I had cause recently to go (re-)read Directive 15 (because I had been speaking authoritatively about it and hadn’t reviewed it in quite some time - a couple of decades, probably). The last time (before this time) I thought I had reviewed it (or potentially related regulations with the IRS or some other governmental organization - I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to find such a citation, by the way), I learned that I couldn’t self-identify as White, because at that time only folks who were 7/8 White or more were allowed to self-identify as White. So I could only identify as Asian/Pacific Islander.

On further research this morning it sounds like I might have been reading an older regulation (if I had to guess, it was issued by a governmental or private agency in Virginia, but I can’t narrow it down further than that - I just don’t know) based on the older “One-drop rule“. It also sounds like in practice, this kind of rule was really only applied to folks who could be categorized as African Americans, but when I read it I’m pretty sure I thought it applied to me as well.

For reference of anyone who might find this via IBARW, I am half Chinese American and half Caucasian American by blood, ancestry, parentage. I can tell you where my families are from, but it also works if I say I’m 1/2 Taishanese, 1/4 Welsh, 1/8 English and 1/8 Scot. Cool, huh? I’m proud of my inherited ancestries.

Anyhow…

Well it turns out that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has this Directive 15, which is how they describe the voluntary race/ethnicity classification on almost all the government forms, as well as rules for categorization and data collection and reporting.

So even though that all sounds really boring, this is the way the US Federal Government tracks its racial diversity, verifies civil rights initiatives, and reports on trends regarding initiatives to support racial diversity, civil rights, the whole shootin’ match vis a vis its diverse racial/ethnic populations. One of the things that matters here is what kinds of buckets the put out to catch us, how we are allowed to and how we factually do self-report, and how the agencies are allowed to combine the buckets and report on us and how in fact they do do so. All of this stuff is very important, and though Directive 15 has been slow to change, it has in fact been changing over time.

The last changes happened after 1993 when the OMB started a review process for the existing Directive 15, which has been instituted in 1977. On October 30, 1997, the OBM released the official revision, and starting in 2000 Federal Agencies were given until 2003 to implement these changes. If you search Google, you can find a lot of various organizations making recommendations on Directive 15 around 1997 (after July, when what was essentially an RFC went out in the Federal Register). Here’s a notice about public hearings in 1994. (Note: Also look up “Statistical Policy Directive No. 15″ for more googling.)

Anyway, it all boils down to this: I am now allowed to self-identify as more than one race (in my case, the appropriate selections would probably be both “Asian” and “White”), but should be advised that when Federal Agencies report on that choice, I might get bucketed in with all the other mult-ethnic peoples. Which I am not entirely thrilled about, except with regard to comparison with the old option, where I was only allowed to self-report as Asian.

Tags:   anti-racism · damn lies · directive 15 · ibarw · ibarw3 · lies · omb · racism · statisticsNo Comments