, I’m going to fill it (truthfully) as Other: HUMAN. As any D&D playing person will tell you: black, white or brown, everyone is classified under the Human race.
That question threw me. I hadn’t seen the “Other Asian” box and automatically (though with crinkled brow and a vague feeling of dissatisfaction) checked “Asian Indian” and “White.” When I saw the “Other Asian” option, I checked that as well.
So now, instead of feeling rightly represented, I feel overly and incorrectly represented.
BTW: Have you seen the Common App and its new configuration of race/ethnicity?
In Britain in the ’60’s, a lone Sikh man fought and won the right to retain his turban and to not have to wear a motorcycle helmet. A law was passed to give Sikhs dispensation to be allowed to wear the turban, everywhere. I might be wrong, but I think Britain designated the Sikhs as a race through those legal amendments. British census forms will be filled in as ‘Sikh’, by those who are so.
Identities are fluid in the native places. While Pakistan has become Middle Eastern, Tibetans are increasingly identified as South Asian. The Census can hardly be faulted for trying to make sense of such shifting identities.
The Census is not about discovering your personal identity.
I think for those of you who want to say things like “human”, it defeats the purpose and doesn’t give a clear view of the population. Identities are fluid and all, but policy isn’t as fluid. And the policies that are enacted to show where resources are distributed, are based partially on the Census. If I I’m writing a grant to support a South Asian domestic violence prevention project, it helps to know who is in my region and the population of South Asians. If we all marked “human” where would that leave us?
What defines being South Asian?
I have mentioned the diversity and complexity of this dynamic and diverse community.
Not all South Asians are Desis. If that is what Sepia Mutiny is only defines as being South Asia, that would exclude Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tibet and huge chunks of Pakistan largely autonomous of Punjabi control from Islamabad/Rawalpindi.
I’d just check “white”–girls at clubs usually mistake me for Italian or Greek.
They won’t reunite because Pakistan would be a major drag on India economically an culturally as reuniting with any failed state would be.
delurker,
India is wise not to reunite with Pakistan because it would inherit the Pushtun Question. Afghans look favorably on New Delhi and resent Pakistani interference via direct means by arresting high ranking Taliban members who are crucial for the upcoming “reconciliation” loya jirga or through terrorism.
India sees Afghanistan and Iran as essential in alienating Pakistan in the South Asian region. Pakistan is the Muslim equivalent of Israel, a nation which occupies people who have no desire to be part of a Muslim commonwealth. Pushtuns have always been on a thorn in Infian history and we continue to be.
Seems like a double question – they want race for the population that has been there for generations, but also want to identify national origin for recent immigrant groups. Pakistani, Sri Lankan etc are grouped, but they do ask you identify one specifically.
I love Pakistani people but not their government’s actions towards their neighbors. As a Muslim, I reject all forms of Muslim nationalism.
Only if one ignores the the economic, military, or intellectual strength of Israel?
More importanly, why cant there just be just one box to check for race?
Human.
Breaks out guitar and plays “coom ba ya”
I’m not sure why the Census Bureau didn’t just name it “South Asian” as opposed to “Asian Indian.
Anyway, please fill out the census and DO check off at least one category, whether it be Asian Indian or Other and filling in the ethnicity you identify with. The whole point of the race box is to identify and extract information not just for the government but for the South Asian community itself. It would help South Asian advocacy organizations pinpoint and target particular areas of the country where South Asians reside and allow them to more effectively address the needs and issues of the community.
Also, as part of the “human” race as one person noted, it’s important to fill out your forms so that we don’t lose out on money that can be used for hospitals, schools, roads, etc.
Ok that’s all for my Census push.
I’m not sure why the Census Bureau didn’t just name it “South Asian” as opposed to “Asian Indian.
that’s the “hispanicization” of brown folk. the government creates a catchall category. in the case of hispanics/latinos this grouping has really emerged over the past generation,though mexican americans are now demographically very dominant in relation to puerto ricans, cubans and other latin americans. but the term “south asian” sounds too clinical. and as is evident even on these message boards the pak-indian cleavage is probably too strong for most south asians. everyone here knows what indians tend to think of pakistan; just read any thread that talks about pakistan (even outside of a terroristic context). but pakistanis themselves probably aren’t too excited to be lumped with indians, who they often perceive as religiously abhorrent, and racially inferior (because objectively, pakistanis are “whiter” than south asians to their east and south).
