The Census Bureau is beginning the debate for the 2010 racial categories list. I received a query on a list serve yesterday asking what people thought about the term “Negro.” This leads me to believe that the Census is considering removing the term from the 2010 form. I expect there to be several debates over Census language and categories. Once the data is collected the other big issue will be how the data is tabulated and reported. Just to give you an idea here is a copy of the 2000 ethnicity (Spanish Origin) and race questions. This is exactly how they appeared last time.
If you would like to look at how the Census forms and race questions have changed throughout US history, here are a few links.
History of Census Racial Categories
Instructions and Copies of Census Long and Short Forms From 1790-1990
Why should this be difficult. The study reported on at http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050128_racefrm.htm states, “the new studies, some of which come from Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., suggest that the way people classify themselves by race reflects real and clear genetic differences among them.” So just put down these real categories as used by the researchers, and almost everyone will be able to get it right. Simple, right?
…
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!!
Kidding. I have kids of my own who are either Mexican or White, and can switch back and forth depending on whether they happen to say “milk” or “leche”. I happen to like the old forms, because my children get to be both “Mexican” and “White”, but most of my in-laws hate them, because they have no idea what to put for question #8.
I do not know if there are “real” racial categories right now or not, but even if there are, I do know that there will not be so for long.
For a second there I thought I was reading Robert or Brandon Berg. Hee Hee!!
How do aboriginal Latin Americans fit into this classification? Are they considered American Indians?
For future reference, I have a fairly strict policy of never linking to web sites with space-themed background images.
“How do aboriginal Latin Americans fit into this classification? Are they considered American Indians?”
As far as I know, yes. I think all the people aboriginal to North and South America are generally considered in that group. However, people are allowed to chose the categories themselves, and most Latinos who have aborignal ancestry don’t chose that classification. Last time, most Latinos chose white as their race, and I think other was second.
I was told by a Latina member of my Diocese’s Anti-Racism Commission that “Latino” is a race. She was quite emphatic about it. Seems the government disagrees with her. What do you all think?
I am an English, Irish, Scottish, Welch, Dutch and German American woman cohabitating with my boyfriend, who is a Spanish, Basque, French, Native South American (descendants of Incas?) Peruvian living in the States. We live in South Florida, where more than half of the population is Hispanic.
Because I am originally from Pennsylvania, I never had an occasion to refer to my ethnicity or race as anything but, perhaps, white. This is what we call privilege, I suppose. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I thought that “Hispanic” was more or less a race, in that my white family definitely did not think of Hispanic people as white. (Although, to better explain their sense of things, some members of my family also think that all Hispanic people are Mexicans.)
However, when I started dating my boyfriend and talked about white guys and black guys in a way that excluded him, he explained that he is also white (in that he is more white than Native American—a distinction he does make). His family members refer to themselves as white. They make a distinction between white and blond white, and I have not yet found an appropriate time to ask them which one I am, considering I am not Hispanic, but I have dark hair and dark eyes paired with very light skin.
Living here in South Florida, I have learned to refer to myself as Anglo or Anglo American in order to distinguish myself from white Hispanic. However, I am not really 100 percent Anglo considering I am also Irish and Scottish. Also, sometimes Hispanic people refer to me as white in a way that excludes them, and I’m not sure what to make of that. I have also learned not to use the term “Latin people” unless I mean to include Italian and French Americans, or just plain old Italian and French people, as well as Hispanics.
As you can see, it’s all very complicated in multicultural cities and relationships, and there’s really no way to know whether another person is understanding what you mean to describe or if you are offending them instead. And it will only get worse, or better, for me when my boyfriend and I have our own kids who will be not only be Spanish, English, Irish, Scottish, Basque, French, Welch, Native South American, Dutch and German, but will also be both American and Peruvian citizens. (I wonder if that will mean we have to fill out two census packets.) I have found that referring to my self as just “American” can simplify things at times, but my kids won’t even have that shortcut.
Just now I thought of a solution. Not to be flippant, but when people make animal hybrids, they usually combine the two parent breed names to create a new name for the offspring. For example, the pug and the beagle were mated to create the puggle. The lion and tiger were mated to create the liger. Both of these hybrid animal creations are attractive and fascinating. I hope my children will be, too. I think I will call their ethnicity Ameripanic or Hispanglo or Pervuopean. Or maybe I should just call them Globalization Babies. Cast your votes.
I hate this form.
Out of curiosity, are people allowed to be two or three types of hispanic? If you have four hispanic grandparents can you be and ethnic “Cuban-Puerto Rican-Guatemalan-Argentine”? How do you fit that in the box under “other”?
So what do us part-Latina, part-Anglo types do for an answer to number 7? Either “yes” or “no” is wrong. I’m not sure what to do about number 8 either. I have Navajo type mitochondrial DNA but no other connection to the tribe. Claiming it as a racial catagory seems deceptive given my utter lack of cultural connection, but ignoring the known DNA evidence doesn’t seem right either.
Dianne,
I would argue that there is no such thing as “Navajo DNA” for FWIW.
To all,
I wouldn’t think of Latin@s as a race (even though I think many people are starting to think that way) because Latin@s represent a very broad range of phenotypes; thus, a broad range of racial groups.
As before, the exercise you did last week notwithstanding, Middle Eastern is white. At least my [half white-American and half-Egyptian] kids would not have to think about how to fill it out.
