Question about Demographics for a city on Wikipedia

[Beringia]

I was looking up the demographics for different cities in my area. The last census was 2010 and that is what is cited on the Wiki pages. I came across this puzzle on many of the pages I visited, where they gave a breakdown of the different races and the percent for that neighborhood, and the numbers didn't add up to 100%.

Here is an example, Berwyn, Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn,_Illinois#Demographics

As of the census of 2010, there were 56,657 people and 18,910 households in the city. The racial makeup of the city was:

60.48% White
6.40% African American
0.59% Native American
2.52% Asian
0.03% Pacific Islander
26.61% some other race
3.37% from two or more races.

Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 59.44% of the population.

So I couldn't understand, how can you 60.48% White and 59.44% Hispanics. I asked on the talk section of the Wiki page, located top right, about the numbers not making sense, and I saw something where the reply was (no difference). I don't know how the message got there or who put it there.


So I went to find some demographic data that made sense to me and found one from Illinois.

https://www.cmap.illinois.gov/documents/10180/102881/Berwyn.pdf

I added it to the Wiki page and I wonder if it will get deleted in the future. Here is the data I found and added.

As per the Community Data Snapshot Berwyn 2013-2017, Municipality, June 2019 release Berwyn had the following demographics:

Hispanic or Latino: 35,928, 63.7%
White non-Hispanic: 14,793, 26.2%
Black non-Hispanic: 3,235, 5.7%
Asian non-Hispanic: 1,823, 3.2%
All other categories: 588, 1.0%

So was wondering if anyone could make sense of the first data given, where there are 60.48% White and 59.44% Hispanics.

Also they gave a breakdown of the different European ethnicities but they didn't give a breakdown of the different Hispanic ethnicities.

The top five non-Hispanic ancestries reported in Berwyn as of the 2009-2011 American Community Survey were Italian (8.0%), German (7.8%), Irish (7.3%), and Polish (7.1%).

[SharonClark]

1. Good catch. Your wiki change is still there.

[Jim__]

2. My reading of that is that some of the 59.44% Hispanics are White.

From the Demographics section of the wiki page:

As of the census of 2010, there were 56,657 people and 18,910 households in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 60.48% White, ... <new sentence> Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 59.44% of the population.

The Hispanics and Latinos of any race makes me think they are double-counting some Hispanics in those 2 separate statistics.

[Clash City Rocker]

3. Here's the definition of Hispanic

adjective
relating to Spain or to Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Latin America.
noun
a Spanish-speaking person living in the US, especially one of Latin American descent.

So, technically, a person can be white and Hispanic.

But I’m guessing this was a mistake

[Boomer]

4. I'm a (mostly) White Hispanic

My mother was born in Mexico and spoke Spanish, that makes her Hispanic. Although there was some Indian in her background, the majority of her ancestry was European: Spanish, German, French and Italian.

"White" is about race, but "Hispanic" is about ethnicity. They're not the same concept, although they do have overlap. And all of it a pretty arbitrary and unscientific set of categories that we take far too seriously

[Beringia]

5. Thanks for the answers

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. In the US Census use, Hispanic/non-Hispanic is a separate category from 'race'

From 2000:

How Do I Answer the Question on Race?

The individual who responds to the census decides what his or her racial
identity is. For the first time ever, people answering the census will be able
to select more than one racial category to indicate mixed racial heritage.
The groups shown in the census race question collapse into the six race
groups needed by the federal government: White, Black or African American,
American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and Other
Pacific Islanders. People who mark the American Indian or Alaska Native
category are asked to provide the name of their principal or enrolled tribe.
People who say they are “Other Asian,” “Other Pacific Islander,” and/or
“Some other race” are asked to also write in their race.

How Do Hispanics Answer the Race Question?

People of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Hispanics can choose one or
more race categories, including White, Black or African American, American
Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.
If someone does not identify with any of the specified race groups, he or she may
mark the “Some other race” category and write in their race

https://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d3249c.pdf

[Beringia]

7. Well this Hispanic is not a race

is confusing. I think people who come from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, on and on cannot claim they are White or African. Sure there are some Hispanics that are White because they came from Europe or may have African slave ancestry, but there is a definite category for Hispanic. I suppose there are some Hispanics that have mainly Amerindian genes, and then some who are Amerindian and Spanish combined.

They have a breakdown for White Europeans for German, Irish, French etc, but they have no breakdown for Hispanic, what country they came from.

I find the information given on Wiki pages for race to not offer me much information at all about who lives in the neighborhood, in terms of where they came from and when. That is the reason I would check a Wiki page for a neighborhood. To read there are 60.48% Whites and then later that 59.44% of the population are Hispanics, that would have to mean that almost all the 59.44% Hispanics call themselves White. Why, because they are partly Spanish? It doesn't even identify they are partly Amerindian in their race.

I know just by taking a walk, that my Berwyn neighborhood is mainly Hispanic, but it would be nice to know more about the diversity. I hear them speaking Spanish almost always. The neighborhood has almost exclusively Mexican restaurants and then the fast food chains.

I suppose maybe a grade school teacher in Berwyn would know more about who lives in Berwyn and where they came from.

My father spend his career integrating all white neighborhoods like Berwyn and nearby Cicero, so black families could live here. So it is interesting to me how it has changed. There are very few black people now in Cicero or Berwyn. And I believe the white families who used to live here 50 years ago, are long gone. I don't know where their children moved to.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Not "almost all" Hispanics called themselves as white; about half, and nearly half "some other race"

Figures aren't exact, because the Community Data Snapshot is from later than the 2010 census (and was not an exhaustive survey, just a sample). But from the census, we have the 2 large categories of 60.48% White and 26.61% some other race. In the CDS, we have Hispanic or Latino: 35,928, 63.7% (up from 59.44% in 2010), White non-Hispanic: 14,793, 26.2%.

So that matches with, in 2010, about 26% white non-Hispanic, 34% white Hispanic, 25% 'some other race' Hispanic.

The Ancestry listed in the 2009-11 ACS comes from an open-ended question (they could give up to 2); for the 2000 Census, a long list of answers was produced, including dozens under 'Hispanic', but for some reason, the census.gov data products haven't listed those for some time:

Currently, however, data for detailed Hispanic, Asian, NHPI, and AIAN groups are not tabulated from ancestry. Only the detailed White, Black, and SOR groups (such as Lebanese, Haitian, and Brazilian, respectively) are in the ancestry data products.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2019/acs/2019_Mills_01.pdf

There's a lot more there, that might give some explanation if you want to spend time looking for it.