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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Opinion: The next Census could reveal a very different America | |
By Cristian Arroyo-Santiago, CNN | |
Updated: | |
4:53 PM EDT, Fri May 3, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
If you’re a self-identified Hispanic or Latino, or a Middle Eastern | |
or North African (MENA) person in the US, chances are that every 10 | |
years answering the Census gives you pause. More specifically, you | |
might have been challenged to answer the race question, which, at least | |
until the last Census in 2020, included five categories: White, Black | |
or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian and� | |
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. | |
According to , of the 54.6 million Americans who reported that they | |
identify as Hispanic or Latino, 43.6% either did not respond to the | |
race question or responded by selecting the “Some Other Race” | |
option, a category that’s not federally recognized. As for the in | |
the country, they are are classified as White – a racial category | |
many represented by. | |
Now, the (Statistical Policy Directive No. 15) in the federal | |
government, as set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), are | |
about to undergo the biggest change in almost 30 years after a | |
revision announced late last month. The two most controversial changes | |
are the introduction of a combined question for race and ethnicity | |
and the addition of two categories — MENA and Hispanic or | |
Latino — as possible answers to that single question. Until | |
this change, people could select “Hispanic or Latino” as an | |
ethnicity but couldn’t designate it as their race. | |
The announcement has been embraced by some and criticized by others� | |
within and outside the affected communities. It has the potential to | |
significantly change how the population of the US is viewed and to help | |
shape government policy in new ways. | |
These standards not only apply to the decennial census but to the | |
American Community Survey and all federal agencies’ surveys and | |
administrative forms. The OMB the Office of the US Chief | |
Statistician is leading these efforts “to help agencies collect and | |
release data under these updated standards as quickly as possible.” | |
asked a range of scholars, thinkers and activists to weigh in on the | |
announcement. These are their takes. The opinions expressed are those | |
of the authors: | |
Robyn Autry: The inescapably social character of the OMB racial | |
categories | |
There’s no getting racial labels right, at least not in any technical | |
or biological sense. Instead, we try to get their political | |
significance right and to capture how these terms are actually used and | |
lived. It has never felt right to say that an Arab American is white, | |
or that some people must belong to racial and ethnic groups. Our | |
feelings about these labels and identities, including who ought to | |
claim them and using what criteria, change with time because race is | |
“” that never fully corresponds to differences we think we see like | |
skin tone and hair texture. Categories are revised, not because a | |
population has been discovered or lost, but because of pressure to | |
describe it better. | |
These distinctions are impossible to get right but too much of American | |
society is organized around racial differences to stop counting, | |
despite its imprecision and troubled history. Even in countries like | |
France where such data is, entrenched racial disparities persist but | |
are harder to mobilize around. | |
Many countries have fretted endlessly about how to get the numbers | |
right. In,” sociologist Mara Loveman tracks shifts in the public | |
thinking about how and whether to collect racial data in Latin America | |
with the effect of making some groups, namely those with African and | |
indigenous ancestry, appear more or less visible. | |
The OMB changes – adding MENA and Hispanic or Latino as racial | |
categories and combining the race and ethnicity question – mean that | |
the other categories will be impacted, namely the White population will | |
again to be in freefall. | |
Others worry that Black Arabs may be or feel torn about which box they | |
are meant to tick, or how many. This is also true for | |
Armenian-Americans whose label is not listed as one of the MENA | |
sub-categories, although they can write it in. But we can go a step | |
further and wonder how we will agitate over the criteria used to | |
self-select into the MENA category in the first place. | |
What does it mean to “self-identify” in this vast context with | |
global reverberations? Is it really up to us as individuals? Will we | |
scrutinize who checks the MENA box and label them and? Ultimately, we | |
bring all of society to bear when we tick those boxes, recognizing that | |
our choice is influenced as much by how we see ourselves as how others | |
do. That is the inescapably social character of these categories. | |
