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A Race To Know : Throughline For nearly as long as there has been a United States there has been a census, it is in some ways how we know ourselves. And in every single census there has been at least one question about race. The evolution of these questions and the fight over asking them is at the heart of the American story. This week, how race has played a central role in who is counted-in America.

Throughline

A Race To Know

A Race To Know

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  • A census table listing the number of slaves and freed slaves over the decades.
    A census table listing the number of slaves and freed slaves over the decades.
    Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/The New York Public Library
  • A crowd of people waiting to take the census at the Standing Rock Agency in 1886.
    A crowd of people waiting to take the census at the Standing Rock Agency in 1886.
    Education Images/Universal History Archive/Getty
  • Map showing the proportion of those Americans counted as Colored to the rest of the population, based on the census data of 1870. Illustration by Francis A. Walker.
    Map showing the proportion of those Americans counted as Colored to the rest of the population, based on the census data of 1870. Illustration by Francis A. Walker.
    Buyenlarge/Getty Images
  • A census bureau enumerator interviewing a family in Denver, CO, 1950.
    A census bureau enumerator interviewing a family in Denver, CO, 1950.
    Al Moldvay/Denver Post via Getty Images

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For nearly as long as there has been a United States there has been a census, it is in some ways how we know ourselves. And in every single census there has been at least one question about race. The evolution of these questions and the fight over asking them is at the heart of the American story. This week, how race has played a central role in who is counted-in America.

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