Estate and Class: A Reply

Abstract

the same time it illustrates the dangers involved when the manipulation of numbers becomes an end in itself and the resulting statistics are not interpreted in terms of the social and cultural context that produced the numbers in the first place. We wish to thank our critics for the statistical reanalysis they have performed on the Oaxaca data, and we agree that their figures and measurements of endogamy and exogamy are probably more exact than ours. They have helped to convince us that simple arithmetic is not sufficient to carry out many types of quantitative analysis. In their zeal to achieve statistical rigor, however, it is apparent that McCaa and his associates have misinterpreted our argument and portions of the Oaxaca data. We remain unconvinced by the rather extreme, cut and dried conclusions they draw and disagree with the inferences and assumptions on which they are based. Our purpose in the article is an admittedly ticklish one-to use census records and other sources on race, occupation, and economic position to show the declining importance of race in the stratification system. In such an enterprise, the parish and census data must be handled carefully and interpreted in conjunction with other sources, some of them qualitative rather than quantitative. Despite their statistically precise reworking of the data, we feel that McCaa and his associates stick too close to the marriage and census figures alone and are therefore led to mistaken conclusions. Among the issues raised by their critique, we see the most important ones as 1) how to interpret data from parish marriage registers; 2) how to interpret mobility or changes in the racial identification of individuals; and 3) how to assess the place and functions of the sistema de castas in colonial