{"id":36514,"date":"2014-05-26T06:43:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36514"},"modified":"2014-05-26T06:44:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:44:04","slug":"the-census-cant-fit-latinos-into-a-race-box-and-its-causing-more-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36514","title":{"rendered":"The Census Can’t Fit Latinos Into A Race Box And It’s Causing More Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Census Can’t Fit Latinos Into A Race Box And It’s Causing More Confusion<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n2014-05-22<\/p>\n

Roque Planas<\/strong><\/a>, Editor<\/p>\n

Pew<\/a> revealed the findings of a study this month that shows some 2.5 million U.S. Latinos changed their race category from \u201csome other race\u201d to \u201cwhite\u201d<\/a> between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.<\/p>\n

The news prompted The New York Times<\/em><\/a> and Slate<\/em><\/a> to speculate that perhaps the United States isn\u2019t headed toward a majority-minority status as many envision, given that, in the words of Slate<\/em>, \u201ca surprising number of Hispanics opted to identify themselves as \u2018white\u2019 in the last census.\u201d Both articles say that the tendency toward identifying as white may mark an evolving pattern of assimilation into whiteness on the part of light-skinned Hispanics\u2014an idea disputed by Latino Rebels<\/em><\/a>, who questioned the non-Hispanic authors’ understanding of Latinidad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea that Latinos will swell the ranks of the whites is an interesting theory, and perhaps even accurate, but the statistics released by Pew hardly support such a sweeping statement. What\u2019s equally if not more likely is that the study reveals less about an evolving Latino identity or pattern of assimilation and more about the Census\u2019s admittedly faulty system for classifying Hispanics.<\/p>\n

The words \u201cLatino\u201d and \u201cHispanic\u201d do not refer to a race<\/strong>\u2014they refer to a multiracial ethnicity composed primarily of indigenous, European and African peoples and, most commonly, people of mixed race. In Latin America, there\u2019s lots of different ways to describe people of mixed race\u2014mestizo (mixed European and indigenous heritage) and mulato<\/a> (mixed European and African heritage) being the most common.<\/p>\n

The study reported by Pew this month isn\u2019t the first indicator that more Latinos are identifying as white on the Census. The total share of Latinos self-identifying in the Census rose from 47.9 percent in 2000 to 53 percent in 2010.<\/p>\n

But before jumping to the conclusion that Latinos are selecting \u201cwhite\u201d because of shifting racial ideas or assimilation, let\u2019s consider a few characteristics of the Latino community…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Census Can’t Fit Latinos Into A Race Box And It’s Causing More Confusion The Huffington Post 2014-05-22 Roque Planas, Editor Pew revealed the findings of a study this month that shows some 2.5 million U.S. Latinos changed their race category from \u201csome other race\u201d to \u201cwhite\u201d between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. The news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,14646,20],"tags":[17387,2425],"class_list":["post-36514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-latino","category-usa","tag-roque-planas","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}