Latinos and the "Other Race" Option: Transforming U.S. Concepts of Race
Morales, Pablo
As 42% of all Latinos tell the Census Bureau they are neither black nor white, the media remain bemused by the ongoing transformation of U.S. racial categories. Lurking in the shadows of the...
...Garry South, chief political adviser to Gov...
...1 (January 1998...
...5. See Antonio S~rgio Alfredo Guimaries, "Racismo e restrigoo de direitos individuals: a discriminaCAo racial publicizada," Revista de Estudos AfroAsiiticos, No...
...Tirando a Mdscara: Ensaios sobre o racismo no Brasil (Slo Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra, 2000), pp...
...Susan Sachs, "A Hue, and a Cry, in the Heartland," The New York Times, April 8, 2001...
...Warner have called its cover girl-a computergenerated image of what the ideal, racially mixed citizen will look like once whites in the United States have become a minority-a "divine Frankenstein...
...17...
...Born and raised in East Harlem and the South Bronx (predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods), he is the son of parents who migrated from Puerto Rico to New York before World War II...
...Yardley, "Non-Hispanic Whites May Soon Be a Minority in Texas...
...Lauren Berlant and Michael Women selling tacos at the Loisaida (from "Lower East Side") street fair in downtown Manhattan...
...Latinos understand this phenomenon as their being identified racially but not culturally...
...and "What do you consider yourself to be...
...Paroxysms of anti-immigrant fervor, after all, usually accompany recession...
...It may not take much to turn those worries into a nativist backlash...
...4, 5, 7, 8. 4. Rodriguez, Changing Race, pp...
...1 3 The National Review felt that "the United States should restrict the currently high inflow," since "Hispanics come here because it is better than home," and it will only "stay attractive as long as less than everyone comes...
...asked a retired Iowa lawyer, apparently one of the many residents of the country's "fourth-whitest state" who, the article says, "want it to stay that way...
...While Rodriguez is quick to emphasize that there is not "only one Latino view of race"-or that race "as understood by Latinos does not have overtones of racism or implications of power and privilege"-she maintains that a generally more cultural, shifting, context-dependent concept of race constitutes a basic difference "between the way that Latinos view race and the way that race is viewed overall in the United States...
...42NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 42REPORT ON RACE Jos6 All: The Pressure to Be Black os6 Ali is a Dominican, 24 years old, single and a fulltime student at a public university, Jose Ai answered "other, Hispanic" to the census race question and explained: "By inheritance I am Hispanic...
...Arco Iris, as a three (intermediate in color...
...3 40NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASThe Census Bureau must be as vexed as it has always been on the issue: How are the mil- lions of racially unclassifiable Latinos to be understood...
...5 The contradictory nature of the official categories is evident in the coverage of the new census data that focused on the status of the white and black popula- tions vis-h-vis a 58% boom in Latino numbers...
...2. In census reports since 1940, only between 5 and 10% of the Brazilian population has identified itself as black...
...According to The Washington Post's analysis, this would all seem to Pablo Morales is an assistant editor at The Village Voice and a staff assistant at NACLA...
...In a sense," he said, "[illegal immigration] bailed the country out...
...She sensed that following the 1990 cens from other countries...
...immutable and not subject to diverse interpretations...
...indicate that many Hispanics were "apparently frustrated that they did not see a racial category that included them...
...The last time around, Congress con- vened a series of hearings in which the idea of making His- panics a "race" was enter- tained-albeit nearly without any support from Latino orga- nizations-as a way to amelio- rate the "data quality" problem posed by "other race" Latinos...
...165-202...
...1 2 Robert Samuelson, in his column for The Washington Post, noted a "subtle and useful shift in tone and message" in the press's coverage of the census...
...Asked if his identity had changed over time, Jose Ali answered yes...
...6. Studies on workers' mobilizations in Brazil also point to moral values, like dignity, as being more important than material interests for the success of these campaigns...
...1 4 Items in The New York Times nior high school when she went mart chicana" to t white...
...We may also need to favor skilled over unskilled immigrants, further improving the odds for assimilation...
...Arco Iris checked "other" and wrote "Puerto Rican" in the space next to it...
...The New York Times noted that 43REPORT ON RACE in California, "Republicans are not going to be successful statewide unless they can come up with some way to rebuild and repair the damage they've done among Asian and Latino voters with the anti-immigration crusades of the 1990s...
