Why America Needs Anti-Racialism

not contemporary anti-racism

Dear Reader,

I have a routine I go through with my students when I have to teach a racial topic: I take them through the US Census. It is wild, it is crazy, it needs to stop.

The United States has performed a census every decade since 1790 under President George Washington. Race mattered to policy. Slaveholders intended to keep their slaves and wanted extra votes in the House, the Electoral College, and the state legislatures based on the number of slaves they owned. At the same time, most states, North and South, did not enfranchise their free African population but wanted to count them as whole persons—they were not slaves—so they could be assigned even more legislative clout. This meant you had to count the slaves and count the free persons. While the normal historic way of defining a nation is language + religion + geography, that could not work in the United States because of racism. At the same time, two developments shaped the nature of alien assimilation: the First Amendment guaranteed the federal government would not mandate an exclusive national religion, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 opened American citizenship to whites—Europeans—of good moral character, making immigrant French and Irish Catholics and Sephardim and Ashkenazim Jewish immigrants eligible to be Americans, but Black African English-speaking Protestants—largely enslaved and born in North America—were wholly denied national citizenship. So as immigrants assimilated, they assimilated into being white, not merely into being American.

All this introduced a racialist obsession into the US Census, one that is dark comedy.

So in 1790 we counted Slaves, Free Whites, and “all other Free Persons.”

It stayed like this until 1820, when clarity was desired and the Slave category became the category of “Slaves and Free Colored Persons,” while retaining Free Whites and all other Free Persons, which meant those few who were Indigenous or otherwise not seen as white or African.

But in 1850 we cut to the chase and dropped “all other Free Persons” and went with Black/Mulatto, and White as the only categories, with a notation for slaves because they only counted 60% or 3/5 of the slave population for the purpose of gaining legislative seats.

In 1860, before the Civil War, we had to do a little update because of the 1849 Gold Rush and the completion of the Mexican Cession brought the first Asians and larger numbers of Native Americans, so we added “Chinese” for the newcomers from Asia and “Indian” for Native Americans to the census, while keeping the rest the same.

Then in 1870 we had to make the biggest change because the United States crushed the slaveholder rebellion, and so, there were no more slaves—all Africans/Mulattoes counted as whole persons. The rest of the categories remained the same, with the racialist absurdity of de facto treating “Chinese” as the default “race” of East Asians was maintained.

But in 1890 a few things had changed. Japan went through the Meiji Restoration and rapidly built up industrial and military might with a sizable number of Japanese moving the US for work, enough to make Europeans and Americans have to put some respect on their name, as they say. Concurrently, eugenics and Social Darwinism thought rose in influence, and the racial categorization obsession in the census looked like this: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and White, with African Americans divided according to their blood quantum—a legal term used to measure the proportion of a person's ancestry that is of a specific racial group, usually a non-white group. This meant that “white” was used as a measure of purity, as a “white” mixed with something else was not white. The 1890 census counted those were seen as mostly “Black” as Black or Negro, those who were half-Black as Mulatto, those one-fourth as “Quadroons,” and finally those who were one-eighth as “Octoroons.” It is a lot for many students to come to grips with that fact that this was considered important.

In 1900 the American census simplified again, and Blacks got to be just “Negro or Negro descent.” It stayed like this until 1920.

By 1920 the US had received an increase of non-European immigrants, but their total numbers were still far lower than the Black population. Yet the census attempted to enumerate them with an “Other” category, but sizable groups like the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans received their own categories, and Filipinos did as well, as the Philippines were conquered by the United States after the Spanish-American War. However, a new category seems out of place among racial groups: Hindu. Well, the US could not count people from the actual Indian subcontinent as “Indian” because that category was taken by Native Americans, who are not from India, of course. But the US was not going to fix that centuries-old error, so people from actual British-ruled India were called racially “Hindu.”

Which brings us to perhaps my “favorite” census, for its absurdity. In 1930 the categories were “White,” “Negro/Mulatto,” Indian (meaning Native Americans), Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, “Hindu,” “Other,” and the new race of… “Mexican.” Yes, for the first and only time in US history, Mexican was a “race.” Thankfully, that was at least dropped in 1940, due in part to lobbying by the Mexican government.

Prior to the end of World War II, what this amounted to was the strange situation where immigrants from unlikely backgrounds often sought to be included as white persons to avoid the historic disadvantages inflicted on Blacks and Native Americans. So you have this collection of odd federal court cases of the early to mid-20th century (there are others but I am trying to keep this brief as possible.):

Dow v. United States (1915) addressed whether a Syrian immigrant could be considered legally “white” and thus eligible for naturalization. The United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, ruled that Syrians and Levantine Arabs, but not other Arabs, were “Caucasian” and therefore qualified as white under the law.

In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that an Indian Sikh man, though “Aryan” and “Caucasian” by the anthropological standards of the 1920s, he was not “white” in the common American understanding of the term and thus ineligible for naturalized citizenship. The Court held that whiteness was to be judged by “the common man’s” standards. You will see that is not the case, however, in a moment.

