“Paper, practice, ancestry, culture”: Racial frames and contested racial/ethnic census categories

Abstract

How do individuals and groups frame their appeals to change official racial/ethnic categories and explain their perceptions of the underlying boundaries that such categories reflect? This article draws from the case of revisions to the 2030 U.S. census categories using the universe of the over 20,000 public comments submitted to the federal government in response to proposed changes. Using an integrated computational text analysis and qualitative approach, I find that three sets of strategies characterize the general deployment of racial frames across comments. The first describes the broader characteristics that are perceived to define a given category; the second grapples with the historical and contemporary nature of racial/ethnic boundaries; and the third situates the placement of a given group in the existing racial order. I then examine the use of these strategies in reference to the proposed Middle Eastern and North African category and to the existing Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino categories. Finally, I examine the resonance of particular frames and strategies by illustrating the extent to which they were submitted on behalf of organizations or duplicated widely by individual actors. Together, this study advances our broader understanding of the dynamic nature of racial/ethnic categories and the boundaries that they are perceived to represent.