...1 8 This papering over of massive social inequalities with feel-good multicultural images and gestures-such George W.'s "colorful" right-wing cabinet-may be the ideological maneuver to beware of in these postmillennial days, even as the old nativism whispers in the press...
...7. D'Vera Cohn and Darryl Fears, "Hispanics Draw Even With Blacks in New Census," The Washington Post, March 7, 2001...
...John Burdick correctly calls attention to the fact that the percentage of blacks who define themselves as such in Brazil is large in spite of the way it is reported by sociologists...
...I can't change my color, and I do not wish to...
...a pyounggrund with two of "Non-Hispanic white" is black American woman h not the same as, say, verbally abused her, and "non-Eastern European Celia is a black Hispanic P white" or "non-West But she is not a black Am Indian black," because herself as black according "Eastern European" and ness...
...When asked what the word "black" meant to him, he replied, "As other people see me...
...he stated, in both instances, "I am a mixture of black, white and possibly Indian...
...For the first time in the modern era," The New York Times declared, "non-Hispanic whites are officially a minority in California," while "Texas may soon become, after California, the second biggest state in which nonHispanic whites are no longer the majority...
...Seeing Hispanics/Latinos as 'light' clearly restricts ck and Proud...
...16 George W. Bush's more strategically savvy politics in Texas-in which "Hispanics were incorporated into [the Republican] party and [its] agenda," if only through his rejection of "harsh rhetoric" and "symbolic gestures"seems a more likely tack...
...because at 62, he has a respected and established position as a professional in the criminal justice system...
...See John Burdick, "The Lost Constituency of Brazil's Black Movements," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...8. Purdam, "California Census Confirms Whites Are in Minority...
...So she did not check "West Indian," as ethnici- the census question...
...See Lais Abramo, O Resgate da Dignidade, MA thesis, University of SAo Paulo, 1990...
...Arco Iris stated that "four is more biologically accurate" and further explained that he identified himself as dark out of respect for and loyalty to his brown-skinned father...
...Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," in Lauren Berlant (ed...
...A more accurate interpretation came from the National Council of La Raza's Sonia Perez: "Those concepts of black and white are just not at all how [some Latino] people are used to defining themselves...
...1 In addition, 6% of Latinos took advantage of the new "multiple race" option, compared with only 2% of the non-Hispanic population...
...Other Latinos in the sample felt similarly confused or pressured to be "white...
...Arco Iris labelled his mother as a one (light) and his father as a five (dark), and he identified himself as a four...
...0 lo er children when they were .she began talking and a The story of this counard her accent, the woman try's "browning," the Celia left the playground...
...Otherwise, a labor shortage would have had a real effect on our economy...
...Arco Iris described his color as "brown" and explained that North Americans tend to see him as a "brown-skinned Puerto Rican or a light-skinned black...
...The implication is that white Hispanics are not quite white, not "really" white...
...This imposition of the black-white racial order on Latinos separates them into "whites" and "blacks" and in the process attempts to create new African Americans and so-called hyphenated (European) Americans...
...Latinos conceive of race not only as a simple question of "biological or genetic ancestry or color," she argues, but also as a matter of "culture, national origin and socialization...
...system of racial classification...
...In many states," The New York Times reported in an article on the burgeoning Latino population in the Midwest, "there are already signs of public unease over the role of immigration in crowding schools, burdening hospitals and depressing wages...
...Robert Samuelson, "Can America Assimilate...
...Arco Iris' Rainbow Identities M r. Arco Iris' name means "rainbow" in Spanish, and he is always addressed as "Mr...
...But in a perspective absent from mainstream editorializing, Tom Rex of Arizona State University, quoted in the Times, contextualized Phoenix's "rusting manufacturing plants...giving way to bustling strip malls" by suggesting a relationship between border enforcement and labor control...
...6 One of the Post's earliest headlines on the topic trumpeted that Cella: Latina, B nationally, Hispanics have And Not Afri "drawn even" with blacks...
...want to burst their bubble...
...Intimacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 313...
...Eighty ff the "black" category on years ago, the father of U.S...
...Citing articles from the Times, USA Today and the Post on the "new social problems and tensions" that immigration Vol XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2001 same...
...Latinos and the "Other Race" Option 1. Census Bureau press release, March 12, 2001, see www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cbOl cn61.html...
...175-176...
...his answer was, "Because when I was jumped by whites, I was not called 'spic,' but I was called 'nigger...
...definitions of black- cinematic culture...
...In accordance with a well-established pattern, 42% of Latinos identified themselves as "other race," and 97% of all respondents who declared themselves "other race" were Latinos-a significant trend not emphasized in the press...