Robyn Autry is a sociologist and director of the Allbritton Center for | |
the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University. She is the author of | |
“Desegregating the Past: The Public Life of Memory in the US and | |
South Africa.” | |
Arturo Vargas: The Census will finally ask the right questions on race | |
and ethnicity | |
The 2030 Census will see a combined question on race and ethnicity — | |
a welcome and overdue development that marks a considerable shift from | |
the 2020 Census. | |
In the last , 8% of Latinos left the race question unanswered, and | |
35% indicated they were of “Some Other Race.” Nearly did not | |
see themselves in the five race categories recognized under federal | |
data collection standards. As a result, “Some Other Race” became | |
the . | |
In previous counts, many Latinos were tallied as White, a category with | |
which most did not identify. To mitigate this issue, the Census Bureau | |
conducted to identify a solution before 2020. The revealed a | |
single question combining race and ethnicity led to better data on all | |
respondents, especially Latinos. | |
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials | |
Educational Fund supported this combined question approach. However, to | |
make this modification, the OMB needed to revise its data standards, a | |
change that under President Donald Trump. | |
That all changed in late March when OMB announced that — after | |
picking up where it left off in 2017 and a year-long review that | |
included extensive public input — it is revising how it asks about | |
race and ethnicity by using a combined question approach. | |
While we applaud this progress, key stakeholders, including some Afro | |
Latino researchers and community leaders, a combined question could | |
result in data loss on respondents identifying as both Latino and | |
Black. And while there is suggesting otherwise, these concerns | |
warrant consideration and should be addressed by the government as it | |
implements this new approach. | |
Although this approach must be done correctly to fully account for our | |
racial and ethnic diversity, with this new path forward, we now have | |
the opportunity for a better way to collect data on Latinos. | |
Arturo Vargas is the Chief Executive Officer of the National | |
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) | |
Educational Fund, a national non-profit, non-partisan organization | |
working to promote the full participation of Latinos in civic life — | |
and the CEO of NALEO, a national membership organization of Latino | |
policymakers and their supporters. He’s the chair of the 2030 Census | |
Advisory Committee. | |
Tanya Katerí Hernández: For Latinos, race and ethnicity are not the | |
same thing | |
The to list Latino ethnicity as commensurate with the existing | |
racial categories on federal government data collection forms like the | |
Census is mistakenly rooted in the idea that Latin American� | |
mestizo/mixed-race culture . Hence the notion that Latinos are too | |
mixed to embrace race. | |
The reality of actual Latin American census taking gives the lie to� | |
the OMB presumption that Latin American cultures create Latino | |
resistance to racial identity. | |
It also illuminates the harm to Afro Latinos of the new OMB standard | |
to have Latino treated as equivalent to racial categories rather than | |
as a separate ethnicity question that would enable Latinos to indicate | |
they are both ethnically Latino and also have a racial identity. | |
In , many residents self-identify as White, Black, Asian and | |
Indigenous on their census forms without any angst or confusion about | |
what the racial categories mean. Nor do they flock to the racial | |
ambiguity of a “Some Other Race” box fill-in. | |
Black social justice activists in the region have long noted that the | |
availability of the lobbying for . This is why the has noted that | |
when governments hinder the collection of statistical racial data it | |
“stands in the way of the progressive realization of their rights and | |
inclusion in public policies.” | |
The disinclination some non-Black Latinos in the United States have | |
with acknowledging the relevance of their racial appearance is thus not | |
a Latino culturally-determined discomfort with racial categories, but | |
rather a reflection of US racial politics. For some non-Black Latinos, | |
it is undesirable to check a race box and thereby acknowledge the | |
relevance of , , harm and privilege that exist within US Latino | |
ethnicity. | |
Importantly, there are other ways to address the complexity of Latino | |
identity that do not block the ability to collect meaningful racial | |
data. The scholars who make up the provided the OMB with other | |
worthy alternatives to consider, which they ignored. | |
Now the US Census Bureau compounds that error by appointing a devoid | |
of any Afro Latino experts. These combined failures now risk having� | |
systemic racism rendered invisible while Latino decision-makers | |
continue to . The OMB reform needs further reform. | |
