History description 2014-03-26: Lock all vaue sets untouched since 2014-03-26 to trackingId 2014T1_2014_03_26
description:
In the United States, federal standards for classifying data on race determine the
categories used by federal agencies and exert a strong influence on categorization
by state and local agencies and private sector
organizations. The federal standards do not conceptually define race, and they recognize
the absence of an anthropological or scientific basis for racial classification. Instead,
the federal standards acknowledge that race is a social-political construct in which
an individual's own identification with one more race categories is preferred to observer
identification. The
standards use a variety of features to define five minimum race categories. Among
these features are descent from "the original peoples" of a specified region or nation.
The minimum race categories are American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or
African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. The federal
standards stipulate that race data need not
be limited to the five minimum categories, but any expansion must be collapsible to
those categories.