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I just received my census questionaire and am confused with the racial categories. As a Puerto Rican male, I had no problem answering the Hispanic Origin question, however, when you go to the next "What race are you" question, the choices are:
1- White
2- Black
3- Native American / Alaskan Native
-Then a series of Asian ethnicities (Chinese/Japanese/etc).
-And finally the "some other race".
So my question is this: What would I choose? And for that matter, what would Jews and Arabs choose? None of us are Asian, none of us are Black, but I believe we are Caucasian, but do not fall under America's narrow definition of "white."
By process of elmination I chose "white" and wrote next to it "caucasian" which is what I believe the actual racial term I would fall under. And what is the "some other race?" There are only 3! The census allows you to choose multiple boxes for race, so you can choose black and white if you are both (or whatever other mixture), so what the heck is the "some other race" option?
I thought they fixed all this nonsense...but apparently they didn't. Does anyone else see the inherent problem/confusion with this?
The 10 census questions are below:
The Questions on the Form - 2010 Census (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/interactive-form.php - broken link)
I'm sorry you have to go through this SobroGuy. This is what you get from separating ethnicity from race.
An Indonesian girl I know is phenotypically Black or Latino at the most, yet she's probably counted into the "Asian race" because she's Indonesian. And this is just one of numerous examples.
Perhaps you could just tick the "Other" box?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neutre
Ethnicity, culture, and race based on physical characteristics are very closely intertwined.
Theoretically you could separate race and ethnicity (e.g. in the census), but that doesn't work in real life.
Even in the census you encounter all sorts of doubts, like Asians who physically are Black or Caucasian, although they're "100%" Asian. This shows how the so called Asian race is inseparable from ethnicity or culture. And then you also have native Europeans who physically look Asian (I've met a number of native Poles, Hungarians, and Greeks who do) or Black. There are also enough Africans (and African-Americans) who look Caucasian or Asian.
One thing that one forgets is that based solely on physical characteristics you often have these different races within one family or an extended family. I know an Indonesian family who has three kids. The eldest one looks Black with dark skin and black curly hair, her younger siblings are twins, a brother and a sister. He looks Asian with "the eyes" and dark brown wavy hair, whereas she looks Caucasian with light skin and straight dark brown hair. And I'm omitting other physical characteristics such as the shape/form of the nose, lips, hair distribution and density, protrusion of the brow ridge, cheek bones, eye color, stature, fat distribution, and a host of other features.
These cases are common all over the "old world" including Southeast, South, Central (including western China), West Asia, Oceania, Africa (Malagasy people of Madagascar are closer to Hawaiians than to Black Chadians, a lot of Bushmen in southern Africa look more like Asians), Russia, etc. Those Poles that are physically Asian probably have siblings or family who are Caucasian.
Are those people supposed to check different races in spite of them being in the same family?
Are these twins now supposed to check different races?
[Go to original post to see the picture]
An Indonesian girl I know is phenotypically Black or Latino
There is no "Latino" phenotype. There is a Mediterranean phenotype if you want to talk about the original Latin people and their descendants in the Americas, but since the United States defines "Latino" as a cultural term that has nothing to do with race, "Latinos" are every color of the rainbow and have drastically different facial structure and hair texture.
There is no "Latino" phenotype. There is a Mediterranean phenotype if you want to talk about the original Latin people and their descendants in the Americas, but since the United States defines "Latino" as a cultural term that has nothing to do with race, "Latinos" are every color of the rainbow and have drastically different facial structure and hair texture.
I know.
I'm just using what a lot of Americans have in mind when they say a "Latino look" in spite of it being different from one person to another.
Just like everybody has a picture of a "White look". Pretty much everybody would agree that a person who has a "high nose", protruded eyebrows, pinkish light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair is White, but the further away you go from this narrow definition of "White", people start disagreeing with each other. Some people consider Arabs White, some don't. Irish, Italians, Jews (most of whom were physically White) used to be considered not White at some points of American history.
There's also a "Black look", which a lot of people from Southeast, South, West Asia and Oceania possess. Although these people would be considered Asian, Pacific Islander, or even White based on their ethnicity.
SobroGuy. Have you decided what box(es) you check? Another possibility is to check more than one.
This business of separating ethnicity and race is bewildering indeed.
I'm sorry you have to go through this SobroGuy. This is what you get from separating ethnicity from race.
An Indonesian girl I know is phenotypically Black or Latino at the most, yet she's probably counted into the "Asian race" because she's Indonesian. And this is just one of numerous examples.
Perhaps you could just tick the "Other" box?
Phenotype is just one aspect of race considering it is a social construct. So, she would be considered "Asian".
What if you're Puerto Rican and you're not exactly sure which combination of races you are? I don't know my ancestry and if you were to look at the color of my skin, I'd guess European and American Indian but my husband who is also Puerto Rican looks simply European but our families skin colors vary tremendously. I checked off "other race" and put Puerto Rican because I really don't know what combination. We had someone from the census bureau come to the house after that, ask us the same questions and she wrote down exactly what we wrote down and was fine with our answer.
This is a pretty easy question to answer, they would put other and write Jew or Arab on the line. I worked for the Census and there was a black girl in my class, and when we were going over race question for the life of her she couldn't understand that Latino/Hispanic is not a race. I tried explaining to her that Pau Gasol and Pedro Martinez are both considered "Latino" in the United States, but they aren't of the same race, obviously, she still didn't get it. The whole Latino/Hispanic thing is pretty retarded to begin with, I don't think any other country uses it. There was also a Puerto Rican in the class who thought Puerto Rican was a race!
Phenotype is just one aspect of race considering it is a social construct. So, she would be considered "Asian".
Race is not a social construct, it is a scientific. Scientist can determine a persons race by their DNA, if it was a social construct you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a black African and a Chinese Asian.
Race is not a social construct, it is a scientific. Scientist can determine a persons race by their DNA, if it was a social construct you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a black African and a Chinese Asian.
Your right about that. I think its science determines what race you truly are. I was watching a pbbs documentry called Our American Lives. They did a 50000 dollar blood test to see your genetic make up of various races from different continents. Eva Longoria is mixed with white, asian and little bit of black. Some black lady on the documentary was actually 60% white according to her genetic make up of dna. I know where my ancestors come from portugal, uk, ireland, india and africa. I wonder what my racial dna would be like.
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