Mixed Race Studies

How the Census Misleads on Race

The Wall Street Journal
2021-08-29

John B. Judis

A new ‘diversity index’ and a subtle change in a question have resulted in an undercount of whites.

The most common reaction to the release of the 2020 census was summed up in the headline “Census Data show the number of white people fell.” The data show the number of whites declining by 8.6%. This observation was often coupled with a political projection: that while gerrymandering could benefit Republicans in 2022, the political future belongs to the Democratic Party, which commands large majorities among minorities.

But these conclusions about race and politics rely on misleading census results. Contrary to Democratic hopes and right-wing anxieties, America’s white population didn’t shrink much between 2010 and 2020 and might actually have grown.

“Races” are defined not by biology but by cultural convention. As late as the early 20th century, many Anglo-Americans didn’t identify Southern or Eastern Europeans as “white.” In 1918, 33-year-old Harry S. Truman, while visiting New York City, wrote his cousin: “This town has 8,000,000 people. 7,500,000 of ’em are of Israelish extraction. (400,000 wops and the rest are white people.)” After World War II, Jews and Italians became identified as “white.”

Something similar seems to be happening to many Americans of Hispanic and Asian origin. About 3 in 10 Hispanics and Asians intermarry, usually to a white spouse. According to a 2016 study by economists Brian Duncan and Stephen J. Trejo, 35% of third-generation Hispanics of mixed parentage no longer identify as Hispanic; and 55% of third-generation Asian-Americans of mixed parentage no longer identify as Asian. A 2017 Pew report found that among Americans of Hispanic origin who don’t identify themselves as Hispanic, 59% said that they were seen by others as white…

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EXCLUSIVE! MASC Analysis of Census 2020: Latinos Make Up A Majority of the Multiracial Population

Multiracial Americans of Southern California
2021-08-23

The recent release of Census 2020 demographic data has enabled us to envision a new version of the country we live in. The following charts and discussion have been prepared to tell a story of unique interest to the multiracial community in a way that may not be easy to find anywhere else. Before we get too into the data it should be noted that the Census Bureau warns about interpreting changes in data between 2010 and 2020. Differences in methodology contributed to these changes. But we believe the major trends described in the following are still valid. Some changes have been so dramatic they exceed the impact from methodology change alone. To learn more about the methodology changes click HERE.

Read the entire article here.

This Is How The White Population Is Actually Changing Based On New Census Data

National Public Radio
2021-08-22

Hansi Lo Wang, Correspondent, National Desk

Ruth Talbot

Some news coverage of the latest 2020 census results may have led you to think the white population in the U.S. is shrinking or in decline.

The actual story about the country’s biggest racial group is more complicated than that.

And it’s largely the result of a major shift in how the U.S. census asks about people’s racial identities. Since 2000, the forms for the national, once-a-decade head count have allowed participants to check off more than one box when answering the race question.

While the 2020 census results show fewer people checking off only the “White” box compared with in 2010, there was an almost 316% jump in the number of U.S. residents who identified with the “White” category and one or more of the other racial groups. Their responses boosted the size of a white population that includes anyone who marked “White.”…

Read the entire article here.

What Does It Mean To Be Latino? The ‘Light-Skinned Privilege’ Edition

Code Switch
National Public Radio
2021-07-14

Shereen Marisol Meraji, Co-host/ Senior Producer

Kumari Devarajan, Producer

Leah Donnella, Editor

Maria Hinojosa (left) and Maria Garcia. Krystal Quiles for NPR

Maria Garcia and Maria Hinojosa are both Mexican American, both mestiza, and both relatively light-skinned. But Maria Hinojosa strongly identifies as a woman of color, whereas Maria Garcia has stopped doing so. So in this episode, we’re asking: How did they arrive at such different places? To find out, listen to our latest installment in this series about what it means to be Latino.

Listen to the story (00:37:15) here.

The multiracial identity revolution among U.S. Latinos

Axios
2021-08-19

Russell Contreras, Justice and Race Reporter

Yacob Reyes, Newsdesk Reporter

A “Stand Up and Be Counted” U.S. census rally for Latinos in Langley Park, Md. Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The number of U.S. Latinos identifying as multiracial soared during the last decade, while those identifying as solely white dropped significantly, according to the latest census.

Why it matters: The dramatic shift in racial identity among Latinos came after the census offered more options in 2020, giving Latinos the opportunity to officially embrace Indigenous and Black backgrounds…

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy

Lexington Books
May 2021
174 pages
Trim: 6½ x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4985-4624-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4985-4625-6

Michelle Holder, Associate Professor of Economics
John Jay College, City University of New York

Alan A. Aja, Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy outlines the current position and status of Afro-Latinxs in the economy of the United States. Very little research has thus far been disseminated in the field of economics on the contributions of Afro-Latinxs regarding income and wealth, labor market status, occupational mobility, and educational attainment. On the other hand, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social science fields have produced more research on Afro-Latinxs; the discipline of economics is, thus, significantly behind the curve in exploring the economic dimensions of this group. While the Afro-Latinx community constitutes a comparatively small segment of the U.S. population, and is often viewed as the nexus between two of the country’s largest minority groups—African Americans and Latinxs, who comprise 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of the U.S. population—Holder and Aja outline how the group’s unique economic position is different than non-black Latinxs. Despite possessing higher levels of education relative to the Latinx community as a whole, U.S. Afro-Latinxs do not experience expected returns in income and earnings, underscoring the role anti-Blackness plays in everyday life regardless of ancestral origin. The goal of this book is to provide a foundation in the economic dimensions of Afro-Latinxs in the U.S. which can be used to both complement and supplement research conducted on this group in other major disciplines.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION –DEMOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
• Chapter 2: INCOME, POVERTY AND WEALTH AMONG AFRO LATINXS
• Chapter 3: THE LABOR MARKET STATUS OF AFRO-LATINXS
• Chapter 4: AFRO-LATINAS IN THE U.S.
• Chapter 5: AFRO-LATINXS AND INCARCERATION
• Chapter 6: AFRO–LATINXS, DISCRIMINATION AND THE NEED FOR BOLD POLICIES AND MOVEMENTS

