Managing an Identity Crisis: Forum Guide to Implementing New Federal Race and Ethnicity Categories

NFES 2008-802 October 2008

Exhibit 4.1 Suggestions for Conducting Observer Identification

The OMB Guidance requires the use of observer identification at the elementary and secondary school level as a last resort, if racial and ethnic data are not self-identified—by the student or more typically the student's parents or guardians.  If you are the individual assigned by your school or district as an observer, these are some suggestions to help you perform this duty.  First of all, remember that:

• Observer identification is used as “a last resort,” after other efforts to increase the chance of having a parent identify the student or a student to identify himself or herself have failed.  Check your district's policies for such procedures.  Typically, they will include following up with parents, through e-mail or phone communication, to determine whether the parent or student is refusing to self-identify rather than simply overlooking the question.

• Self-identification is based on how people define themselves and their children.  Assigning a race and ethnicity to an individual is a somewhat arbitrary exercise because these are not scientific or anthropological categories.  While assigning race and ethnicity to another person is a difficult task, given the emotionally charged feelings and deep beliefs that many people have concerning the issue, your job as an observer for federal reporting purposes is simply to assign race and ethnicity categories to the best of your ability. It is important that you are consistent in your observation, and make your judgments objectively. 

In addition to visual observation there are ways to help you determine an individual's race and ethnicity. Rely first on existing information before you actually “observe” the race or ethnicity of the student, but check your information source to the best of your ability. For example:

• Check the student's prior record to determine whether a racial category was selected in the past.   This can narrow down the possibilities, but you may still need to determine whether the student is multiracial or has selected one of the “old” categories that has been separated (e.g., Asian and Pacific Islander, or Hispanic with no race identified).
• Check whether a student's sibling in the school has re-identified a race and ethnicity during the re-identification.  There is, however, a possibility of different race and ethnicity among siblings as a result of adoption and blended families.

If sufficient existing information is lacking, you may look for clues from other sources such as:

• first-hand knowledge about the student or his/her family (check with a teacher or counselor);
• the student's and parent's country of birth or country of origin;
• the student's home language or parent's language of preference; and
• knowledge about the community to which the school belongs

Selecting an Ethnicity

If, in prior records, an individual has indicated that he or she was Hispanic, then the ethnicity question is answered.  Your job is to observe and select a racial category.  Many Hispanic individuals consider “Hispanic” as their race (partly due to past experience of using this as if it were a racial category).  They may look for “Hispanic” or “some other race” in the race question.  When they do not find it, they leave it blank.  Following up might be all that is needed to collect the information directly from the student or parent. 

A student may volunteer his or her ancestry rather than answering “yes” to the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity question. The following is a list of Hispanic ancestry groups to which Hispanic individuals may refer themselves:

Spaniard Balearic Islander Mexican American Mexican State Panamanian Bolivian Peruvian Latin American Spanish Catalonian Argentinean Spanish American

Andalusian Gallego Mexicano Costa Rican Salvadoran Chilean Uruguayan Latino Californio Mexican Paraguayan

Asturian Valencian Chicano Guatemalan Central American Colombian Venezuelan Puerto Rican Tejano American Indian South American

Castillian Canary Islander La Raza Honduran Canal Zone Ecuadorian Criollo Dominican Nuevo Mexicano Nicaraguan Hispanic

Selecting a Race

In general, the new federal requirements conflate race and geographic/national origin.  For example, “White” is defined to include people who originate from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.  Though not an exhaustive list, the following chart may help in connecting geographic/national origin with a race, as defined in the Guidance:

If an individual considers him- or herself to be:	…or comes from one of the following countries or regions:	…and assuming single-race, the individual may be identified as:
European American	Northern Europe such as: Britain (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden Western Europe such as: Belgium, France, Holland, Luxembourg Central Europe such as: Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland Eastern Europe such as: Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Ukraine Southern Europe such as: Bosnia, Catalonia, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain Other such as: Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan	White
Middle Eastern American	Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria. Turkey, Yemen	White
North African American	Algeria, Egypt, Morocco	White
Black, African American, Afro-American	Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Ethiopia, Haiti, Jamaica, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Nigriti, South Africa, Sudan, Tobago, Trinidad, West Indies, Zaire	Black
Asian American	Asian Indian, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Okinawa, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lankan, Thailand, Vietnam; or ancestry groups such as Hmongs, Mongolians, Iwo Jiman, Maldivian	Asian
Pacific Islander	Caroline Islands, Fiji, Guam, Hawaiian Islands, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Polynesia, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Tarawa Islands, Tonga	Pacific Islander
Australian or New Zealander – not an indigenous person	Australia, New Zealand	White
Aborigine, Indigenous Australian, Torres Straits Islander, Melanesian	Australia, New Zealand, Torres Straits Islands	Pacific Islander