Tanya Katerí Hernández, is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law | |
at Fordham Law School, and author of “.” | |
Justin Gest: Census forms make one nation divisible | |
On March 3, 2015, the US Census Bureau published a report projecting | |
that by 2044, the United States would become a country — that is, | |
a country where immigration and fertility rates lead America’s ethnic | |
and racial minorities to outnumber the “White” majority. | |
One interpretation of US politics ever since might divide the country | |
between those unfazed by the prospect of this demographic milestone, | |
and those who are deeply disconcerted. | |
However, the milestone relies on a narrow definition of “White” | |
people that excludes Latinos, self-identify as white on US Census | |
surveys. | |
In many ways, this explains why the politics around revising the survey | |
are so fraught. If the Census treats being “Latino” as mutually | |
exclusive with being “White,” it reinforces the logic behind a | |
“majority minority” milestone — which has some Latino | |
activists but veils the way many Latinos . | |
And yet, more than White or Black adults, Latinos say that the | |
Census’ present metrics them either. | |
People from Latin America and the Caribbean are often mestizo, or of | |
mixed Indigenous, European and African roots — which are just not | |
captured by Census categories. Asked to freely describe their race or | |
origin, they are Hispanic, Latino or Latinx (28%) or refer to their | |
country or region of their ancestors (28%). Still, another 11% of | |
Latinos primarily identify as “American” and 9% primarily identify | |
as “White.” | |
Treating Latinos as a “race” is just as problematic as the | |
artificial grouping of , and . We would do better by embracing the | |
complexity of the American population on Census forms that offer long | |
menus that record all Americans’ countries of ancestry and how | |
these diverse origins intersect with religion, sexuality, nativity and | |
the social constructs of race. | |
The results would reveal how America is a cross-section of the world, | |
an immigrant-origin nation that no simplistic categories — or | |
“majority minority” dichotomy — should divide. | |
is an associate professor at George Mason University’s Schar School | |
of Policy and Government. He is the author of , including “Majority | |
Minority” and “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in | |
an Age of Immigration and Inequality.” | |
Thomas Simsarian Dolan: The necessary corrections the White House will | |
have to entrust MENA people to make | |
While the new “” racial category adopted by the is a step in the | |
right direction, its definitions echo a century of the federal | |
government’s struggles to define the region and accurately classify | |
the very MENA peoples it claims to represent. | |
When Arabs, Armenians, and smaller numbers of Sephardic Jews, Kurds, | |
and Turks came to the US and Latin America at the end of the nineteenth | |
century, they were almost universally classified as “Turks” since | |
they came from the Ottoman Empire – “” – though very few were | |
actually Turkish. | |
After 1900, the Census added “,” but this term was often used to | |
refer to an ethnic grab bag of “” identities, from a historic | |
region spanning from present-day Turkey to Iraq. Though largely | |
discredited after the Holocaust, eugenicists like the American and | |
Nazi racialized Arabs, Armenians and Jews together, which | |
underwrote , surveillance and across the Atlantic World. | |
After World War II, the emergence of newly independent nations and | |
Arab-Israeli wars shifted common sense away from a pluralist, | |
multiethnic region toward one stereotyped as “Arab” and/or | |
“Muslim.” | |
Still, definitions of the “Middle East” varied wildly: in , the US | |
Department of State defined the “Middle East” as spanning from Iran | |
to Burma; in , it stopped using “Middle East” in favor of “Near | |
East;” and in , redefined the “Near East” to include some | |
Contrarily, the defined the region as stretching from Morocco to | |
Bangladesh, a logic reiterated in George W. Bush’s “,” which | |
included (and targeted) peoples from the Caucasus, and parts of Central | |
and South Asia. | |
The Census also participated in these syllogisms — alternately | |
labeling the region as “” or “,” or even defaulting to .” | |
When it did disaggregate “Middle Easterners,” however, it | |
consistently, and rightly, grouped Arabs, Armenians and Iranians | |
together. | |
That’s why the specific exclusion of Armenians, as well as multiple | |
“Black” Arab groups is so inexplicable. Necessary corrections will | |
require that the White House entrust MENA peoples to be experts in our | |
own experiences, and rectify policies that have historically erased us. | |
Thomas Simsarian Dolan is currently an American Council of Learned | |
Societies Emerging Voices Fellow in Middle Eastern and South Asian | |
Studies at Emory University, after completing a year as a Fulbright US | |
Teaching Scholar at American University in Cairo. | |
