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17 Harv. Blackletter L. J. 33 (2001)
American Mixed Race: The U.S. 2000 Census and Related Issues

handle is hein.journals/hblj17 and id is 37 raw text is: AMERICAN MIXED RACE: THE U.S. 2000 CENSUS AND RELATED ISSUES Naomi Zack* INTRODUCTION The average American, and many scholars as well, still believes that there is some coherent biological basis for the racial categories of black, white, Indian, and Asian, and that relevant scientists have specialized in- formation about the nature of that basis. Race, however, is a social con- struction on all levels. Not only are the links between so-called biological race and culture the result of history, tradition, and current norms, but the existence of biological racial taxonomies is itself the result of such social factors. If human races existed, then more people would be properly de- scribed as mixed race than are commonly thought to be. But, since human biological race is a fiction, so is mixed race. Nonetheless, no matter how it is parsed, race remains a powerful social mechanism for distributing status and privilege in the United States, and the growing numbers of so-called mixed, biracial, or multira- cial individuals are likely to remain an interesting and complex problem of taxonomy and identity for some time to come. Readers of this journal are likely to approach the subject of race from legal backgrounds with ex- pectations of concrete arguments and specific advocacy. As a philosopher, however, I offer a discussion that is more conceptually driven. In Part I, I consider the treatment of race and, in particular, mixed race in the U.S. Census. The logical and empirical weaknesses of common sense beliefs about race and mixed race become evident through an ex- amination of the Census 2000 questions pertaining to race. If common sense and the census are vague and erroneous about the biological basis of race, this raises the question of what is precisely true. Therefore, in Part II, I offer a summary of current scientific findings about biological race. These findings indicate that the main problem with race in common sense is a failure to recognize that there is no biological basis for racial categories. But, since such common sense illusions about race exist, it is Professor of Philosophy and Director, Doctor of Arts Program in Humanistic Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York. I thank the Harrard BladkLter Law Jounial: Ben Glassman for inviting me to write this Article while he was editor- in-chief, Julia Tomassetti for following through after she became editor-in-chief, and Latonia Haney for her assistance, as executive editor, in revision and manuscript preparation.

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