In Lum v. Rice (1927) SCOTUS upheld Mississippi’s exclusion of a Chinese-American child from a white public school, extending Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine to apply beyond Black–white segregation. Essentially, the Chinese parents saw that the South’s “separate” was not equal and they tried to get their child out of the underfunded Black schools. The Court reasoned that state-defined racial classifications were valid grounds for school segregation, reinforcing local authority over education. If the state said “whites” only, it meant “whites,” not non-Blacks. So the Chinese could not escape being segregated with the non-whites by pointing out that they were not the original racial target—Black people were. That did not matter, the intent was to separate the non-whites, and the Chinese were merely a new group of non-whites.

And in Ex parte Mohriez (1944), during the Second World War, a federal district court heard a case from a Saudi Arabian man seeking US citizenship. The federal court ruled in his favor, now recognizing all Arabs as white under American law and eligible for naturalization. The common white American would probably have disagreed in 1944. Arabs from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have counted as “white” in the census since, even in 2010 and 2020. I have remarked on the absurdity of racialization by asking my students if the attacks of September 11, 2001, were committed by 19 white men. 100% reject it out of hand and are shocked when I show them how the census classifies people. Muslim students from the Middle East and of Middle Eastern descent are especially annoyed with the categorization. Forcing them to categorization themselves, something most would not do on their own, then introduces them to the racialized thinking and provokes feelings of angst and sometimes animosity.

White American conservatives often complain about the degree of race and identity politics in the US and especially concerning immigration. But how many consider that no matter whether the GOP, the Democrats, or MAGA are in the White House, one of the first things the US government does, and has done is to ask immigrants to think about race?

The point of this history is to ask why in 2025 we still allow the government to divide and count us by race. It serves no purpose, and its original purpose is a national embarrassment. The census exist to ensure the fair distribution of US House Seats among the states which also effects the Electoral College. Race does not matter for this. Continuing to focus on race does not help the country be more united. It impacts assimilation. I have, in my career, traveled across the country to lecture and discuss race and immigration with diverse groups. Naturalized American citizens from Latino and East Asian backgrounds I meet with normally confess that the whole process makes them nervous and anxious. Those from the Middle East often express anger over being called “white,” especially in the years after 9/11 when Arabs, Iranians, and others from the Middle East came under scrutiny and suffered discrimination, whether or not they were Muslims.

In 2024, the Biden administration, rather than cooling the process, decided to add new racial categories. Unless the Trump administration intervenes, or Congress decides enough is enough, the 2030 census will add “Hispanic or Latino” and MENA (Middle East or North African) categories to the census. This will continue the increased racialization of the United States.

In 1960 we started counting the different North American Indigenous groups with more specificity, including Aleuts and the offensive term “Eskimo.” Only in 2000 did the US Census stop calling people by that name and use the catchall “Alaska Native.” In 1970 the Census decided that a new category to capture the “national origins” of immigrants from Latin America was needed, and in 1980 this became the term “Hispanic,” which became its own special non-racial category, which is set to end in 2030 when it will become part of the “race or ethnicity” question. In 1960, after statehood, “Hawaiian” became a racial category to refer to descendants of the old Kingdom of Hawai’i, and this unique ethnic history is why citizens of the State of Hawai’i are typically called “Hawai’i Residents.” While this history is very important to the development of Hawai’i, did “Native Hawaiian” need to be a “race” in the 1960 census? The Asian and Pacific Islander categories were the last to reach their current form after 1990, and as of 2020 the census categories were:

American Indian or Alaska Native: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.

Asian: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Black or African American: A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.

Hispanic or Latino: A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.

White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. - US Census FAQ

Let me be clear: the census is an act of the federal government of the United States of America. These categories are the official policies of the government of the United States of America. They are not just fodder for academics; they feed into national anxiety. When I hear or read people discussing the population decline—or lack thereof—of “white America,” I ask who they are talking about, because that includes the Middle East or North Africa category. Does that mean we will see a magic 4–5 percentage point drop in the number of Americans classified as White in the 2030 census when the MENA category goes into effect? What about white Hispanics/Latinos who are descedants of the Spanish and Portuguese, two very European nationalities and the original colonizers of the Americas? I can already see the internet conspiracy theories spreading due to the discrepancy between the 2020 and 2030 white count.

None of this is necessary.

To be clear: we do not need government-mandated racialization to fight discrimination. The 1960s Civil Rights Acts also ban discrimination based on religion. That means you can sue and prosecute antisemitism and anti-Catholic bigotry, which were historic problems in the US, especially anti-Irish Catholic bigotry. The US government does not count Jews in the census, yet antisemitism is still recognized, rightfully condemned, tracked, and prosecuted as illegal discrimination, demonstrating that you do not need census-based identity categories to fight injustice against groups of people. The same with anti-Catholicism. Additionally, the claim that “racial” discrimination uniquely requires census race data to address or expose it is flawed, since antisemitism shares many of the same systemic and institutional characteristics as color-based racism.

Racialization does not have to be a part of assimilation into the United States. Race does not need to be imposed on our family and ethnic identities, and the government should not be part of that conversation. The government should deal with us as Americans, and nothing else. We need anti-racialism, because being American should not mean you have to fit yourself into a “race.” We can put an end to it.