Critical Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Differences in Health in Late Life (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Section I--The Nature of Racial and Ethnic Differences2 Racial and Ethnic Identification, Official Classifications, and Health Disparities
Section I--The Nature of Racial and Ethnic Differences2 Racial and Ethnic Identification, Official Classifications, and Health Disparities
Pages 23-52
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Section I The Nature of Racial and Ethnic Differences
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Most Americans and most researchers have in mind a general categorical scheme that includes whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians. Most Americans and nearly all researchers are also aware that these general categories disguise significant heterogeneity within each of these major groups.
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We first look at what the social science literature has to say about the ways in which individuals and society construct racial and ethnic identities. Second, we examine how information on race and ethnicity is recorded in some of the major federal data sets used to study health disparities among the elderly.
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As more and more social scientific research investigated racial and ethnic identities, it became clear that neither model was able to fully explain the complexities of these phenomena. The most prevalent current view on racial and ethnic identities is a social constructionist model (Banton, 1998; Cornell and Hartmann, 1998; Nagel, 1996)
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. Following the OMB standards, the 2000 Census used the five suggested racial categories: White, black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander.
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population reported only one race. Of the 2.4 percent, or 6.8 million, who reported more than one race, 32 percent reported white and "some other race," 16 percent reported white and American Indian/Alaska Native, 13 percent reported white and Asian, and 11 percent reported white and black or African American (U.S.
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notes that the ethnic options employed by white Americans are generally not available to African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, or Hispanics. Nagel notes that some racial and ethnic identities appear more rigid than others (1996, p.
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This wide variation in racial identity among those with the same racial parentage indicates that the one-drop rule of racial identity for African Americans may be slowly weakening.
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These recent studies suggest that although African American historically has been an extremely rigid racial category, the situation may be slowly changing. Asian Americans Any examination of racial identity among Asian Americans must be informed by an awareness of important subgroup differences.
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. Intermarriage has a large impact on the racial identity of Asian Americans.
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Hispanic Americans Similar to Asian Americans, there is wide variation among Hispanic subgroups. The three largest Hispanic subgroups in the United States are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans.
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There are widespread ambiguities and disputes about who is an Indian, how many American Indians there are in the United States, who should be permitted to assert Indian ethnicity, and who has the right to represent Indian interests." Unlike other racial and ethnic groups, the federal government has outlined specific methods to classify Native Americans. These definitions can be at odds with state, tribal, and individual definitions of who qualifies as Native American.
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Of course, the Census and most surveys measure race by self-identification, so individuals not considered Native American in the previous cases would be counted as Native American in these surveys. American Indians have racially intermarried at even greater rates than Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans.
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In other words, groups such as American Indians and Asian Americans are likely to have a much higher percentage of their population switch to a multiracial identity than African Americans or whites. This will change our understanding of racial differences in health to the degree that these multiracial individuals differ from the monoracial groups they were selecting before.
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argue convincingly that there is little reason to keep the Hispanic origin and race questions separate. In fact, there are good reasons for putting them together.
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Data Source 1996 Race and Ethnic Racial Category 1990 Census 2000 Census Targeted Test: Combined White 51.7 47.9 22.6 Black 3.4 2.0 0.9 American Indian 0.7 1.2 0.5 Asian 1.4 0.3 -Pacific Islander -- 0.1 -Other 42.7 42.2 0.6 Two or more races -- 6.3 0.1 Hispanic only -- -- 75.0 NOTES: The Asian and Pacific Islander categories were separate in the 2000 Census; the RAETT results are from Panel F (combined question; mark all that apply)
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Since the NHANES III, African Americans and Mexican Americans have been oversampled in the NHANES (along with adolescents, older individuals, and pregnant women) to allow for better estimation of the health characteristics of these populations.
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The NHIS covers Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic African Americans, and Asian Americans. In 1985, the NHIS began oversampling African Americans.
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Although vital statistics are essential to understanding health in the United States, they also suffer from one of the most well-known problems with respect to racial and ethnic identification. Documentation has clearly shown that mortality rates, especially for smaller groups, are flawed partly because of the way in which race and ethnicity are recorded on death certificates.
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The major panethnic categories used by researchers, however, contain such significant variation within them that it is difficult to draw useful conclusions about the population. We generally lack data on specific nationality groups for Asian Americans, for example, and yet we can be fairly sure that Japanese Americans and Vietnamese Americans will have significant differences in their health outcomes because there are such sizable differences in their class status.
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. African American health status also varies with socioeconomic status, region of birth within the United
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There are exceptions to this, of course, including the current NHIS and 2000 Census, so these sources need to be studied to see how multiracial identification might change our understanding of racial and ethnic health disparities. Currently, however, the multiracial population of the United States is overwhelmingly a young one, so this limitation should have a limited impact on studies of the health of the elderly (see, for example, Root, 1996)
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SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS Summary of Racial Identification and Data Challenges Our review of how we collect data on racial and ethnic groups suggests that in some ways an accurate picture of racial and ethnic disparities in health will remain elusive. This is because societal definitions of racial and ethnic group membership as well as individuals' perceptions of their own racial and ethnic identities change over time.
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However, such differentiation is not always feasible with population-based survey data that sample enough cases to analyze Asians and Hispanics but not enough to examine specific origin groups or distinguish between the native born and the foreign born. Implications for Health Outcomes The ways in which we measure racial and ethnic identity have important implications for our understanding of racial and ethnic disparities in health among the elderly.
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. African Americans have the fewest ethnic options of any group in the United States.
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provides a helpful summary of the history of Native American classification.
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. Changes in racial identification and the educational attainment of American Indians, 1970-1990.
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. Beyond black: Biracial identity in America.
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. The racial identification of biracial children with one Asian parent: Evidence from the 1990 Census.
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