America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census

Joel Perlmann traces the history of U.S. classification of immigrants, from Ellis Island to the present day, showing how slippery and contested ideas about racial, national, and ethnic difference have been. His focus ranges from the 1897 List of Races and Peoples, through changes in the civil rights era, to proposals for reform of the 2020 Census.

Table of Contents:
Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction Part One. The List of Races and Peoples 1. Creating and Refining the List, 1898–1906 2. Immigration—Especially European—through the Lens of Race 3. First Struggles over the List: Jewish Challenges and the Federal Defense, 1899–1903 4. The United States Immigration Commission, 1907–1911 5. Urging the List on the U.S. Census Bureau, 1908–1910 6. The Census Bureau Goes Its Own Way: Race, Nationality, and Mother Tongue, 1910–1916 Part Two. Institutionalizing Race Distinctions in American Immigration Law 7. The Second Quota Act, 1924 8. Immigration Law for White Races and Others: Three Episodes Part Three. The Ethnic Group: Formulation and Diffusion of an American Concept, to 1964 9. From “Race” to “Ethnic Group”: Organizing Concepts in American Studies of Immigrants, to 1964 10. From Social Science to the Federal Bureaucracy? Limited Diffusion of the “Ethnic Group” Concept through the Early 1950s Part Four. Incorporating the Legacies of the Civil Rights Era and Mass Immigration from the Third World 11. Race and the Immigrant in Federal Statistics since 1965 Conclusion Notes Acknowledgments Index

About the Author :
Perlmann Joel : Joel Perlmann is Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and Research Professor at Bard College.

Review :
A work of exacting scholarship and exemplary good sense. Perlmann illuminates as no other scholar has the process by which Americans decided how to classify immigrants. His account offers a much richer and more complex picture of the story than is found in any other work of historical writing.', David A. Hollinger, author of Postethnic America 'Perlmann transforms our understanding of the history of government efforts to racially classify immigrants to the United States. He unearths a number of fascinating discoveries about a history that many thought was already well-known. His book will be essential reading for all serious scholars of immigration.', Mara Loveman, author of National Colors 'We cannot understand America unless we understand race and immigration. To truly comprehend how these two histories overlap and intertwine, we need look no further than the United States government's struggle to define, categorize, and count immigrants and members of racial and ethnic groups. It is Perlmann's brilliant achievement to take what has too often been written as separate stories and tell it as one still unfinished story.', Kenneth Prewitt, former Director of the United States Census Bureau, 1998-2000, and author of What Is Your Race?