Latinos Are Post-Racial! Booyah!

76 thoughts on Latinos Are Post-Racial! Booyah!

1. My husband and I were baffled by this census form as well. He is Mexican-American, I am white. And then where do we put our kids?
   It was confusing.

2. I’ve ALWAYS been confused by this conundrum. I’m Puerto Rican, (already a pretty big mix of things in there to begin with), and white, but my skin is about the color of notebook paper, so that creates a whole slew of other questions about “race” or “ethnicity” or “cultural identity” in and of itself.

   That being said, I’m a proud Puerto Rican woman. I have curves, and I love them. I have ridiculously curly hair that I REFUSE to beat into straightness, and I love it (most days). I have rhythm and can dance, (due to MANY holiday parties during my childhood involving alcohol and salsa music), and I LOVE that. I was also raised in a very Puerto Rican household, full of tradition, rich culture, and delicious food.

   But, to be fair, my skin IS white, and I get some privileges from that which my fellow Boricuas do not get. There should be more, US Census. My heritage is Puerto Rican, my skin is white as snow, and my current affiliation is some of one and some of another, forming a cohesive pattern of ME that can’t be described by the word “mixed”. So what now?

3. I’ve read about terms like “mestizo” and others used to describe people of the particular racial mix that many Latinos are. But I also have the vague feeling that the term is somehow racist or judgmental… what you read in textbooks doesn’t always correspond well to realities…

4. I think the Census is in a tough spot here. Being Latino is a race to some, kind of an ethnicity to others, sort of an “extra” race to still others. And you can be half-Latino, or just-barely-Latino, or you can consider yourself Latino but also black…

   Race and ethnicity are really complex, and the Census needs you to fill in bubbles. There’s never going to be a really good solution to this.

5. I self-identify as “mixed” because my grandparents came from _all over_ Europe. Granted, in the American context this makes me roughly as “white” as possible– but I’ve always identified as (in Obama’s terms) a “mut”. I know it takes an awful lot of white privilege to be able to identify as non-white and not be penalized, and yet…

6. I am half Irish/English/German and half Cuban, but I identify as Latina. I don’t consider myself as white, because I grew up around my Cuban family. I was very close to my abuelos, and I’m very close to my aunts and cousins now. I like my dad’s side (the white side), but we don’t hang out nearly as often and thus are not as close. Race and ethnicity are complicated for me :-\ That form would piss me off so much.

7. My grandmother is from Brazil, but the rest of my heritage is white and I definitely have all the privileges and cultural accoutrements of being white, so if I can’t fill in more than one bubble, I put “white.” The Census format is actually the one I like the most, where I can fill in white and Latina. The forms I hate are the ones where you can only choose one bubble, and I have to choose “White (non-Hispanic or -Latino).” I mean, I identify as white, but that particular phrasing just feels like a blatant lie.

8. I’m thrilled to pieces that the census finally got the Latino thing right. Regardless of the dominant mestizo image portrayed in the media, people of Latin heritage are black, white, Asian, Native American, and all kinds of mixtures of the above. I mean for goodness’ sake, both Sammy Sosa and Cameron Diaz identify as Latino, and no matter how many jars of skin-lightening cream Sosa smears on his face, nobody can seriously say those two are the same race. I’m tired of light-skinned Latinos who don’t want to call themselves white and Afro-Latinos who don’t want to say they’re black all claiming their ethnicity as a race. Race itself is not even a biological reality, so let’s not complicate things further by adding fake socio-cultural baggage-laden categories into the mix.

9. @Karak. In Mexico, at least, mestizo is a perfectly nice, non-insulting word. In large part because 80% of Mexicans are mestizos and the State-approved definition of Mexican national identity is based on the concept of mestizaje. I honestly don’t know if this’d be different in other parts of Latin America.

   If you look at the Latin root of the word, mestizo just means “mixed”, which is what I specify when I fill US forms and applications.

10. Right on, Uju.

    On Question 5, I wrote “mestiza.” I’m aware of the term’s problematic colonialist history, but it’s one I’m determined to reclaim because it doesn’t force me to deny any of my blood, North American or European.

11. I know it takes an awful lot of white privilege to be able to identify as non-white and not be penalized, and yet…

    Do you think a white person identifying as “mixed” would be offensive to a non-white (or at least not-all-white) mixed person? My first impression is that it sounds a little appropriating (like white people who dig up that 1/128th First Nations heritage and act like they’re “ethnic”) but YMMV. Maybe that’s more an American concern.

12. I’m Puerto Rican, born and raised there. Been living in the US for the last 7 years. I’m very light skinned, much paler than my half-white/half-Asian husband. I most certainly identify as Latina — not white, regardless of my light skin. If there’s an option in the census race question for “mixed” or “multi-racial” then I’ll pick that. If not… then I’ve no idea…

13. My partner had a fairly non-complicated approach to the census. He’s about half or one-fourth (he’s the product of an affair, and thus only slightly sure about his Mexican ethnicity) Mexican/Chicano, so he marked that, yes, he has Latino background. But he’s also white, and no one who meets him thinks any different, except when they meet his family, none of whom he really resembles. So it’s possible to be of partial Latino ethnicity and still identify and experience life as a white person, but Latino should be both an ethnicity option *and* a race option. Not everyone has an experience like my partner.

14. I have been doing a little bit of research and writing on this. I think a good (though not perfect) way to think about these terms is to see latina/o as an ethnicity, skin color/hair/features as a race, and national background as nationality.

    for example, my ethnicity is latino, my race is mestizo, and my nationality is mexican-american.

    an a person who is afro-colombian’s ethnicity might be latina, her race black, and her nationality colombian.

    any thoughts on this paradigm?

