America's majority-minority confusion

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

America becoming a majority-minority society, or no longer having a white majority, is a misleading narrative based largely on a confused interpretation of a constructed demographic statistic. The changing composition of America's population is being misinterpreted by the puzzling use of racial, ethnic, linguistic, ancestry and origin categories that increasingly make little sense.

Since the first U.S. census in 1790, when some data on race and ethnicity as well as categories differentiating between free persons and slaves were collected, the government has changed its definitions of racial categories more than 10 times. Nearly every census has collected racial data differently than the census preceding it. Also, in most past censuses people who were both white and another race, no matter how small the percentage, were counted as the nonwhite race.

In addition, census terminology for ethnicity data has changed, especially during the recent past. In 1970, for example, the Census Bureau added a question to one of its forms about Hispanic origin. In the 1980 census the term "Spanish/Hispanic" was added before origin or descent in a form sent to all U.S. residents. But in 1990 "descent' was dropped from the census question and in 2000 "origin" was dropped as well and the word "Latino" was added.

America's population census is an essential undertaking and importantly required by the Constitution for determining representation in Congress. However, beyond the basic enumeration, what subjects or questions are included in the decennial census is a political matter, which is increasingly being impacted by decisions of the courts.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/america-s-majority-minority-confusion/ar-BB1fEytd

[Claire Oh Nette]

1. Race ethnicity or anscestry?

My first year teaching, a student said, Miss O., "there's no such place as His-spain." Snap.

It occurred to me later on, traveling back from a trip to Costa Rica, that no one is Hispanic at all until they come here. They're Honduran, or Argentinian, or Costa Rican, or Venezuelan, or Mexican, or Oaxoacan, El Salvadorean. They simply all speak Spanish. As do people from Spain. And Afro Caribbeans.

So, Hispanic is what? Descended from Spain? Or Spanish speaking?

What, then, does one do with Sammy Sosa? He's a Spanish speaking Black man. He is not, however, African American. This doesn't even begin to get into mixed and multi racial people.

If the US wasn't so sytemically racist, we'd not have to count all the ways one isn't white european english speaking because we'd simply count people.

SIgh.

[TwilightZone]

2. Hispanic has been used to refer to people/culture from Spain for centuries.

Hispanic has been used to refer to people and culture from Spain and related countries for several hundred years. The reference predates the United States.

"The term Hispanic derives from Latin Hispanicus, the adjectival derivation of Latin (and Greek) Hispania (that is, the Iberian peninsula), ultimately probably of Celtiberian origin.[3] In English the word is attested from the 16th century (and in the late 19th century in American English).[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic

[Claire Oh Nette]

3. Her point stood.

There is no Hispain. As a Mexican American, she spoke Spanish, but she herself was not from Spain. It's fine if it means from Spain exclusively, but it doesn't. It's become a pejorative catch all for Mexico and other Central American countries, even those descended from indigenous peoples.