Census Categories and Social Research

Matthew Snipp, Stanford University

In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established an official classification standard for the measurement of race in the American population. In so doing, OMB authorities created what amounted to a racial cosmology that spread throughout American society, affecting public perceptions about the racial hierarchy of American society. In 1997, the OMB issued a revised version of this classification in which small changes may profoundly affect the way policy makers and the American public think about race. At the very least, these revisions present significant challenges to social scientists who study race and ethnicity. This paper will examine the conditions leading up to the 1997 revisions of OMB Directive 15, and how this may affect social scientific research on the subject of race and ethnicity.