I agree it is really unduly complicated regarding Latinos. (It almost reminds me of the old southern categories of black including “octaroon” and that sort of thing). Really, I wonder what anthropologists from the future would think about this sort orf fixation on how to label ourselves.
somewhere in the Principia Discordia, a mock application form (for membership in the POEE, i think it was) has a category titled “race” containing two checkboxes: “horse” and “human”.
that is the only form of the “choose your racial preference” question i, personally, would even contemplate answering. has been so ever since i first read the Principia.
I would agree that there are presumably no uniquely Navajo mitochondria (as not all descendants of whatever woman is (far enough back) the ancestor of all Navajo are themselves Navajo). Indeed, it is unlikely that all Navajo are necessarily descended from the same woman within the past 50,000 years. Surely, there are some people who are Navajo whose matrilineal line is eventually from somewhere else. However, I believe most Navajo are part of the Nadene mitochondrial lineage (one of 3 distinct Native American mitochondrial lineages). While many other tribes are also part of the Nadene lineage, no one whose direct maternal line is not Native American has Nadene mitochondria.
However, (to give an extreme example) someone who had a single thirty times great grandmother who was of the Nadene lineage, but who had no other more recent ancestors who were from the Nadene lineage, would have Nadene mitochondria if that one grandmother was in her direct matrilineal line. So it does seem dubious to claim to be Native American on the basis purely of mitochondrial DNA.
I wonder if the fact that Latin@s who are of indigenous American ancestry do not generally categorize themselves in the census as “American Indian or Alaskan Native” means that that category should be relabeled (or, at least, a third name listed).
Charles said, “I wonder if the fact that Latin@s who are of indigenous American ancestry do not generally categorize themselves in the census as “American Indian or Alaskan Native” means that that category should be relabeled (or, at least, a third name listed). ”
I think this actually says more about the Latin American concept of race than it does about the category labels. The literature I am familiar with suggests something similar to a “reverse one drop rule.” In other words, even having limited European ancestry makes one white. I think many Latino immigrants choose white for this reason rather than a misunderstanding of the language.
On another note, can you tell me where the concept “Nadene” DNA comes from? I’m curious what methodology groups use in assigning ethnicities/races based on DNA. I’ve been very curious ever since I started to see stories and advertisements for people who want to use DNA to “discover their ancestry.” If you have more info. You can send it to my email.
Rachel, I tried emailing you, but mail at rachelstavern dot com didn’t seem to work. Is that the correct address?
Oops, sorry. Send it to rachel at rachelstavern.com
I find this list pretty confusing. Is this the Census Bureau trying to respond to criticisms from the 2000 census, or is this form anticipating changes in immigration law or something like that? Maybe there should be a one-page list of common identifiers and we get to check off as many that apply or choose to write in our own. Forcing people into fairly narrow boxes like this only leads to confusion and delay.
Original Lee,
This is the actual 2000 census form.
Oroginal Lee said, “Forcing people into fairly narrow boxes like this only leads to confusion and delay.”
Maybe for some, but my sense is that most people don’t think about it much. People can mark more than one box on the race question. However, I think many people miss that point. That fact of the matter is that all surveys reduce choices to a few boxes. It’s just the reality of the methodology.
Rachel, sorry I missed that this was the 2000 form. I still think it would be simpler and less confusing to have a wide range of choices, with instructions to mark all that apply and maybe also a write-in space for Not Listed Above. This works for many of the surveys I see on professional topics, so I fail to see why this wouldn’t work for the Census Bureau. Unless the resulting granularity was too fine for political purposes, it should be a fairly straightforward change to make, and surely less confusing than the 2000 form. The Census Bureau can always do the bigger groupings later, when processing the data, which could be done through a guidance document with a public comment period.
For example (I’m not doing the boxes):
Check all boxes that Person 1 feels apply to himself/herself:
White Samoan Native Hawaiian Filipino
Black Vietnamese Chamorro East Indian
Asian Hmong Chinese Japanese
Native American Asian Indian Persian
Arab Guamanian Korean Frisian
And then after the data has been collected, they can discuss whether or not Filipino counts in the Asian category or the Pacific Islander category, and how significant it is that x percent of Filipino-Americans self-identify as Asians versus x percent as Pacific Islanders.
I tend to go toward the “get it all down and categorize later” mode of data collection, though.
Bother. The spacing didn’t work out right above. Oh, well, you get the idea, I think.
Race is a weird concept. It is clear that there are some groups of people who are more closely related to each other than to others outside of the group. And the catagorization can be useful. For example, if one is looking for a bone marrow donor, one is more likely to find a good match within the recipient’s “race” than outside of it. And so it is useful to know the race of potential donors and to actively recruit when there aren’t enough of a given “race.” Then there are certain diseases that come up more often in one “race” versus another. People whose ancestors came to the US from Africa (using a US-centric model of the world for the moment) are more likely to have hypertension, sickle cell anemia, and some types of heart problems than those whose ancestors migrated to Europe first. On the other hand, those whose ancestors came to the US via Europe are more vunerable to hereditary spherocytosis, cystic fibrosis, and skin cancer. Those whose relatives came via the Bering Strait are more vunerable to gall stones, diabetes, and alcholism. Knowing these things is worthwhile, since it can give hints as to which diseases need to be screened for most carefully.
But when one tries to rigorously define “race” it just sort of…evaporates. What does “genetically similar” even mean? If one looks at transthyretin polymorphisms, for example, then 90% of the world’s races exist within sub-Saharan Africa. If one looks at mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, one might conclude that there are 3 or 4 races per continent. And, of course, people don’t necessarily marry within their “race”, confusing the issue.
Yes, I know you have undoubtedly gone over all this before and with greater sophistication. I’m just trying to work out my own understanding, or lack thereof, of this issue.