Turning a Blind Eye to Racial Categorization

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The categorization of race has always been a controversial topic throughout history. The website titled “The Real Face of White Australia” highlights one of the instances of controversy pertaining to the policies put in place in the early 20th century that essentially excluded those who were not white from Australia. This excluded those who had lived in Australia for the entirety of their lives, just because of their families’ origins and the color of their skin. They “found themselves at odds with the nations’ claim to be white” and were confronted with discriminatory laws preventing them from leading their normal (or at least what used to be) Australian lives. For those confined by this “White Australia” that had never lived anywhere else, this seemed rash and unjust as they saw themselves as a part of the country just as much as the next person. This specific issue parallels the discrepancy between perceived and personal race identification both in the past as well as today.

In this article that I recently read (link), the history of the process of collecting census data is outlined. For nearly 200 years, before mail-in survey methods were used, the government collected data by sending out a government representative to evaluate households based on various categories (including race). The article states that the government workers, or “census enumerators” did not let the people characterize themselves. Instead, it was based on appearance and ultimately was determined by the census enumerator. This completely segmented race into a matter of appearance rather than identity, and brought up the same question seen within “The Real Face of White Australia” website of what the idea of race actually means at its core. When mail-in surveys became the method of collecting census data, the number of people identifying themselves as certain races drastically changed. This highlights the difference between personal identification and initial misclassification that has been occurring around the world for ages.

This error in classifying someone’s race solely based on his or her appearance can also be a problem for any large database management system. Databases cannot include personal thoughts or identification in their analysis of someone’s face or body without being given the appropriate additional information. When sorting solely through images, it may resort to placing people into different buckets based on physical features or attributes that it finds to be common or similar. While this may be appropriate in some settings, taking into account a person’s personal outlook and opinion is an aspect that can be easily overlooked. In the article “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”, Johanna Drucker touches on the concept of “humanistic interpretation” relating to the expression of digital information and the need for “a co-dependent relation between observer and experience”. I believe this directly applies to the idea of racial categorization and that there is an evident need to analyze all relevant potential factors before attempting to classify a human being.

 

Sources:

  1. http://www.psmag.com/culture/census-data-collection-changed-race-in-america-57221/
  2. Tim Sherratt, The Real Face of White Australia. http://invisibleaustralians.org/
  3. Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Digital
    Humanities Quarterly 5, no. 1 (2011). http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/
    vol/5/1/000091/000091.html.
  4. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7zTnJIf_wow/UzxE9H5Nv5I/AAAAAAAAo_Y/pLzHrIEd5Tw/s1600/none-of-the-above-428×181%5B1%5D.jpg