SANTA BARBARA — The UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center will present Kenneth Prewitt, author of “TALK: What is Your Race? — And Why the Government Should Ask,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 13 at the Mosher Alumni House.
Prewitt is a Carnegie Professor of public affairs and director the Scholarly Knowledge Project, Columbia University.
What is Your Race? (Princeton University Press, 2013) traces the tortured history of government race statistics from 1790 to the present, the university reported in a media release.
Across three-fourths of that history, policy purposes dictated the measurement strategy (e.g., the three-fifths clause). In the Civil Rights Era, however, policy (statistical proportionality, disparate impact) was shaped in terms of the statistics available. Today’s demographic transformation and demands for identity expression, however, cannot be satisfied with categories left over from the 18th century. Different purposes mean different questions. Change is easy to recommend, difficult to bring about. Change in the census race question must work in the census environment (technically feasible) and must overcome congressional resistance (politically acceptable). What is Your Race? concludes with recommendations meeting these criteria.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Identity Studies RFG, the IHC, the Center for New Racial Studies, the Department of Political Science, and Broom Center for Demography.
Website: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/identity/
• See more events sponsored by the IHC’s Identity Studies RFG