 

Though not exhaustive, the following is a list of American Indian and Alaskan Native tribes or self-descriptions that may help in your observation:

American Indian Tribes
Abenaki Assiniboine Burt Lake Band Catawba Cherokee Chickasaw Choctaw Coharie Coos Cree Cupeno Fort Belknap Grand Ronde Hoopa Kalispel S'Klallam Long Island Makah Metrolina Miwok Miwok Mono Nez Perce Oneida Tribe Pamunkey Pequot Pomo Puget Sound Salish Round Valley Schaghticoke Shinnecock Paiute-Shoshone Tohono O'Odham Umatilla Warm Springs Winnebago Yakama Cowlitz Yuman	Algonquian Assiniboine Sioux Caddo Cayuse Cherokee Shawnee Chinook Choctaw-Apache Colorado River Indian Coquille Creek Delaware Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota Guilford Hoopa Extension Karuk Klamath Luiseno Maliseet Miami Me-Wuk Me-Wuk Nanticoke Nipmuc Oregon Athabaskan Passamaquoddy Pima Ponca Quapaw Sac and Fox Seminole Shoalwater Bay Siletz Tolowa Umpqua Wascopum Wintun Yaqui Yurok	Apache Bannock Cahuilla Chehalis Cheyenne Chippewa Chumash Colville Costanoan Croatan Diegueno Fort McDowell Gros Ventres Indians of Person County Kaw Konkow Lumbee Mandan Miccosukee Modoc Modoc Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Nomlaki Otoe-Missouria Pawnee Piscataway Potawatomi Quinault Salinan Serrano Shoshone Siuslaw Tonkawa Wailaki Washoe Wintun-Wailaki Yavapai Apache	Arapahoe Blackfeet California Tribes Chemakuan Cheyenne-Arapaho Chippewa Cree Clear Lake Comanche Coushatta Crow Eastern Tribes Fort Hall Haliwa-Saponi Iroquois Kickapoo apoo Kootenai Lummi Mattaponi Micmac Mohegan Mohegan Narragansett Northwest Tribes Ottawa Penobscot Pit River Powhatan Rappahannock Salish Shasta Te-Moak Tribes of Western Spokane Trinidad Walla-Walla Wichita Wiyot Yokuts	Arikara Brotherton Canadian and Latin American Chemehuevi Chickahominy Chitimacha Coeur D'Alene Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Cowlitz Cumberland Esselen Gabrieleno Hidatsa Juaneno (Acjachemem) Kiowa Lassik Maidu Menominee Mission Indians Monacan Monacan Navajo Omaha Paiute Peoria Pomo and Pit River Indians Pueblo Reno-Sparks Salish and Kootenai Shawnee Shoshone Indians of Nevada Stockbridge-Munsee Tygh Wampanoag Wind River Yakama Yuchi
Alaskan Native Tribes
Alaska Native Tlingit-Haida Greenland Eskimo Yup'ik Chugach Aleut Unangan Aleut	Alaska Indian Tribes Tsimshian Inuit Aleut Tribes Eyak	Alaska Indian Sealaska Inupiat Eskimo Aleut Koniag Aleut	Alaska Native Southeast Alaska Siberian Eskimo Alutiiq Aleut Sugpiaq	Alaskan Athabascans Eskimo Tribes Cupiks Eskimo Bristol Bay Aleut Suqpigaq

Languages can be an indication of an individual's race and ethnicity.  Of the more than 5,000 languages and dialects spoken in the world, these are the ten most common ones and their probable “race/ethnicity” designations:

If an individual's native or home language is:	He/she is likely:	Therefore…
Chinese	Asian
Hindi(India)	Asian
English	White	Check “country of birth or origin” (as the language is also used in U.S. Virgin Islands)
Spanish	Hispanic, with one or more of any racial categories	Check “country of birth or origin”
Bengali (India and Bangladesh)	Asian
Portuguese	White, Black, or Asian. Note that Portuguese-speaking groups are not considered Hispanic.	Check “country of birth or origin” (as the language is used in South American countries such as Brazil, Asian countries such as Macao, or the Caribbean)
Russian	White
Japanese	Asian
German	White, some could be Hispanic in ethnicity	Check “country of birth or origin” (as the language is spoken by a few in South America and South Africa)
Korean	Asian