It is extremely difficult to define ‘coloured’ precisely at all; and it is impossible to define it precisely in a way that will work in a census. We did not (and will not) attempt it, but used the unequivocal and objective concept of birthplace instead. This leaves you with the awkward ‘white Indians’ and ‘black Englishman’ but there is no practicable way of identifying them in a census. John Boreham, Chief Government Statistician

Introduction

In Britain and the US, the terms ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘ethnic group’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ are now ubiquitous in politics and social science alike, with abundant statistics to match. But less than 50 years ago, Britain’s chief government statistician ruled that it was impossible to measure in a census what was then termed ‘coloured’. Britain is still the only country in Europe to regularly make such measurements in national inquiries. The measurement of ethnicity remains a contentious issue because the question of what is being measured is inseparable from the (political) purposes for which the statistics are intended. The historical development of race statistics informs how we think about and understand race today.

It is the role of this chapter to take a historical, political and statistical view of the official collection of data that are currently labelled ‘ethnic group’, in order to better understand how they are used in the making of myths and, indeed, in the counterarguments to those myths. The first section of this chapter presents a roughly chronological review of the development of race statistics in Britain in relation to specific policy arenas. It considers the influence of pre-20th-century eugenics, immigration control, anti-discrimination legislation, multicultural policy and community cohesion agendas. The second section gives examples from three countries – Britain, France and the US – of solutions to the dilemmas of how to measure race. The chapter thereby aims to demonstrate that the categorisation and measurement of race is highly contentious, with data serving several specific policy agendas. Nevertheless, the chapter concludes, ethnic group statistics in Britain have meaningful potential for assessing social conditions and social change.

Politics, policy and race statistics

Eugenics

The development of statistics as a scientific discipline more than 100 years ago has a direct link with racist ideology.