Farley R
Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48104-2590.
Demography. 1991 Aug;28(3):411-29.
In addition to specific inquiries about race and Spanish origin, the censuses of 1980 and 1990 included an open-ended question about ancestry, which replaced the question about parents' place of birth that had been used since 1870. This paper examines findings from the new ancestry question from the perspective of measuring ethnicity. The question adds little information about Hispanics, racial minorities, or recent immigrants, who can be identified readily on the basis of other census inquiries. The ancestry question allows us to characterize the descendants of European immigrants, but because of ethnic intermarriage, the numerous generations that separate present respondents from their forebears, and the apparent unimportance of ancestry to many whites of European origin, responses appear quite inconsistent. In regard to these groups, we may now be in an era of optional ethnicity, in which no simple census question will distinguish those who identify strongly with a specific European group from those who report symbolic or imagined ethnicity.
除了关于种族和西班牙裔血统的特定询问外，1980年和1990年的人口普查还包括一个关于祖籍的开放式问题，该问题取代了自1870年以来一直使用的关于父母出生地的问题。本文从衡量种族的角度审视了新的祖籍问题的调查结果。这个问题几乎没有增加关于西班牙裔、少数族裔或新移民的信息，因为根据人口普查的其他询问可以很容易地识别出他们。祖籍问题使我们能够描述欧洲移民的后代，但由于族际通婚、将当前受访者与他们的祖先分隔开来的众多代际，以及祖籍对许多欧洲裔白人显然不重要，回答显得相当不一致。对于这些群体，我们现在可能处于一个选择性种族的时代，在这个时代，没有一个简单的人口普查问题能够区分那些强烈认同特定欧洲群体的人与那些报告象征性或想象中的种族的人。