...brings-many of which are borne by immigrants themselves--Samuelson concluded: "To benefit from immigration, we may need a little less of it...
...On a five-point color scale, Mr...
...Janofsky, "Illegal Immigration Strains Services in Arizona," The New York Times, April 11, 2001...
...The fantasy's aim, by representing the USA as "a happy racial monoculture made up of 'one (mixed) blood,"' they say, was "to help its public process the threat to 'normal' or 'core' national culture that is currently phrased as 'the problem of immigration.'" The "crisis image of immigrants," linked to "white fears of minoritization," is a "racial mirage" that in "supplying a specific phobia" avoids a "substantial discussion of exploitation...
...But when people assume he is an African American, "they are disregarding my own feelings...
...His interviewer described him as "not white/not black...
...3. See Caetana Damasceno, "'Em casa de enforcado nho se fala em corda:' notas sobre a construyao social da 'boa apar~ncia' no Brasil," in Antonio S6rgio Alfredo Guimarbes and Lynn Huntley (eds...
...They don't ask...
...Lurking in the shadows of the news media's early coverage of the 2000 census numbers was a challenge to the U.S...
...I decided to accept the fact that no matter who I feel to be, I am categorized as black...
...The way he viewed his ancestry also has changed "I would have considered myself more white up to the age of nine...
...The Washington Post, April 6, 2001...
...This was a sea change*from their tradition- al projection "as fairly A family at Dla de la Raza parade in New York Civ...
...However, I identify more with blacks because to white America, if you are my color, you are a nigger...
...Michael Janofsky, "Arizona Owes Growth Spurt Largely to an Influx of Hispanics," The New York Times, March 28, 2001...
...elia identified herself a subsequent Times article census question, she reported that "black Panamanian...
...Celia lived Floridians...risk being ty of the 1950s, the raci overshadowed...
...popular, literary and o U.S...
...ties, are not recognized as racially heterogeneous categories...
...Time, March 19, 2001...
...Thus, even though Jose Ali says he is "other race, Hispanic," his responses reveal the pressures that some Latinos feel to identify as an American black...
...5. Lise Funderburg, "I Am What I Say I Am," Time, March 26, 2001...
...18...
...9. Rodriguez, Changing Race, p. 19...
...This corresponds c is h al t sh N n h a t 0 to the stereotyped image of Latinos, as Rodriguez understands it, as "tan...
...He consistently alluded to his identification as black when answering other racial items in the interview, for example, "Hispanic, yet identifies as black" and "I describe myself as black...
...Gray Davis (D), quoted in Purdam, "California Census Confirms Whites Are in Minority...
...4. France Winddance Twine detects, through interviews, that in a small town in the Rio de Janeiro countryside the practice of segregation of blacks lasted practically until the 1987 Constituent Assembly debates that criminalized racism...
...In fact, of all the multirace combinations made possible by the new option, the most common was "white and 'some other race,' which census officials said was checked mainly by Hispanics...
...It's worth worrying whether the latest demographic "explosion" of "colored people" in the United States Mr...
...There is no point in trying to prove that I'm not black...after being practically attacked by whites because of the way I look...
...7 and the renewed racial ha Accompanying the bar says that throughout the graphs and commentary in she always knew "who these stories was the con- that she is both Hispanic stant reminder that "His- roots in both identities panic is a demographic Celia realized that most group, not a race...
...Historically it starts with calls for a crackdown on illegal immi- She describes jt grants and sometimes, indeed as recently as 1996, the back- as the period lash produces laws that take services not only from illegal from being a "s but also from legal nonciti- a "sma zens...
...As I got older, I developed a broader definition of race and acknowledged greater mixture...
...William A. Henry Ill, "The Browning of America," Time, April 9, 1990, cited in RodrIguez, p. 129...
...Clara E. Rodriguez is professor of sociology at Fordham University and author of Changing Race: Latinos, the Census and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (NYU Press, 2000...
...Todd S. Purdam, "California Census Confirms Whites Are in Minority," The New York Times, March 30, 2001...
...They simply assume...
...2. D'Vera Cohn and Darryl Fears, "Multiracial Growth Seen in Census," The Washington Post, March 13, 2001...
...l Time featured an article on the Iowa governor's plan to boost the state's sagging number of laborers by stimulating immigration...
...This was darker than the interviewer's view of Mr...
...wrote in "black Hspanic Caveats and technicalirough the racial insensitivi- ties aside, the news awakening of the 1960s, media treatment of the reds of the 1 980s...