I noticed this as well when filling out my own form. In past conversations with representatives of Asian-American advocacy groups on the wording of questionnaires (though not specifically the 2010 census form), I was given the impression that separation of “Asian Indian”, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc. from “Other Asian” is something they have been lobbying the government for sometime, though this is an imperfect result. The trend used to be to lump all “Asians” and Pacific Islanders together, but that throws off statistics greatly. An example is income and education – Asian Indians tend to earn more and/or hold higher/more degrees than, for example, their Hmong counterparts. When you lump Asian Indians – typically the richest subset of Asian Americans – together with Hmong – typically the poorest of Asian Americans, you get a skewed picture of reality. On the census, they don’t ask about education (and from what I remember from filling out my own form, they don’t ask about income either). But other studies rely on the census in evaluating the status of certain groups in America today. So my impression was that separating certain groups out was meant to increase the accuracy of other government (or non-government) studies.
I could be totally off base, though, since this thinking was all based on what I’ve heard about past government and non-government questionnaires.
My favorite idea on the matter of the race question: everyone who takes the census should answer “American”.
Some pakistanis are “white” in appearance. My mother looks like Rekha but is porcelain white with dirty blonde hair. My grandfather looks “Tamil” with his cinnamon red hue. But like some people from Pakistan he has a huge nose.
South Asian is clinical but the least controversial pan-ethnic term to refer to people who are brown, black, yellow, and white. There are Afro-South Asian communities in Pakistan and India bearing witness to the slave trade of the Islamic period of rule.
Please don’t forget the “rat” race, that we are all engaged in.
oh, dear. my father’s ancestors travelled to india a few thousand years ago from the middle east and married into a brahmin family and my mother is descended from a mixture of portuguese immigrants and dravidians. now what do i do?
hybrid wrote:
No, they probably did not. Nice try, though.
It seems that certain groups (Asian Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, etc…) they want to know specifically about, others can be lumped together with people they have far less in common with. It is odd that Pakistanis are listed with the generic “Other Asian,” with the Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Cambodian. I don’t think it is because as some seem to suggest that Pakistanis are “whiter.” Resources get allocated because of this census. Former PM Musharaff was born in what is now India, and India’s current PM Singh was born in what is now Pakistan. I think South Asian would have been the better category like someone else here suggested. The question for me is what purpose was there for the government to highlight Asian Indian separate from Pakistani, and why is Pakistani under the generic “Other Asian?”
As for India and Pakistan being one India like was originally envisioned before partition, I no longer think that is a good idea. Pakistan is way too messed up, even without the terrorist training camps. It would be detrimental for India at this point.
Sameee,
Indians in America are probably more influential in this country than people from Pakistan. But in the American Muslim scene, Pakistanis predominate in many urban areas. As a Muslim South Asian, I don’t interact with non-Muslim South Asians on a regular basis outside the acute hospital setting.
Notice, Hmongs live in several Southeast Asian countries and China. They are classified as “Other Asian.”
The Hmong do not constitute a nationality but a distinct nationality who aided Americans during the Vietnam War. I fist encountered this community at UCLA.
In the Vietnamese community, some identify as ethnic Han Chinese and there is a small community of Chams (who are wither Hindu or Muslim peoples who are related to the Malay peoples of maritime Southeast Asia). Even among some Indian immigrants, I’ve encountered a Naga family who looked East Asian.
Near my mosque, there is a Chinese Muslim restaurant owned by an ethnic Uyghur family. These people are Turkic peoples native to China’s western frontier.
Latinos and South Asians have something in common, an indeterminate racial status. Where I live in San Diego at my mosque, the “white” Syrian is different racially from the “black” Sudanese. Both in my mosque are ethnically Arab and speak regional dialects of the same language, but the diffferences are there. Arabs like South Asians can’t simply be labelled “brown.”