Methodological pitfalls of measuring race: international comparisons and repurposing of statistical categories

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Throughout this paper, I deliberately capitalize the racial categories “White” and “Black” to indicate that these are social constructions, rather than natural or generic categories. Like other ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and even other racial categories such as “Asian” and “Native American,” they should be treated as proper nouns.

2 The visible minority designation excludes Aboriginal people only because they are treated as a separate designated group by the legislation, and are identified by separate census questions.

3 In the late 2000s, these questions were changed to the Canadian census race/ethnicity question, making time series data problematic.

4 Author’s calculation from 2006 Canadian Census data at www.statcan.gc.ca.