Measuring Race and Ethnicity across the Decades, 1790-2010: Coded to 1997 Office of Management and Budget Classification Standards

Beverly M. Pratt, University of Maryland
Lindsay Hixson, U.S. Census Bureau
Nicholas A. Jones, U.S. Census Bureau

This submitted poster is an infographic timeline capturing one aspect of the operationalization of U.S. Census Bureau race and ethnicity variables on decennial censuses from 1790 to 2010. This infographic visually displays the relationship between our race data collection history and our current historical moment, given the “2010 Census Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment” and the possibility of design changes for race and ethnicity in the 2020 Decennial Census. In doing so, this visualization can be a starting point for community stakeholders, race scholars, and Census data users in understanding how race and ethnicity variables have changed over 220 years. The visualization is based on historical Census documents and Karen Humes and Howard Hogan’s 2009 Race and Social Problems article “Measurement of Race and Ethnicity in a Changing Multicultural America.”