Nancy López and Alan Aja: Asking about Latinos’ ethnicity and race | |
in one question contributes to myth of a post-racial America | |
The (1947) US Supreme Court decision, preceding Brown v. Board of | |
Education (1954), highlighted the complexity of race within the | |
Latinx community. , born to Mexican and Puerto Rican parents, was not | |
allowed to enroll in a California school because she was “too | |
dark.” But her lighter-skinned cousins were told they could enroll at | |
the school. | |
The Mendez family’s experience underscores that Latinx people have | |
never been treated as a racial monolith. “” or the race strangers | |
perceive us to be based on a conglomeration of physical | |
characteristics, including skin color, facial features and hair | |
texture, shapes experiences with discrimination and access to | |
opportunity. | |
Yet the OMB released new for collecting data that treat | |
Hispanic/Latino ethnicity/cultural heritage as a co-equal category with | |
race/visual status. The primary rationale for this change is that large | |
numbers of Latinxs select “,” perhaps because the Census has never | |
tested categories like “” or “.” | |
It is important to note that the revised OMB guidelines do not prohibit | |
the collection of additional data points, including separate questions | |
on race as a visual status and ethnicity as a social status related to | |
cultural heritage. | |
shows that separate race and ethnicity questions allow us to learn | |
that Black Hispanic/Latinxs have higher levels of education than other | |
Latinxs, especially White-identified Latinxs, but do not experience the | |
same . Black Latinxs experience higher unemployment rates, are less | |
likely to own a home, report, are subject to and live in more | |
segregated neighborhoods compared to other Latinxs. | |
These inequities would go unnoticed if race and ethnicity had been | |
combined in one question. In fact, a recent on Black Latinxs | |
utilized 2019 data because more recent data from 2021 merged origins | |
with race, rendering it unusable. | |
Asking about race/visual status and ethnicity/cultural heritage in the | |
same question results in statistical gaslighting, promoting the . How | |
else will we know if we have eradicated the ? Making Hispanic/Latino | |
ethnicity a co-equal category with race is not the answer. | |
Nancy López is a professor in the Department of Sociology & | |
Criminology at The University of New Mexico. Alan Aja is professor & | |
chair in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latinx Studies at Brooklyn | |
College at The City University of New York. | |
Jesenia De Moya Correa: A Latino racial and ethnic category is the | |
same as a Latino voting bloc — a fiasco | |
, so combining race and ethnicity for the group could tamper with the | |
collecting of the federal data that journalists use to surface the | |
issues that affect them. Limited access to disaggregated data creates | |
barriers to reporting on the racial disparities that impact Latinos’� | |
, , just to name a few. | |
Latinos experience and elsewhere. | |
Whether pardos, mulatos, trigueños or mestizos, being overlooked� | |
by design isn’t new to Afro Latinos in the US. We’ve all learned | |
about when it comes to buying a house, living in a certain | |
neighborhood, attending a specific school or having access to healthy, | |
green spaces. | |
Using Census data, a examined Afro Latinos in the US, including the | |
group’s unique trends in education, employment, and homeownership | |
compared to non-Black Latinos in the country. The report, published | |
last year, highlighted the importance of racial status in bringing | |
visibility to the inequities that affect Latino communities. Some � | |
highlight the importance and to address economic disparities among� | |
. | |
In a society obsessed with binary narratives, the journalists dedicated | |
to these communities had already found themselves navigating a sea of | |
data sets in favor of presenting a fairer picture of the Latino | |
experiences. With these changes, journalists may now find themselves | |
relying on flawed governmental data for their news reports, which could | |
lead to deeper marginalization and stereotypes. | |
Combining the federal standards on race and ethnicity into one single | |
category will oversimplify the Latino experiences and unfortunately� | |
most . | |
Jesenia De Moya Correa is a journalist specializing in science, | |
health and environmental issues affecting Latinos and their connections | |
in the Americas. She leads the Latino Media Initiative at the City | |
University of New York’s Center for Community Media at the Craig | |
Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. | |
Rima Meroueh: The addition of a MENA racial category extends equal | |
opportunities for Arab Americans | |
The OMB’s addition of a “Middle Eastern or North African (MENA)� | |
reporting category is a long-fought victory that is overdue. Since the | |
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of | |
1965, respectively, the federal government has used data on race and | |
