Do you know your race? I can't say I've ever had a gut response, and after this year's census, I still don't know. I filled question 8 about Hispanic origin with a "yes" for Mexican, but then also had to fill out question 9 about race. A bolded note in between the two explicitly stated that, "for this census, Hispanic origins are not races." That froze my pen and how. My choices instead were white, black, american indian, and a host of asian/pacific islander nationalities. Faced with those choices, I could see what they were driving at: am I Sammy Sosa, or Selma Hayek? Right? I think what they want to know is: are you, or have you ever been, a member of the African peoples of the earth?
If that's the case, then, to the best of my knowledge, I think I should have answered white. Except I'm not white. There is no social reality that I live in where any of the available terms make sense. I told my brother about this question and asked him what he thinks his race is: "Uh...Latino?" "What if that wasn't an option?" "Hispanic?" "If not that?" "Mexican" "Nope" "...Chicano?" Can it really just be a biology question? The online FAQ explains that answers to these questions help determine fairness and disparities of all the usual suspects: employment, voting, services, etc. Does lumping thirty million Americans of Mexican origin into black, white, or any other of these categories help shed light on such differences? If anything, I'd say the hispanic origins question does that, but then what does it help to add a wholly independent racial component?
So that was one reason the form lingered on my kitchen table. When the census guy stopped by I was on my way to pick up M. I told him I'd be back soon. When I got back he was right outside. And I would've stopped, but we wanted ice cream, so I just gave him the one-index-finger-up gesture that told him I'd be right back. Ice cream in hand, I came back, gave him the form and asked him about question 9. Actually, he asked first. "Did you just want to leave that blank?". I told him no and explained my confusion. And he told me it throws lots of people off. He hears, for example, "Well, I'm white, but I'm Italian." So I asked him what I should do, and he told me that if all I wanted to put was Mexican then I could check "other" and just write it in. Which, however much in direct conflict with the bold explanatory note, is what I did. Not satisfying.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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2 comments:
Yes, it's a clusterfuck - I can give you some readings on this problem if your interested. From a "help the social scientists" perspective, you're best off putting "white" and "Hispanic" (or white and Mexican). Often, the first thing researchers need to do is to rearrange the data to consolidate the race and ethnicity questions.
Anyway... there's no good way to do it that would satisfy all the different types of researchers but the way we do is not the best by a long shot.
You know, do send one of those readings my way so I can unpack that some. I got the sense that the white/Hispanic combo might be the suggested course, although doing that would mean, as I wrote, ignoring direct advice to disregard labels like Hispanic on the race question. If write-ins for categories like Hispanic get worked over by researchers, I wonder what's done with all the self-reporting of white ethnic categories like Irish, Italian, or Polish. And come to think of it, I don't recall seeing Jewish as one of the boxes. Some must be more relevant than others, no? And how many "Mickey Mouse" and "School Sucks" end up in the write-in category? I guess we'll find out, preferably in some big national scroll-down manner from most to least reported.
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