Behind the Surprising Jump in Multiracial Americans, Several Theories

The New York Times
2021-08-13

Sabrina Tavernise, National Correspondent

Tariro Mzezewa, National Correspondent

Giulia Heyward, 2021-2022 reporting fellow for the National desk

Kori Alexis Trataros, of White Plains, N.Y., sees generational differences in how Americans think about race. “Our generation is so great at having open conversation,” she said. Janick Gilpin for The New York Times

Families across the country have grown more diverse. A design change in the census form also allowed the government to report people’s identity in greater detail.

WASHINGTON — The Census Bureau released a surprising finding this week: The number of non-Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial had jumped by 127 percent over the decade. For people who identified as Hispanic, the increase was even higher.

The spike sent demographers scrambling. Was the reason simply that more multiracial babies were being born? Or that Americans were rethinking their identities? Or had a design change in this year’s census form caused the sudden, unexpected shift?

The answer, it seems, is all of the above.

Multiracial Americans are still a relatively small part of the population but the increase over the decade was substantial and, the data shows, often surprising in its geography. The number of Americans who identified as non-Hispanic and more than one race jumped to 13.5 million from 6 million. The number of Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial grew to 20.3 million from 3 million. In all, the two groups now represent about 10 percent of the population.

The largest increase in non-Hispanic Americans of two or more races was in Oklahoma, followed by Alaska and Arkansas.

Americans who were mixed race recorded a wide range of identities. People who identified themselves as both white and Asian made up about 18 percent of the total number of non-Hispanic multiracial Americans in 2020. Those who reported their race as both white and Black accounted for 20.5 percent. Americans who were both white and Native American were 26 percent of the total, according to Andrew Beveridge, who founded Social Explorer, a data analytics company…

Read the entire article here.

“Latinidad Is Cancelled”: Confronting an Anti-Black Construct

Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture
Volume 3, Issue 3 (July 2021)
pages 58-79
DOI: 10.1525/lavc.2021.3.3.58

Tatiana Flores, Professor of Latino & Caribbean Studies and Art History
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Adopting a hemispheric perspective, this essay problematizes the construct of latinidad by foregrounding how it reproduces Black erasure. I argue that “Latin America,” rather than being a geographical designator, is an imagined community that is Eurocentric to the degree that its conceptual boundaries exclude African diaspora spaces. I then turn to understandings of whiteness across borders, contrasting perceptions of racial mixture in the United States and the Hispanophone Americas. Lastly, I examine works by (Afro-)Latinx artists whose nuanced views on race demonstrate the potential of visual representation to provide insight into this complex topic beyond the black-white binary.

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The Spectacle of Latinx Colorism

The New York Times
2021-07-30

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Tina Tona

This summer’s controversy over the underrepresentation of dark-skinned Afro-Latinos in “In the Heights,” the Hollywood adaptation of the Broadway musical, laid bare the cancer of colorism in Latinx communities in the United States. The reckoning was long overdue, a pain that goes back as long as our community has existed. And the mainstream media was enraptured. It created what I think of as the spectacle — el espectáculo. I haven’t seen as high a demand for Latinx voices since the Pulse shooting.

“Latinidad” is the shared language, childhood references, music, food, inside jokes and idiosyncratic TV Spanglish among the Latinx in this country. It is the sameness that unites us no matter where we grow up, and no matter where our parents were from. But the idea of sameness can devastate as much as it can connect. An open wound in this world of Latinx has been the shame around darkness, our own and that of our family and neighbors and compatriots. According to media by us or for us, dark-skinned Afro-Latinos do not exist and if they do, they aren’t Latino. Not really…

Read the entire essay here.

The ‘Heights’ of Anxiety and the Color Line: Racial Ambiguity in a Culture of Absolutes

Nerds of Color
2021-07-09

Lara Stapleton, Lecturer of English
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, New York

I once heard the great political philosopher and activist Angela Davis argue that Americans are so obsessed with race as an identifying feature that when we meet racially ambiguous people, we are anxious until we know on which side of the color line they fall. Upon hearing this, I was relieved by the articulation of something I had suspected was at the heart of my experience. It was like experiencing great art, that rush of adrenaline that comes with recognizing what we’ve known all along presented as fantastically new.

I say this because I am extremely racially ambiguous person, particularly in the United States where we traditionally discuss race as an absolute. I am bi-racial, Filipino and white, and I hear, from day-to-day, wildly different interpretations of who I am. I have been recently called “Kaitlin” on the train, and also described as many permutations of light brown people: Latinx, Native American, and Arab. I get Mediterranean, Jewish, and Sicilian and quite often, I am asked if I have some Black ancestry (which coincides also with being Latinx)…

Read the entire article here.