The problematic status of US statistics on race and ethnicity: An "imperfect representation of reality"

This article extends Stratford's brief observations about the problematic s tatus of racial and ethnic group statistics to a discussion of the relation ship among these statistics, public policy, and the conceptual status of ra ce and ethnicity. Federal statistics are organizational products that are s ocially constructed. They represent the implementation of public policies t hat govern political, social, and economic life. It is the interaction betw een politics and the subjective meaning of race and ethnicity that is respo nsible for the continual modification of racial and ethnic group statistics . The article discusses the premises on which racial and ethnic group stati stics have been based and illustrates how they were implemented in the inst ructions of the decennial censuses for classifying the race and ethnicity o f the population. The article then summarizes some of the empirical evidenc e from recent research conducted by federal agencies and social scientists to show that racial and ethnic group statistics produced by government reco rd keeping systems have no objective status. The meaning of race and ethnic ity is contextual, situational, and subjective, and, thus, how respondents and observers define these concepts has significant consequences for the qu ality of federal statistics. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.