Census Bureau will drop the word "Negro" from its forms

WASHINGTON After more than a century, the Census Bureau is dropping its use of the word "Negro" to describe black Americans in surveys.

Instead of the term that came into use during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, census forms will use the more modern labels "black" or "African-American".

The change will take effect next year when the Census Bureau distributes its annual American Community Survey to more than 3.5 million U.S. households, Nicholas Jones, chief of the bureau's racial statistics branch, said in an interview.

He pointed to months of public feedback and census research that concluded few black Americans still identify with being Negro and many view the term as "offensive and outdated."

"This is a reflection of changing times, changing vocabularies and changing understandings of what race means in this country," said Matthew Snipp, a sociology professor at Stanford University, who writes frequently on race and ethnicity. "For younger African-Americans, the term`Negro' harkens back to the era when African-Americans were second-class citizens in this country."

First used in the census in 1900, "Negro" became the most common way of referring to black Americans through most of the early 20th century, during a time of racial inequality and segregation. "Negro" itself had taken the place of "colored." Starting with the 1960s civil rights movement, black activists began to reject the "Negro" label and came to identify themselves as black or African-American.

Still, the term has lingered, having been used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his speeches. It also remains in the names of some black empowerment groups that were established before the 1960s, such as the United Negro College Fund, now often referred to as UNCF.

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For the 2010 census, the government briefly considered dropping the word "Negro" but ultimately decided against it, determining that a small segment, mostly older blacks living in the South, still identified with the term. But once census forms were mailed and some black groups protested, Robert Groves, the Census Bureau's director at the time, apologized and predicted the term would be dropped in future censuses.

When asked to mark their race, Americans are currently given a choice of five government-defined categories in census surveys, including one checkbox selection which is described as "black, African Am., or Negro." Beginning with the surveys next year, that selection will simply say "black" or "African American."

In the 2000 census, about 50,000 people specifically wrote in the word Negro when asked how they wished to be identified. By 2010, unpublished census data provided to the AP show that number had declined to roughly 36,000.

[kbbpll]

"Americans are currently given a choice of five government-defined categories" - come on, that's simply not true. On the 2010 form there were 4 different flavors of "Hispanic" and 11 different flavors of Asian/Pacific Islander, with "other Asian" further broken down into a write-in for Hmong, Laotian, Thai, etc. Why should I have to pick "white"? I am not "white". I am English non-Catholic Irish Czech German Native American. Whites and blacks get screwed for choices on the census relative to Hispanic and Asian. Band together and revolt!

[saucymugwump]

Those of you who claim that Caucasoid/Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid/Negro are the true definitions or that we all hail 100% from Africa really need to catch up with science. Read the latest (March) issue of Discover Magazine and you will discover that we are NOT all 100% Africans. Asians and Europeans have as much as 5% of DNA from Neanderthals. Melanesians and Australian Aborigines have as much as 6% of DNA from Denisovans. We will undoubtedly discover more DNA in the ancestral closet.

[HM8432]

So what are we calling them this week? What _______ call themselves seems to change as often as the 'Flavor of the Week' at the local ice cream shop! Pity to the White person who describes them with the wrong name...

[cpmp08]

They should eliminate all reference to any race on the census forms and just list colors:

Black
White
Brown
Yellow
Red
Gray
Off-White
Pink
Tan
Dark-Brown
etc.

This country is a land of equality so this way we are all offended equally.

The Brown guy

[johnlockesghost]

If the census bureau in its infinite wisdom decides to put African-American as a racial identity, I urge everyone to mark it as applying to them, because it does.

[johnlockesghost]

Black is OK, African-American could be anybody since all human life emigrated from Africa, the difference in appearance being the effect of thousands of years of environmental influence.

[winslowe1]

Perhaps the word became offensive during the Jim Crow era, but "Negro" is certainly mentioned in the accounts of various explorers dating back 500 years or more. I agree with SMBUSMAN, eliminate the block. I'm going to mark my next one with a ?.

[bradkt1]

Maybe Black folks don't like some of the names that White folks made up for them. They decided to pick their own names.

[1Citizen]

Does this mean that America will be the only country that doesn't recognize negro as a race?

[saucymugwump]

Fine, eliminate Negro and replace it with African-American.

But then we had also better eliminate white and Caucasian as terms for people who originated in Europe. The former is as bad as red or yellow as terms for Native-Americans or Asian-Americans, respectively. And the latter is simply not correct and never was, as the peoples of Europe did not all originate in the region Russians refer to as the Kavkaz, the Caucasus Mountains; Caucasian is just as moronic as Negro / Negroid.

European-American is the only correct, not to mention consistent, choice.

[saucymugwump]

BludApfel wrote: "How is one an African-American or European-Americans when one is not born in neither Africa nor Europe?"

The problem is that the Census Bureau has conflated two classifications, ethnicity and place of birth.