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Latinos still misrepresented: add ‘mestizo’ to the U.S. census
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Since Judge Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to join the United States Supreme Court she has taken some blows from the conservative media. Her past cases have been questioned and she’s even been foolishly called a racist. Nevertheless, polls seem to show that most Americans agree with her nomination, and should her hearing be successful; she will become the third woman to serve on the Court, as well as the first Latino. It would be a great honor to the fastest growing minority group in the country.
However, as we witness this historic development, and despite all the progress made, Latinos are still misrepresented in this country. And in my opinion, one of the areas where this is exemplified is in the U.S. census. I was a little surprised to learn that Latinos are not classified as a racial group in it. Upon reading the explanation, it did make sense though. It states that a Latino person could be of any race.
And if we take a good look, it is evident that Latinos are indeed a multi-racial group. After all, everybody can clearly notice that baseball star David “Big Papi” Ortiz (black) does not physically look like actress Cameron Diaz (white), and that soccer legend Pele (black) looks nothing like funnyman George Lopez (Indio/Native American), and so on. Yet, they are all Latinos here in the U.S.
Even when one looks at censuses from Latin American countries, one sees that “Latino/Hispanic” is absent as one of the racial identifiers. Instead, we see most of the categories present in our own census, such as Black, White, Indian/Indio (Native American). However, there’s one that is more common in theirs but absent in ours: Mestizo (people of mixed white and Indian blood). And its absence here is problematic because it seems to be the majority “race” amongst Latinos.
Therefore, not only are they (Latinos) not classified as a “racial” group (here), but the majority of them are not given the chance to identify themselves correctly. The Black Latinos can check “black,” the white Latinos can check “Caucasian/white,” and the Indios can check “Native American.” But the majority Mestizo has nothing to check.
Now, this following point may be unfair to the other races in the Latino community but, the general image of Latinos is that of the Mestizo. In other words, the supposed “Latin look” is that of the Mestizo. This unfortunate reality sort of takes away the input of the other groups such as Afro-Latinos who have contributed tremendously in the Latin culture, especially in the area of music (a lot of the popular Latin music are Afro-Latin), but that’s another topic for a possible future article.
Furthermore, the largest immigrant Latino population in this country comes from Mexico, and the majority of Mexicans (and Mexican-Americans) are Mestizos. And not only are they the largest group, they are also the fastest growing. So aren’t we denying them representation by not having their race in our census? I think we are.
Latinos have contributed tremendously to this country’s progress. They have suffered discrimination in the past but they have changed the course of their destiny, and their success is ongoing. Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is just one of the many examples of that success.
Nevertheless, they are still misrepresented, and the U.S. census is an area where this happens. Fortunately, at least in this case, all can change if we add “Mestizo” to it. That's the least we could do after denying them recognition there (in the census) as a whole group. I’m not saying that having racial categories at all is right or wrong, but since we have them, we should try to get it right. Some perhaps will also say that my suggestion might open a can of worms for others to take advantage of, but this is the land of immigrants, and that can of worms was opened the day racial categories made its way into our census.
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