15. My husband and I have been discussing this one since we got our form. I am white from a European background, his background is more complicated. He is from Brasil, doesn’t consider himself “Latino or Hispanic” since Brasil isn’t a Spanish-speaking country, also he’s ethnic background is Lebanese/Italian and Native Brasilian. He usually marks down “white” because there isn’t any other box that describes him. The whole thing, it’s just so… silly. Why does he have to fit in a box? Why do I feel the need to mark something down for him.. But yeah, complicated.

16. I’ve sat for hours pondering this question. This is my fourth census and I still have no idea.
    Latino and peach are not an option.

17. This has always confused the shit out of me, too. Here’s why:

    I have been doing a little bit of research and writing on this. I think a good (though not perfect) way to think about these terms is to see latina/o as an ethnicity, skin color/hair/features as a race, and national background as nationality.

    for example, my ethnicity is latino, my race is mestizo, and my nationality is mexican-american.

    For me, two questions are easy: my ethnicity and nationality. But if “race” (the biological fiction and social fact) is “skin color/hair/features”—it gets more complicated. Quick…close your eyes. Think, “white woman”. Did you get a picture in your mind of someone with thick, medium/coarse, black hair, dark brown eyes, and olive skin? No? Why not? Most people of so-called “caucasian” ancestry resemble that picture—if one is considering all the geographical/historical areas where such people come from, and not just northern Europe. “White” has a strong code in many places to mean northern European….which is why I don’t identify as such.

    That’s not to say that I don’t have white privilege. I do. But not always, as I am not always “read” as white. My physical appearance (and name) gives some people pause for the cause. “What are you?!” said in a tone that clearly indicates the person doesn’t consider me one of “theirs”. Add in that technically, sicilians are “mixed”—the trinacria of Asia, Africa, and Europe. “Mediterranean” isn’t an option as a race, though that would probably be the most accurate descriptor if race is reduced to primarily physical appearance….though that would also work if cultural factors were included also.

    I guess the reason it’s so confusing is because the whole modern concept of race (rather than ethnicity….ethnicity used to be the indicator of what people called “race”) was created or developed to serve the idea of racial “purity”. People who cross those boundaries dissolve that concept by our very being, and so we’re either forced into boxes we don’t fit into, or we’re erased.

18. This was an issue for me when I lived in the US too: according to the state of Ohio at that time (the 80s), “Latin@” hadn’t come into general use yet and the definition of “Hispanic” was something like “any person from a Spanish-speaking background, REGARDLESS of country of race.” I’m Spanish, so yeah, I do come from a Spanish-speaking background, but I’m also a white European.

    I get that non-Latin@ USians like to lump all Latin Americans into a huge, monolithic group and treat them as a “racial” category. And if you’re a US-based Latin@, you have to deal with that ignorance and the accompanying prejudices. So having group solidarity is the right thing to do politically and socially. But doesn’t the USian-imposed view erase the reality of multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic Latin America?

    The problem is that Latin@s can be of ANY racial/ethnic background, and the definition many USians have of a mixture of indigenous American with European and (possibly, if they’re really clued-in) some African ancestry may have some validity in the US, but doesn’t reflect the reality of Latin American countries themselves. I’ve known Latin@os who were pretty much 100% indigenous (and didn’t have Spanish as their first language), ones who were pretty much 100% European, ones who were Ashkenazi or Mizrahi Jews, ones with Chinese ancestry–you know, pretty much the same range of ethnicities that you would get in North America.

    I think Rodrigo’s paradigm has some merit, but it’s also got limitations. For example, you could be a latin@, white Argentine, but there’s a big difference between being a Spanish-monolingual Argentine-Italian in Buenos Aires or an Argentine-Welsh Spanish-Welsh bilingual from Patagonia. And what about all the indigenous people who may not be too thrilled about being considered “latin@” in the first place?

    apricoco: “He is from Brasil, doesn’t consider himself “Latino or Hispanic” since Brasil isn’t a Spanish-speaking country,”

    Really? The Brasilians I’ve known have been quite clear about being Latin@s (but of course not Hispanic).

19. OK, so if race is simultaneously a construct and also a physically determined set of features and/or languages and/or country or continent of origin, how the hell do we create check boxes to contain it? And yet, in order to do some really good things and make progress, we need to “count” how many people in the US self-identify as Latin@ or White or Asian or Black or Female or Married or whatever. So it’s always going to be imprecise, it’s always going to be “take it with a grain of salt cause it’s all messed up anyway.”

    And it changes with every generation. My father was born in Mexico to an American and a Mexican. He considers himself latino, Mexican-American, white. Which of these is race? Have we erased ethnicity? Can you share ethnicity and be of different races? Do we let the old colonialist view of race dominate because it still influences our life (1/8th=”African” never mind that it’s an entire fucking continent or that you don’t look Black)? Do we shed that and only count privilege assigned in modern society? Is my father a “hidden” minority because he has no accent and no physical give-aways that he is latino? If he doesn’t directly experience oppression, is it only through empathizing with compatriots who are much more stereotypically latin@ and *do* experience oppression that he also internalizes the distinctions? This makes race more of an emotional state than a physical reality (again with the constructedness).

    Sigh. But the census is trying. There’s just no way to get it right, only ways to get it more wrong.

