'Negro' Wiped From US Census

'Black' or 'African-American' to be used instead
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 26, 2013 6:39 AM CST
Updated Feb 26, 2013 8:05 AM CST
'Negro' Wiped From US Census
This photograph of a sample 2010 US Census form obtained by the AP shows question 9: "What is Person 1's race," on the first page of the 2010 Census form, with options for Black, African Am., or Negro.   (AP Photo)

The Census Bureau seems perhaps a few decades late on this, but it has finally decided to stop using the word "Negro" in its surveys. Census forms will replace the current option of "black, African Am., or Negro" with simply "black" or "African-American" beginning next year. It apparently took months of research and feedback gathering to come to the conclusion that many black Americans find the term "Negro" to be, in the words of the chief of the bureau's racial statistics branch, "offensive and outdated," reports the AP.

"Negro" was first used on census forms in 1900, replacing "colored." The government decided not to drop the term for the 2010 census after determining that some older Southern blacks still identified with it. But after it mailed out those forms, some groups protested, spurring an apology from the director of the Census Bureau. (More US Census stories.)

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