ethnicity to ensure that minority populations have equal opportunity to | |
benefit from federal programs and services and are protected from | |
discrimination. | |
However, inaccurate classification has negatively impacted the ability | |
for people from the Middle East or North Africa to benefit from these | |
programs and protections. Research has demonstrated how the lack of a | |
racial and ethnic identifier the assessment of health disparities in | |
Arab and MENA populations. This is because since 1977, the OMB has � | |
all federal agencies to report data on individuals from MENA countries | |
under “White” populations. | |
This was the result of a regulation issued by the OMB in 1977, under | |
the authority Congress granted them to coordinate the federal | |
statistical system, including how agencies collect and report data on | |
race and ethnicity. By combining MENA and White data into one racial | |
category, the federal government has misrepresented the realities not | |
only Arab Americans face, but all racial and ethnic populations across | |
the United States. | |
With the recent addition of a MENA category, Arab Americans will be | |
counted and therefore seen in the data across all federal agencies, | |
including the decennial US Census. Our government can finally conduct | |
an accurate analysis of racial and ethnic disparities and/or | |
discrimination, and analyze whether individuals from the MENA region, | |
including Arab Americans, have had our rights infringed upon. The | |
addition has the potential of also addressing and tackling disparities | |
in health care, business, education, and more. | |
Adding a MENA category will extend to Arab Americans and the broader | |
MENA community the same opportunities to engage in the civic and | |
political process as all citizens, giving us a voice in the politics of | |
our nation. Most importantly, this change means recognition, | |
self-determination and power for a community whose voices and | |
contributions have been silenced for too long. | |
Rima Meroueh is the Director of the National Network for Arab American | |
Communities, a national institution of ACCESS, the largest Arab | |
American community nonprofit in the United States offering a wide range | |
of social, economic, health and educational services to a diverse | |
population. | |
Bárbara Abadía-Rexach: Adding Black to all my identities is a | |
political act of resistance | |
As a Black Puerto Rican woman and anthropologist, I aim to explore ways | |
to critically and politically challenge the racial categories imposed | |
on us Latinos in the country and to take into account other societal | |
factors that make our experiences as non-White individuals in the US | |
particularly unique and diverse. | |
I was born and raised in a country that, for political purposes, is not | |
even a nation. Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United | |
States — a US colony. In Puerto Rico, I learned that I am Puerto | |
Rican, of course. But I was also taught that us Puerto Ricans are a | |
mixture of three races: Indigenous Taínos, White Spaniards and Black | |
Africans. However, in that same archipelago that appears to celebrate� | |
mestizaje, I have survived anti-Black racism. | |
Outside of Puerto Rico, my blackness distances me from my Puerto Rican | |
identity. “Where are you from?” is a recurring question. | |
Therefore, I self-identify as a Black Puerto Rican woman, a Black | |
Latina/Afro Latina, a Black Antillean and a Black Caribbean. Adding | |
Black to all my identities is a political act of resistance to | |
challenge societal notions of what a Puerto Rican or Latina is, should | |
be or should look like. | |
The conversations and initiatives that have taken place as a result of | |
the (2015-2024), proclaimed by the United Nations, confirm that | |
racial inequities are not just an admitted problem in the US that | |
affects African Americans. While Latino populations, as an ethnic | |
group, suffer inequality and xenophobia from being racialized as | |
non-white, visibly Black Latinos additionally face anti-Black racism in | |
this country. | |
Although the racial categories used in the US are inappropriate for | |
Latino communities, imposing Latino as a racial category will not� | |
yield accurate data on the diversity of that ethnic group. And beyond | |
the data and statistics, it will place Black Latino people in greater | |
precariousness. | |
Latino is not a racial category and to ignore race, despite being a | |
problematic social construct, is to deny the existence of human beings | |
who are treated differently. When the treatment that Black Latinos | |
receive is finally humanized, racial or ethnic categories will not be | |
necessary. | |
Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach is an anthropologist and an assistant | |
professor at the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco | |
State University. She’s the author of the book “Musicalizando la | |
Raza: La racialización en Puerto Rico a través de la música.” | |
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