20. Thanks to everyone for their comments so far.

    I think the biggest issue in this is what they (the powers that be, I guess) consider race and what they consider ethnicity. If Black, for example, is both a race and an ethnicity, then they should list them separately on all forms. You would need to specify your ethnicity as, say, Latino, Native American, Black, and then your race as I guess Native American and Black? I realize it’s confusing no matter how you go about it, but somehow this current method seems really weird and rather alienating to people who are ONLY Latino or Hispanic and not something else.

    I think the real issue comes from the fact that, as I mentioned in my post, the mere fact of being Latino means you are of a mixed racial background. So if I’m 100% Dominican and mark White, Black, Native American as my races that doesn’t mean the same thing as somebody who, say, has Dominican grandparents on one side, and Black, White, Native American grandparents on the other side.

    And as for the whole Mestiza thing, in my experience, that’s a term embraced more by Mexicans and Central Americans than people from the Caribbean or South America. While I respect the term, I also feel odd using it, especially when I find myself having to explain to friends from DR and PR what the term even means.

21. My background on my father’s side is from New Mexico, and we always did “White” for race, checked the “Hispanic/Latino” box, and wrote in “New Mexican Spanish” or even just “Spanish” for the country of origin. (Not “Mexican” or “Mexican-American”!) I personally easily pass for white (or Anglo, as they say in NM) but most of my relatives do not, if we base it solely on the coloring criterion. Nevertheless, they still identify as “European” in some sense. Part of this is probably due to the existence of more-or-less intact Native American communities nearby, and perhaps a little bit of an attempt to identify with the Anglo rulers (and repudiate Native or “mixed” heritage, alas).

22. Wow!!! I have not even opened the “Response required by law” envelope sitting on the table in my doorway. My son is half-white and half-Mexican – so I guess I will need to make my own bubble on the form it sounds like for me and him. 🙂 LOL

23. Here is the census bureaus’s discussion of this issue from the 2000 census (the 2000 question appears similar if not the same, though I have not checked them side by side)

    http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-1.pdf

    With regard to mixed race it appears their solution is to allow people to self report either multiple races (you can check more than one race box) or write in a race.

24. If you have a mixed-race/mixed-ethnicity household, please fill out the form using the one that is more often under-counted. Thanks!

25. I’m a bit boggled by this too, but I think I have it easier because I’m Puerto Rican and White (Irish and Polish, to be exact). On some forms, Puerto Rican is explicitly stated, so that’s easy. And since I’m White, I don’t mind putting White when I’m asked to. The part that gets me is that I don’t identify as White Hispanic. I’m both. I’m White and Hispanic. My Puerto Rican family members aren’t White, but they’re not Black. Their skin tones range from tan to really tan, and they all have black hair. Out of the options of White Hispanic and Black Hispanic, I have to go with White Hispanic, even though that’s not really what I am. If there was a category of Brown Hispanic, I’d be set, even though that’d be an awfully crude description. I’d check the boxes of White and Brown Hispanic.

    I didn’t get a chance to look at the Census questions, but people of Asian and Middle Eastern descent have the same problem with checking the boxes. I remember a friend of mine from the Philippines wondered if she had to put Asian or Pacific Islander, since a form she was filling out put those two as separate categories. The Philippines are Pacific islands, after all. Another friend of mine is Egyptian. Egypt isn’t in the Middle East, so she can’t be Middle Eastern right? Egypt is in Africa, but she’s not African American. So she kind of has to guess at what the form is asking. She usually puts down Middle Eastern because that has become synonymous with Arab-speaking, and it’s closer to the Middle East than the rest of Africa.

26. My husband, who is white, refused to answer with “white” and instead checked the “other” box and wrote in “none,” because, like many people here have pointed out, race is a social construct and doesn’t actually exist. As opposed to ethnicity, which they don’t exactly ask you about.

27. My husband, who is white, refused to answer with “white” and instead checked the “other” box and wrote in “none,” because, like many people here have pointed out, race is a social construct and doesn’t actually exist.

    That seems…kinda assholish, actually. Like those white people who write in “American!” for their race.

28. I think the issue that drives confusion is that what people tend to consider salient categories in US society are not consistent in how they are derived. So Latin@ is generally a salient category that derives mainly from a language – a heritage that includes Spanish speakers (though one could argue it’s geographically based – coming from latin american/the carribbean). Asian is geographically based, but Black/African-American is (usually) color based (do white South Africans who come to the US check “black/African-American”? Not usually).

    So there’s no scientific basis for creating racial categories, but there’s also no consistent social criteria for doing so. Sometimes it’s geographic, sometimes it’s language, sometimes it’s skin color/facial features/hair. What we’re really trying to describe is communities that see themselves or are seen by outsiders as having some commonality that is politically and personally salient. Maybe it’s time to just have one question that is “describe what group(s) you feel you belong to” and throw everything in there, whether it’s a “race” or an “ethnicity” or a “heritage” or whatever.

29. I was thinking, as I filled out the form, about the fact that in modern American culture Jews are white. In most of the rest of the world, Jews are considered a race, as we were in the USA until the latter half of the 20th century. Is being labeled “white” a sign of successful social integration?

    I have all the privilege of being white, but I was raised in a household where white people were “them”.

    In the end, I checked the box next to the blank line and wrote Jew. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I can’t decide if I’m doing some social wrong by not saying I”m white. I hope not, but “white” sure doesn’t feel like the right answer.

30. Emily, I agree with you – if the criteria for one label are different from the criteria used for another label, there’s no good way of getting the information they want/need.

