Racial Identity Census
Posted By
admin on Feb 4, 2012 2:33pm PST
There is an identity argument that has gained momentum with the growth of the Latino population. These fifty million people-and counting-are split between how they see themselves and how the government wants to categorize them. Many argue that the country's race categories in the population census forms do not fit them. While the census categorizes people by race, which typically refers to a set of common physical traits, Latinos, as a group in this country, tend to identify themselves more by their ethnicity, meaning a shared set of cultural traits, like language or customs. So for the census the clear answer on ethnic origins is "Hispanic," since it is their main identifier. But then there is another question asking them about their race, but people of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin may be of any race, and that is why more than a third of Latinos (18 million) checked the "other" box. Census Bureau officials have acknowledged that the questionnaire has a
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problem, and say they are wrestling with how to get more Latinos to pick a race instead of just putting "other." Some experts say officials are right to go back to the drawing table to rewrite those questions, because "whenever you have people who can't find themselves in the question, it's a bad question."
Because the census data on race serves many purposes, including determining the makeup of voting districts, and monitoring discriminatory practices in hiring and racial disparities in education and health, when respondents don't choose a race, the Census Bureau assigns them one based on factors like the racial makeup of their neighborhood, inevitably leading to a less accurate count. Latinos, who currently make up close to 20% of the nation's population, say they are too racially mixed to settle on one of the government-sanctioned standard races. At a time when many multiracial Americans are proudly asserting their mixed-race identity, many Latinos, an overwhelmingly diverse population with Indian, European, African and other roots, are sidestepping or ignoring questions of race. However, it is clear that race matters. How Latinos identify themselves-and how the census counts them-affects the political clout of Latinos and other minority groups. While the majority of Latinos identify themselves as racially white, some of the latest research shows that many of them drop the Latino label to call themselves simply "white." A study published last year in the Journal of Labor Economics found that the parents of more than a quarter of third-generation children with Mexican ancestry do not identify their children as Latino on census forms. Most of this occurs among the offspring of parents or grandparents married to non-Mexicans, usually non-Hispanic whites. Over the decades, the Census Bureau has repeatedly altered how it asks the race question, and on the 2010 form, it added a sentence spelling out that "Hispanic origins are not races." This change helped steer 5% more Latinos away from "some other race," with the vast majority of those choosing the white category. Census critics like ourselves say the government must move on from racial distinctions based on outdated forms of categorizing people and adapt to Americans' sense of self.