Law Commons^™

Erasure And Recognition: The Census, Race And The National Imagination, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article is concerned with the constitutive power of the census with respect to race. It is an examination of the U.S. Census as an aspect of what Angela Harris calls race law, "law pertaining to the formation, recognition, and maintenance of racial groups, as well as the law regulating the relationships among these groups." While others have noted and explored the epistemological and constitutive functions of the census race categories, my aim is to unpack this insight in the context of two specific examples of categorical change and contest: the addition of a Chinese racial category in 1870 and …