...I realized that though I feel Hispanic, I was not seen as Hispanic or Latino, but as black...
...2 The fact that large numbers of Latinos repeatedly identify themselves as "other race" on the census is the centerpiece of the provocative thesis of Clara Rodrfguez's recent book, Changing Race...
...In response to the census race question, Mr...
...8 Thus, be like "any other blac Hispanics are an excep- uneasy with American-bi tional ethnic group, indeed they strongly disliked blac the only U.S...
...But as I grew, I understood Puerto Rican as a mixture, and I could identify with both blacks and whites...
...Though overlap between "race" and "ethnicity" was recognized, a thorough re-examination of the census categories was not achieved and the formal distinction was retained.4 It is noteworthy, however, that despite the continuing tendency of the government's cate- gories to reify race, the retired 40-year Census Bureau veteran who oversaw last year's new multiple race option, Nampeo McKenney, can now be quoted in Time saying, "It's very clear that race is fluid, it's changing, it's dynamic...
...As a child, I perceived myself as a Puerto Rican and distinctly apart from black and white...
...Despite the fact that a plurality of Hispanics-46%-identified themselves as white only, the comparison of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites as distinct groups is considered viable...
...on Arizona, which had the greatest Hispanic population increase, also reported on swamped social services, such as a $49 million peak last year in "uncompensated [health] care to illegal immigrants and other uninsured county residents...
...25, No...
...Do we really want to become another California, with all of its immigrant problems...
...3. Clara Rodriguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp...
...eugenicist demographics, Lothrop Stoddard, feared "the rising tide of color," as he titled one of his books, and the consequent "race suicide" of "slow-breeding whites" outpaced by the immigration and fertility rates of "inferior colored peoples...
...When asked why he characterized himself as darker than North Americans might see him, Mr...
...their 'whiteness' and "an American thus makes them non, : : i:: white by default.'9 "other race," and on the ite by default...
...To sus: "the browning of experience she had had at America...
...During these hearings, Rodriguez notes that for the first time, it was "publicly acknowledged on a national level that [the concepts of race and ethnicity] were not mutually exclusive but were fluid and dvnamic...
...National Review, "The Census: Minority Report," April 2, 2001...
...Finally, when asked, "Why do you see yourself as black...
...17 Three years after its "browning of America" piece, Time published a special issue titled "The New Face of America...
...Mr...
...31 (1997), pp...
...She emphasized which whites are or are and black and has strong swiftly becoming a minority, continue the orth Americans saw her to demographic metaphor but noted that she felt coined by Time magazine n blacks...
...Tammerlin Drummond, "Como EstAs, Des Moines...
...Mexicans are New York City's fastest growing Latino immigrant community...
...See France Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998...
...l 5 It remains to be seen if immigration policy and popular attitudes will swing rightward as a result of the new census findings...
...Dana Canedy, "Florida Has More Hispanics Than Blacks, Census Shows," The New York Times, March 28, 2001...
...6. Jim Yardley, "Non-Hispanic Whites May Soon Be a Minority in Texas," The New York Times, March 25, 2001...
...He noted that his racial identity had changed over time...
...In my case, the "only" in the above phrase means merely that a large number of persons who would be classified as blacks by lighterskinned others do not classify themselves that way, but as "pardos" (mixed bloods...
...nativist's nightmare, is namanian and proud of it, an old one, entrenched in ican, and she does not see U.S...
...ethnic group illustrate, Celia described that may be of any race...
...Now I agree with whoever thinks I'm black...
...51-78...
...He said that he goes along with their assumption as long as he is treated well but admitted that he accepts this identity because it would take him too much time to explain why he is culturally not an African American...
...But when answering "How would you describe yourself racially...
...Within this perspective," she writes, "Hispanics are often referred to as 'lightskinned,' not as white...
...During the interview, Jose Ali noted that he assumes everybody at his job assumes he is black and he does not Race, Class and Color 1. See Hannah Arendt, "Race-thinking Before Racism," in The Origins of Totalitarianism, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951) and Michel Foucault, La Genealogia del Racismo, (Madrid: Las Ediciones de la Piqueta, 1997...
...Yet she census results, especially constant racial turbulence, in regional instances in ie was...
...He pointed out that "when you are seen as a certain race, you are also seen culturally the might occasion a recrudescence of Stoddard's language...
...Consequently, today Latinos are pressured to be categorized according to their color rather than their national heritage and culture...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 6
