ABSTRACT
The US 2000 Census has the potential to be the most pivotal ever for defining what constitutes black America. The census and the census process are reflections of the manner in which US racial paradigms and discourse are produced. Necessarily, the debate over the census from the beginning was a struggle over racial identity, racial status, and racial power. In 1996, the Bill Clinton administration proposed that a more innovative and efficacious method be employed in the 2000 Census. The tortured ways of defining race served the purpose of never completely erasing a middle-race strata in the United States. Though perhaps not obvious, the enumeration of races is a critical factor in shaping racial identity and the national discourse on race. The results of the census decide how federal, state and local political and school districts are apportioned and how the political pie is sliced.
