US, Illinois—Naturalization Records, 1912–1933 [Part E] I
I'm confused by the "race" field. On the records it lists Italian, German, etc, but the instrustions say don't index nationality in this field. What do I do?
Answers
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If there is only a race field, index the race from that field. 1930 (ish) to 1940 (ish) Petitions do not have color listed, just the race, which will be German, English, Russia, etc. Back then, as we are indexing what it was at the time of the document, German, etc., was used as a race, not a nationality as we refer to them today.
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There was another thread about this project (which I am too lazy to look for) where I asked (somewhat rhetorically, in a comment) what the intention behind that instruction actually was; nobody answered (that I know of).
As erutherford says, the best we can do is to ignore that instruction and index what's on the form in the appropriate field: the color if there is one, whatever it says for "race" otherwise, even if that's a nationality.
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I refuse to enter German as a "race" if the person was born in Germany. Please someone correct me if I am wrong. I will enter that if he or she was born in some other country though.
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If the race says German, Scotch, Lithuanian, etc and there is not a color, you will enter what the race says. This is most common with PETs that were filed from 1930-40. We do not index the race based on where they were born. I've seen people born in Poland that listed their race as Russian and people born in Germany as Lithuanian.
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Do not index the nationality in this field. Do not assume the color or race based on nationality or birthplace
I find some instructions quite vague - including this one. It would be nice to have some more details about the background. It it possible that people arriving where also stumped by the question and gave answer they thought was the correct one.
I think whoever created this, does not want indexers to make assumptions and add information from different fields rather than race field if race field is not present on the form. In the nutshell, if there is a race field on the form - I index it with whatever info is there. If there is no race field on the form - I ignore it.
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We do not assume anything about any project, because if we did, we still might be working on WWII draft cards. Just a month ago, when we were having trouble with Part E Nats and races that were not on the drop-down list sticking, someone tried to say that even though the race was German, the applicant was Caucasian. Was the applicant Caucasian? Probably. Did it say he was Caucasian? No.
Nationality, as we know it in 2024, is German, English, Polish, but say in 1932—where just the race Field is found on Nats—the race was German, English, etc. Words, meanings, and places change over time.1 -
I don't know why they prefer Color over Race. The Declaration of Intentions show both of them.
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Parameters are set by the records administrator. The field help for color or race has been like that for a handful of years now and I don't think it will change.
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