    Liz, I would think that instead of choosing the one that’s less counted, you select everything that you identify as. Choosing just one would not reflect your reality. Seems better for them to know that somebody is multi-racial (and what those races are) rather than thinking you’re only {insert least counted identity here}.

    And I also want to say as a general comment that while this post was inspired the by census, this format is used in other forms and applications. Sometimes those forms don’t have the option of “other” or of choosing more than one. The census is better in that regard, though still problematic, as we’re seeing.

31. I was kind of curious about the historical perspective, so I went to ancestry.com and looked at census entries for a few common Latino surnames in Puerto Rico, Texas, New York, and California on the 1920 census. Nearly everybody was recorded as white, with a few black and mulatto. I was confused by the lack of people identifying as Indian in California, but then I realized that there was a separate census for people living on reservations.

    The older forms define all of these categories totally differently than the newer ones do. When I look at my ancestors’ immigration papers, from about 1900 to 1940, the most common set of questions and answers is “Race: Hebrew,” “Color: white,” and “Nationality: whoever is currently in charge of the place where they lived before coming to the US.” Looking through the lists, I’ve seen a bunch of people identified as German race and Russian nationality, or Hungarian race and Austrian nationality, and all kinds of other combinations. Sometimes there’s also a space for “complexion,” but there doesn’t seem to be much consistency there — I’ve seen the same person listed as light, medium, and dark on different forms.

32. What squirrely at 19 said. That’s what I was trying to say.

33. It feels awkward as a Black person from the US too. My definition of Black is the exact same as your definition of Latin@, but, per the one drop rule, I CANNOT identify outside of “just Black” on the census. MY definition of Black American has always been “mixed race person descended from African slaves” and pretty much whoever else feels the term applies to them. In my brain Im 100% Black and also indigenous and white. It’s especially frustrating not being able to “count” as Indian because my grandparents aren’t the right kind of “mestizo.” Sometimes I feel like it’d be easier if I were Latina–I’d just call myself Zambo and that’d be the end of it. But in the US, being Black and Native just isn’t possible.

    (PS I realize ALL mixed race Natives in the US encounter obstacles. Ton count as Indian on the census you can ONLY check one box.)

34. I noticed they included “spain/spanish” with the latino category which I thought was odd because most spaniards I know identify as white. I mean we were the white guys on the forefront oppressing the native population so I feel weird to identify with the oppressed when my ancestors were the oppresors.
    My stepmom (who is latina) is forever telling me to check “hispanic” so I’ll qualify for scholarships or whatever. Yeah thats something I’m never gonna do.

35. This kind of baffles me.
    Here in germany, where ironically nationality is still mostly “achieved” through blood,the question of “race” is considered incorrect, I think.
    Either that, or German forms all assume we’re all white.

    What they do ask is nationality, and since my German one is the relevant one for pretty much everything (work permit, government aid, banking and whatnot) that’s the one I give.
    It’s some kind of freak accident of bureaucracy that I was allowed to keep my other (Japanese) nationality at all, and I have no ties to that culture, so yea. German, if I like it or not. And I dare you to oblige me to check some stupid “race” box.

36. @Ruchama – while I always check “white” on forms, and did so on the census, I also feel like my “ethnicity” is being Jewish and while I also identify as white, I feel more disconnected from being “white” than from being Jewish. I’ve always felt like part of the reason I never feel defensive when people talking about “white” people doing XYZ or being XYZ is that I don’t really identify with the word in a core or passionate way.

37. http://www.crnlive.com/CRNBlog/?p=168

38. One of my sister’s friends was born in Colombia. Her parents were also born in Colombia. Her grandparents came to Colombia as young adults — they were German Jews in the thirties who pretty much just took the first ship out of Germany taking them somewhere that would let them in, which happened to be Colombia. She and her family moved to New Jersey when she was in fourth grade. When they got here, she spoke no English. Her family usually spoke Spanish at home. She very much identifies as Colombian. People looking at her would not ever say she’s any race other than white — she’s got straight blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin.

    When she was applying to colleges, there was no option on the form that just said “white.” It was “white, non-Hispanic,” which she refused to check off, since she was the third generation of Spanish-speaking people from a Spanish-speaking country. So she checked off “Hispanic.” Those options as racial categories just made no sense for her — if her grandparents had gotten on a different ship, she’d be a different race?

39. What a fascinating discussion!

    I’d have to say that I find the idea of people of European heritage identifying as “mixed” to be very appropriative. Similarly, just because race is socially constructed, illogical, and lacks a biological base, it’s still real; thus, when a white person writes in “none”, I think that’s a serious denial of privilege.

    Ruchama, the story of your Colombian friend is very interesting. I wonder if her experience would be more like that of someone like me – a first-generation white immigrant from Europe who’s family came here when I was a child – than that of American-born Latino/as or even that of Latino/as that are not American-born. (Although the notion of a single experience is problematic, anyways). I didn’t take the census yet, but does it mention country of birth?

40. Actually, the census survey was changed after many civil rights activists argued that latin@ was *not* a race, but an ethnicity, and it was limiting and borderline offensive to consider it such. Also, I’m a little uncomfortable with your language of “all latin@s” and “our culture” to broadly essentialize a huge and diverse geographic area. Not everyone who is latin@ is racially mixed, identifies as such, or identifies their ethnicity as their race (and in fact many people find using the term latin@ for race offensive. You have right to identify how you want, but don’t assume that it can automatically be universalized).

