Excerpt

[Professor of political science] Melissa Nobles is interested in counting. The tallies that most intrigue her involve racial counting — the politics propelling it and the consequences coming in its wake. More specifically, Nobles is interested in how the census — both in the United States and Brazil — has used racial categorization through history for political purposes. In Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford University Press, 2000), Nobles explores how political pressures have influenced racial categorization over the past two centuries.

Photo: Ed Quinn

Feldman, Orna. "All About the Count." MIT Spectrum (Spring 2007).