I recently ran across a claim citing the United States Census that non-white US population has increased from about 10 percent in 1921 to about 30 percent today that is almost certainly based on comparing apples and oranges:
Census records from 1921 indicate that non-whites comprised 10.2% of the American population that year while the 2010 census reports that non-whites now constitute more than 30% of the population. 38,39 Be that as it may, it can be argued that, while the numbers of non-whites in the United States have increased over the past century, so has the number of Planned Parenthood facilities.
McCrea, Sarah (2015) “Eugenics No Matter What?: An Investigation of the Eugenic Origin of Planned Parenthood and its Effect on Contemporary Society,” Black & Gold: Vol. 1.
Available at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold/vol1/iss1/5 (pages 8-9)
The US Census did not start regularly counting Hispanics, which is a cultural category that includes persons with entirely European ancestry, some or all American Indian ancestry, Blacks, essentially anyone who traces their background to a Spanish speaking region or country, until 1970.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/03/03/census-history-counting-hispanics-2/
The US Census now estimates about 18.5% of US population is Hispanic: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2020/comm/us-hispanic-population-growth.html
California for example classified most Hispanics as white in 1921 and American Indians were explicitly exempted from the infamous California law banning interracial marriage — otherwise a huge fraction of the state population would have faced a bureaucratic nightmare when trying to marry. Today, I would estimate about 80% of Hispanics, defined as a Spanish surname, in California have visible American Indian ancestry. Hard to be sure, but probably very similar numbers in 1921. The US acquired a substantial non-white — as sometimes defined today — population in the Mexican-American war and the annexation of Texas. The US census avoided counting these people as separate from the “white” population. Note that many Hispanics self-identify as “white” when asked their race even if they have visible American Indian ancestry.
References on the Racial Classification of Hispanics in California
These are some references to back up my discussion of the curious laws and social customs of California in the past. This is the text of the California State Supreme Court decision in the Perez vs Sharp case that invalidated bans on interracial marriages in 1948:
https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/perez-v-sharp-26107
Note that the issue was the marriage of Andrea Perez, a Mexican-American woman who identified as “white” and Sylvester Davis who identified as “Negro”.
This is a very detailed article on the case: https://www.cschs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Legal-Hist.-v.-17-Articles-Perez-v.-Sharp.pdf
The interracial marriage law in California did not ban marriages between whites and either Mexican-Americans or American Indians. Mexican-Americans were usually classified as “white” legally in California.
Curiously, one could drive down to Mexico, get married in Mexico where interracial marriages were legal, and return to California which would recognize the marriage in another jurisdiction despite the law. Andrea Perez wanted to get married in her Catholic Church in LA, hence the challenge.
Not One Drop of Blood
There is a myth that one encounters on the Internet and in some political debates, that the United States historically had a one drop of blood rule where any non-white ancestry immediately resulted in being classified as non-white. There is even a Wikipedia page on the One-drop of blood rule which used to be grossly inaccurate and promote this myth. California with its large mixed-race population long deviated from this supposed rule.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).