Don’t put race in a boxPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2015-01-13 20:10Z by Steven |
The Eastern Echo
Ypsilanti, Michigan
2015-01-11
One ought to talk about race like one talks about their mother’s age: very rarely and very discreetly. Given the Census Bureau’s outdated categories, I say it’s time for one of those rare and discreet conversations.
In January 2013, Haya El Nasser of USA Today reported that “many [Hispanics] feel boxed in by the current race categories . . . 95 percent of those who selected ‘some other race’ are Hispanic.” Last July, Fox News Latino reported that Detroit’s Mexico town not only withstood the brunt of Detroit’s most recent downturns but was spearheading Detroit’s economic recovery. But Detroit’s growing Hispanic community gets whitewashed by the Census.
By attempting to define race with neat little boxes, the Census Bureau is forcing an increasing number of Americans to check “other,” doing a disservice to Detroit’s growing Hispanic community and to Dearborn’s already sizable Middle Eastern community. In 2010, the Census categorized Dearborn, a city where one third of the residents speak Arabic, as over 89 percent white. But with a term nebulous enough to include everyone from Morocco to Murmansk and from Riyadh to Reykjavik, it should be no great surprise that the Census categorizes Dearborn as whiter than Montana. Race is difficult enough without the government trying to define it too…
Read the entire article here.