    Of course, there are huge limitations with the census, or any nature of box checking that needs to reduce the complex nature of race/ethnicity/nationality. The people who design the census are not stupid or unaware of these drawbacks, they realize that the nature of their tool is very blunt, and there always has to be a balance between specificity and generalization. That balance may not be right yet, it’s always a work in progress to get meaningful (i.e. politically/socially salient, not “scientifically” accurate) demographic information about such a complex and often individualized social construct.

41. Race and ethnicity is just an invention. People evolve according to their environment (how much sun they get, etc.) and whatever are their standards of beauty. We all come from the same original stock of people and have just evolved and will continue to evolve. If you want to identify yourself as a member of a nationality or a culture, that’s fine, but the color of your skin is just the color of your skin and the language you speak is probably not the language of your ancestors. Keep it real.

42. Is there a point to this article?

    I hear a lot of complaining but I don’t hear any definitive solutions or answers being offered. Apologies that the US census can’t capture your ‘special butterfly-ness’.

43. Elisabeth, I understand that Latino is an ethnicity and not a race, my question was about what we’re supposed to do with the race concept. If they single out Latino as an ethnicity but then make you choose between White, Black, Asian and Native American as race, what are you supposed to select? It’s generally accepted in our society (however wrongfully so) that if you are one of those races, then that is also at least one of your ethnic identities. With Latinos, that is not so.

    And in terms of generalizing about our culture, I think that’s very different than saying “all.” That’s why I say many or most, because, well, that’s just history. Most countries in Latin America had a native people there, those people were then colonized by some European country or another (or several), and some then had African slaves brought over. I never said that this was the case for all of those countries, but with time, it’s safe to say that’s how it went down. I also made it clear that it was some combination of those races and not explicitly those three races for everyone. Now, the U.S. also had a similar start, but there were also boatloads of various European immigrants coming in, the land was huge, they pushed the indigenous people into sections of that land, etc. so that the results were not the same.

    And pololly, there are some solutions being discussed, but no, nothing is “definitive” because that’s the whole point of discussion – you talk about things and weigh the options before coming to better alternatives. Also, we’re not the U.S. Census so, um, yeah.

44. I tried another ancestry.com search to see where “mestizo” was used as a racial category on forms. It looks like it was used on draft cards for WWI and WWII, but never for the census. There are also some people identified as “Negro mestizo,” and one record of a cook on a ship who was “Chinese mestizo.” (His nationality was Philippines, and most of the rest of the kitchen staff has Philippine Islands listed as both race and nationality. I’m not totally sure what that means.)

45. Mark “some other race” and write in Latina/o. This is a signal to researchers who will look at future census data that Latinos want their own racial category, not just an ethnicity category. In 2000, 42% of Latino-classified individuals marked the “some other category.”

46. la lubu: i agree, i think race is where it gets the most complex. white, black, mestizo, mulatto, asian, indian, and others and any combination/s of any of these and others would classify as race.

    but i feel fairly comfortable with latina/o being an ethnicity, and nationality being country/ies of descent. the only place where i get caught up is in the indigenous communities in latin america, particularly those who have retained their culture with little european influence, including native languages. is it fair to impose “latin” on people who have no “latin” influence?

47. when a white person writes in “none”, I think that’s a serious denial of privilege.

    Well, I guess I see it the opposite way. It strikes me more as denying you *have* privilege than actually rejecting the privilege itself. The box you check on the census won’t in any way affect you personally (not like the cops are gonna pull you over for no good reason ’cause you put “none”!) but it seems to be playing at being “colorblind”, which is one of the more obnoxious white affectations.

48. Here in the Netherlands, I’m never asked to state my race. Either we’re all considered to be white (which would be really stupid at least for the bigger cities like my home town of Rotterdam – just look around you on the street and you can easily tell why that’s stupid), or it is not considered to be an issue like it is in the USA.

    What they do often ask on forms is to fill out your country of birth, and the country your parents were born in. So that would be a question that determines your ethnicity. Only this is a flawed system, too. I am sure that there are by now many people in the country that could put “the Netherlands” as both their own and their parents’ birthplace, while in daily life they will still be considered as Moroccan or Turkish or Chinese and perhaps also consider themselves that way.

49. Is it me or do certain people think their heritage is so much more complicated than everyone elses *wallow wallow whine* – does ‘black’ accurately capture the full history of the mix of African and European ancestry that charaterises most African American lineage? (I’m black btw). Racist social convention privileges discussion of one kind of mixing over another – what about people who are mixed between different groups of the same race? They manage to wake up, dress themselves and get from A to B. But it’s meant to be profound soul searching stuff if it’s across races.

    So who exactly is saying you are ‘post racial’? I hate conversations like this because yes race is messy and complicated but actually a lot of people have worked very hard to try to capture the political and social realities of race on surveys like this and it’s so easy to make snide pointless comments (I guess we must be post racial – no one said that. They tried to acknowledge how race and heritage may vary dramatically for many Hispanics. Stupid them.) My guess: People feel that ‘ethnicity’ is somehow less valid than ‘race’ (given its historical force and emotive power) and so by ticking ‘white’ they are somehow being lumped in with the ‘man’. Here’s an idea: why not acknowledge your white privilege instead of hiding from it and actually attempt to move the conceptualisation of race and ethnicity forward instead of getting pissy that you don’t have a one word signifier which captures your entire identity? Isn’t that supposed to be the reality anyway? Isn’t the whole point that the codifying and labelling of POC into very rigid groups benefitted white supremacy and othered us? So isn’t this a step forward in the establishment being forced to acknowledge the intersecting privileges and identities, contradictions and just plain rationalisations that make up classification by race. I mean if people are Latino and white, doesn’t that say something about whiteness that making up a fake ‘Latino race’ category would not? And is this a less accurate identifier in reality? Just admit that it’s less accurate, makes no sense and is based on a refusal to take the step of reconciling white privilege with POC identity.

