Still Black or White: Why the Census Misreads Hispanics
Hispanic advocates often tell the story of a Census Bureau worker who visits a Puerto Rican household in New York City's East Harlem neighborhood. Seeing the family's caramel complexion, the Census taker asks which race he should put down for them - white or black. To which the family answers: "Puerto Rican."
The story could substitute a Mexican-American family - or Colombian- or Nicaraguan-American ones for that matter - but the gist would be the same. Many, if not most, Hispanics in the U.S. think of their ethnicity (also known as Latino) not just in cultural terms but in a racial context as well. It's why more than 40% of Hispanics, when asked on the Census form in 2000 to register white or black as their race, wrote in "Other" - and they represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so.
An even larger share of Hispanics, including my Venezuelan-American wife, is expected to report "Other," "Hispanic" or "Latino" in the race section of the 2010 census forms being mailed to U.S. homes this month. What makes it all the more confusing if not frustrating to them is that Washington continues to insist on those forms that "Hispanic origins are not races." If the Census Bureau lists Filipino and even Samoan as distinct races, Hispanics wonder why they - the product of half a millennium of New World miscegenation - aren't considered a race too. "It's a very big issue," says Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy in New York City and a community adviser to the Census. "A lot of Hispanics find the black-white option offensive, and they're asserting their own racial uniqueness."
( Read the rest at Time Magazine online )
The story could substitute a Mexican-American family - or Colombian- or Nicaraguan-American ones for that matter - but the gist would be the same. Many, if not most, Hispanics in the U.S. think of their ethnicity (also known as Latino) not just in cultural terms but in a racial context as well. It's why more than 40% of Hispanics, when asked on the Census form in 2000 to register white or black as their race, wrote in "Other" - and they represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so.
An even larger share of Hispanics, including my Venezuelan-American wife, is expected to report "Other," "Hispanic" or "Latino" in the race section of the 2010 census forms being mailed to U.S. homes this month. What makes it all the more confusing if not frustrating to them is that Washington continues to insist on those forms that "Hispanic origins are not races." If the Census Bureau lists Filipino and even Samoan as distinct races, Hispanics wonder why they - the product of half a millennium of New World miscegenation - aren't considered a race too. "It's a very big issue," says Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy in New York City and a community adviser to the Census. "A lot of Hispanics find the black-white option offensive, and they're asserting their own racial uniqueness."
( Read the rest at Time Magazine online )