ABSTRACT
A population's distribution by age and sex is called its structure; one by other characteristics, its composition. Even if the data the Census Bureau collected on race and ethnicity have little relation to real life, they might be of some use in measuring the relative changes from one count to the next. To argue thus means, it is true, that one must abandon the nineteenth-century concept of race as a prototype and substitute the probabilistic aggregate that modern biologists and anthropologists use. The same trend toward a melting pot in a literal sense is also apparent among Hispanics, many Asians, not to say the already thoroughly mixed Hawaiian population. Some denominations refuse to be counted; others see enumeration as a prelude to discrimination. One important motive of the Census Bureau in constructing a category encompassing a congeries of quite different units, one can assume, was for its convenience in presenting data in summary tables.