    Also – why is it now bad to ask for ethnicity/race on forms by the way? Oh, it’s sooooo annoying for someone to inconvenience me and my interesting ethnicity. Well genius – how would we know the racial disparities that define America without counting? Guessing? Half the articles on this blog couldn’t exist without this kind of data but thanks for playing.

    And people who find this ‘baffling’ especially white people who are connected to POC need to seriously shut up and get the hell over themselves and their astonishing privilege. Oh noes, forms! Race is hard!’Race is a social construct so my white husband ticks other’ – absolutely pathetic.

    ugh

50. pololly: It’s not your concern what aspects of other people’s identities are profound for them. Yep, people have worked hard to capture the political and social realities of race on surveys and censuses and so on; that doesn’t mean they have succeeded. People’s racial, ethnic and national identities don’t change, don’t get less complicated, because other people have worked hard. Building on what Sally said, these are not snide pointless comments, these are conversations about people’s identities and lives that are important.

    ‘My guess: People feel that ‘ethnicity’ is somehow less valid than ‘race’’

    Clearly not the case if you read through comments.

    ‘why not acknowledge your white privilege instead of hiding from it and actually attempt to move the conceptualisation of race and ethnicity forward instead of getting pissy that you don’t have a one word signifier which captures your entire identity?’

    Lots of people are acknowledging their white privilege. They are trying to move the conceptualisation of race and ethnicity forward. And they have every right to want identity labels that fit them, that acknowledge their histories; that is, in fact, a way of moving the conversation forward.

    I could go on but… this is not the first time you’ve come on this blog and said totally inaccurate things about people’s races and identities. You really need to check yourself.

51. All of you should be insulted that someone is sending you a form in the mail asking you to categorize yourself.

    Throw your census form in the garbage. I did.

52. Honestly, pololly, your lack of reading comprehension is startling. The conclusions you seem to be drawing from this discussion (and others, as Chally pointed out), are nothing more than taking some sentences that bug you and whining about them by implying that this is what everyone is saying. Yes, at this point, even the basic racial categories don’t reflect reality for most people because that’s what colonization, slavery, immigration, etc. do. But nobody is denying or ignoring that in this discussion.

53. It seems to me that what’s needed might well be a grid.

    For one thing, the fact that the only ethnicity captured is either you’re latin@ or you’re not seems odd to me. Yes, that has a profound impact in the United States because we are one of two English-speaking countries on a double continent of mostly Spanish speakers (and one Portuguese). But isn’t it a major impact on your life if you’re Asian as to whether you come from China, Korea or Japan? If you’re from Europe, isn’t it important whether you come from Western Europe or Eastern? White people from Russia have, I think, a different experience over here than white people from France do. For that matter, if you’re black and English that’s going to make a big difference than if you’re black and American. Or if you’re black and actually from Africa within this generation or the last one.

    Ideally, I think, you should be able to check off more than one racial box, and one or more ethnicity box. The races “white and Native American” plus the ethnicity “Latino/a”, or the races “black and Native American” plus the ethnicity “Latino/a”, probably capture the actual “biological” heritage of most Latin@s (inasmuch as race is biological at all) while specifying the ethnicity. My husband’s friend’s daughter is half Japanese, half white American of no specific ethnicity — what’s she on the census? My daughter’s best friend is half Chinese, half Italian, and identifies with both halves — what’s she?

    But I haven’t opened up my package from the census yet, so I don’t actually know the details of how they’re trying to capture race and ethnicity this time around.

54. Oh, and Marksman — great, you just lost your home city and state a fraction of a percent of their representation, their state funding, their government funding, their planned transportation capacity expansion, and, if you have kids, their school budget.

    Personally I live in hope that vast numbers of right-wingers will be deeply offended that the guv’mint is trying to pry into their personal lives and find out if they exist or not, and will throw out their census forms, and they will do so in such numbers that their right-wing-voting states and districts will lose representation, while the sane people who actually think government might be valuable sometimes will be properly counted.

55. I don’t know, people, I hear pololly’s point. It makes sense to me. I’m not saying many other points by other posters don’t also make sense, but I think there’s really something to be outraged about if you take this seriously:

    …does ‘black’ accurately capture the full history of the mix of African and European ancestry that charaterises most African American lineage? (I’m black btw). Racist social convention privileges discussion of one kind of mixing over another – what about people who are mixed between different groups of the same race?

56. It is amazing what a posting about race and ethnicity can evoke in some people. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the island. I have just lived in the US for three years. To me this race complexities don’t exist. In my country race is not an issue, because we are soooo over that already. All Puerto Ricans are of a different color, from pale white to blue black and everything in between. Some of us look like our native Tainos, some of us look like our african ancestors, and some of us look like the already mixed Spanish conquerors. I filled the census and I marked other for race, then wrote Puerto Rican. Why? Because Puerto Ricans, like Dominicans are a mix of those three races which make up for 5 centuries now a different distinctive race. Other Latinos in Central and South America were not mixed with Africans, or their natives didn’t mix with whites or Africans, etc. By the way, Pololly, if you feel that African American or Black is not your race, just like I feel I am not white even if I look like it, just mark other and put in whatever you feel is your race. Conclusion, globalization means we are ALL post racial, we are too mixed together that it is almost impossible for a lot of people to identify with a race. So, mark other in the Census and fill in your own name for what you feel you are, or just say I have no idea. Hopefully, the Census will get the message.

