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.