57. In 2000 I got the long-form census and it asked more questions, including one that was basically asking what nationality your ancestors were (I don’t remember how it was phrased but examples were like “Argentinian, Italian, etc”). I was stumped because my ancestors immigrated from eastern europe, areas that have changed borders a number of times since my family left in the early 20th century, and when they did live there jews were considered a separate race, not russian or polish or whatever. I put jewish on that line, even though I felt like it was not the answer they were looking for. But I felt like “Russian” would not be true.

58. Alara,
    One thing on this census that surprised me was under race there were about 8-10 different Asian categories (e.g. Chinese, Korean, Samoan, etc.) First, that seemed more appropriate under ethnicity, but also I found it interesting the specificity that they wanted for people of Asian ancestry. I guess the census is always a work in progress, and, given that Asians and Latin@s are the largest growing immigrant populations, the government is probably interested in learning more about those populations than they are, say, about white people. I also think part of the problem is that there is no good option for racially mixed people at all, which the census will have to deal with as more Americans have racially mixed ancestry. It’s also hard, do they keep adding categories as groups point out they need them, or do they somehow make it possible using the categories they have to be more representative? It’s difficult, because on the one hand, to be as specific as possible you would need thousands of boxes, but on the other, there might be a socially relevant category not yet on the survey, etc.

    As someone with a strong European ethnic identity (in fact, most people assume I am a visitor or exchange student to America, even though I was born here), I get really annoyed having to tick off “white” as an ethnicity, because it is wrong on so many levels, but I realize the US government doesn’t really care about where in Europe my family is from, the point isn’t really to know everything about the make up demographic make up of Americans, but rather to know how to distribute resources, etc., so I dutifully check the “white” ethnicity box and be done with it.

59. Karen, the thing is that we aren’t not taking it seriously. Yes, the post was written from a Latino perspective because I’m Latina and I opened up the census and that was my reaction, but 1) it’s not as if we aren’t open to discussing other races and ethnicities (they’ve, in fact, been raised in this very thread) and 2) that isn’t in contradiction with the arguments this post and thread have raised.

    Many of us agree that this race/ethnicity format is problematic for various reasons, and we can discuss those without being condescending.

    As others have pointed out, “White” isn’t an accurate reflection either. Meanwhile, choosing Hispanic/Latino/Spanish or Asian (and possibly American Indian, I don’t have the form in front of me) means you can specify a nation which is somewhat helpful, but still has its own issues.

    ETA: (cuz I pressed enter prematurely, my bad)
    So, no, it’s not only about Latinos, though I still think the discussion about what “race” we’re supposed to choose is an important one. By all means, continue raising other issues; I, for one, am open to that.

60. @Emily: For questions like that, I generally put “Ashkenazic.” One branch of my family was from Germany, one from territory that kept going back and forth between Austria and Poland, and one from territory that went back and forth between Poland and Russia. But they were definitely never considered Polish or Russian, and only sometimes and grudgingly considered German or Austrian. When they came to this country, all of their immigration forms identified them as “Hebrew.” “Ashkenazic” seems like the best answer.

61. Bagelsan, what you said is exactly what I meant.

62. Marlene, I have the same problem you do, because… I look “white,” until someone decides that my curly brown hair and my medium-sized nose makes me “look Jewish,” and while I don’t feel 100% comfortable claiming “white” as a label, the idea of claiming “Jewish” as a racial identity rather than an ethnic one gives me screaming hives, for what should be obvious reasons.

    My boyfriend, who’s from a Cuban family, finds himself in a similar mental space. His name’s an obvious marker, his looks less so — it’s more “oh, yeah, I can see it now you mention it” rather than “strangers approach him on the street expecting that he’ll speak Spanish,” and his strongest social-group identifier is actually “MIT graduate” rather than an ethnicity.

    It’s not the easiest question to answer!

63. Ruchama, I like the idea of putting “Ashkenazic” on the “other” line — since it’s enough of a recognizable genetic grouping to have an effect on medical conditions, and because it matches up pretty well with the sketchy race-as-phenotype construct that most people use in daily life.

    For all that the Czar would never have considered my great-great-grandparents “Russian” (or, only Russian enough to get drafted), I have been stopped on the street or in stores by recent immigrants who assume from my looks that I can speak it and can translate for them. Funny, that.

64. I marked Spanaird down for the Latino column – one of the listed examples since I lack an Native American blood and we are unsure about the North African – even though being Jewish disqualifies you in much (though not all) of the Latino community. White for race (for my French Bourbon European side of the family) and Asian race (other) and wrote in Semetic. Hope they enjoy their attempt to classify me using fill-in bubbles.

65. I was also very excited to find this on my census form!!! The race/ethnicity question was always the hardest on standardized tests, school applications, etc. My father is from a South American country, but his great-grandparents came over there from Europe. Does that make me just as “white” as other Caucasian people who can trace their distance relatives back to Ellis Island? What about my culture? Although my skin is white as a ghost, my family speaks Spanish. I was very happy to be able to mark myself as both Hispanic and “white” because that’s what I feel that I am.

66. The race/ethnicity question was always the hardest on standardized tests

    Oh, well now you’re just bragging. ;p

67. Wow, US racial/ethnic categories are interesting. In NZ we have European/Maori/Asian/Pacific Peoples/MELAA (Middle Eastern, Latin American or African – a very small percentage of our population)/Other (including “New Zealander”. Dickheads.)

    We can choose as many as we like. We also put in our Iwi (tribal group) if we are Maori. But I find it pretty straight forward, and am somewhat bemused by using a term like “white” on a government form… what is that supposed to mean?

    And as for having race and ethnicity, why on earth would you do that? It’s getting a bit conceptual for a statistical form isn’t it. Do people find “Latin American” too broad? “Asian”, “Pacific Islander” and “European” are all pretty broad too.

    I mean, if I got to fuck with the census, I would probably separate “Middle Eastern”, “Latin American” and “African”, but otherwise I think I approve of our ethnicity groups.

68. Interesting, Dana. I applied for a job in New Zealand a few months ago, and I remember getting very confused by that form. I was looking at it and thinking, “I’m … European? I guess?” I was pretty sure that that was the box that I was supposed to check, but it didn’t seem right to me, in the same way that marking Polish or German wouldn’t seem right to me — my ancestors were from there, but not really accepted as part of there. I mean, at the time that my ancestors left Europe, most Europeans would have said that, as Jews, they were Middle Eastern, not European. I’m much more comfortable identifying as white than as European.

69. I was also a bit startled at a form for a job in the UK, where the white options were something like “White-English,” “White-Irish,” and “White-Other.”

70. I marked white. I don’t identify as white, really (like others said, I’m not about to say “I’m a member of the white race!”). I identify as Irish American, because it’s the only known ancestry I have- the other half of my family comes from very poor parts of Appalachia and the heritage is ambiguous- sort of stripped of any identifiable European ancestry and replaced with a sort of “White American” culture.

    My brothers are part of that “I don’t know the exact ethnic origin” side… so part “white”. And part Latino- from Mexico. By all appearances and with the information I know about their father, mostly or perhaps solely indigenous. So then we mark “White” and “American Indian”? But that seems wrong… but nothing else seems right. To just mark “white” would be to ignore half of their ethnicity, but to mark “American Indian” almost seems like we are taking away from those peoples who sustain ties to the indigenous tribes of the Americas… but then again, is the other half of my ethnicity that may be part english, dutch, german, and perhaps many other european ancestries any less true or real than the part I can trace back to Ireland?

71. I’m black. As an American, that means I’m African & other stuff. Blackness has nothing to do with skin color as an even cursory glance at most African-American families will attest. But America must have its blacks.

72. Interesting.

    There is a lot of racial tension between blacks and Latinos. Which leads me to believe that most Latinos would rather identify other than Black, if they can. It’s one of those issues that Latinos would rather see swept under the proverbial rug, but, it exists. So, Latinos being post-racial? Not there yet.

73. Miss Incognegro, it’s unclear to me what your comment has to do with the post or the discussion… For one, I think it’s true that some Latinos are all “we are not racist!” the same way some members of ALL groups of people are all “we are not racist!” I agree that many Latinos are racist, but that isn’t what this discussion is about. It’s about the flaws in how race and ethnicity are structured, and how to get as close as one can to how one actually identifies.

74. @ frau sally benz First, the point I was trying to make is this: If a Spanish-speaking person does not view people of color, eg. Black Americans in a favorable light, and if said individual is light enough to be considered white, then the decision as to which box to check/bubble to fill in is not very complicated and complex. At least, it wouldn’t be for me if I were of the aforementioned mindset.

    Second, of course not everyone of a particular ethnic/racial category isn’t racist, and I expressed nothing of the sort in my comment.

    Third, which box to check is more about race and attitudes re: race than perhaps you think. If a Spanish-speaking person person has grown up in a home where people of color were viewed favorably, then said person is more inclined to consider other options besides white as a racial category.

75. I agree with all of your points, but I still don’t think that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. I think there is a difference in the examples of people I gave above: “if I’m 100% Dominican and mark White, Black, Native American as my races that doesn’t mean the same thing as somebody who, say, has Dominican grandparents on one side, and Black, White, Native American grandparents on the other side.” I don’t think that is really an issue of anti-Black sentiment. I don’t think it occurs to Latinos to mark White any more than it does to mark Black.

76. Meh, I know the discussion’s kinda dead now, but I just wanted to speak on what Miss Incognegro said.

    @Miss Incognegro: I’m Black US American and I think I understand what you’re talking about in respect to US Black/Latino tension. I used to kind of label any African descended Latino self-hating if they didn’t identify as Black. The same with Blacks who identified as mixed race. I kind of got away from that though after learning more about the history of race relations in some Latin American/Caribbean countries– and also just the history of my own family. I think it’s really important we remember that the specific demographic/economic/political history of the US shaped the way we (Blacks) navigated our oppression. It made sense– politically– for US African descended people to use the ODR to our advantage in order to build solidarity and numbers. The US didn’t have as many slaves compared to Latin America and the enslaved &white populations were more segregated. The US could afford to focus on preserving whiteness by excluding the “other” so we “others” found ways to resist within that framework. In countries where the enslaved population was the majority and many of the Africans worked domestic jobs in the cities– those in power often worked to “whiten” the already brown population instead of exclude them from whiteness.
    African descended Latinos formed very unique&nuanced forms of resistance and those histories affect how people identify today. Yes, ALL of our racial/ethnic identities are influenced by racism. But I think since colonialism has ALREADY stolen so much of our autonomy and power, we should try to respect everyone’s right to self-identify how they see fit. Especially me, as a US Black, I try to be very conscious of US neocolonialism and not further that oppression by making Latinos conform to MY identity politics.

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