The New York Times

October 24, 2004 Sunday


SECTION: Section 1; Pg. 21

HEADLINE: Hispanics Debate Census Plan to Change Racial Grouping

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

(EDITED)

ITALICS ADDED FOR CLARITY

The music was blaring, the hair dryers humming and the hair stylists laughing in the beauty salon as one of them, Kathia Mendez, loosened her curlers and let her black hair tumble to her shoulders. To many Americans, the vivacious young woman smiling into the gilded mirror might seem easily recognizable as a black woman.

But like many Hispanics here, Ms. Mendez views race through a decidedly different lens. In her home country, the Dominican Republic, she is known as ''india,'' or Indian, a term often used for people of mixed race who do not have indigenous roots. If she was asked to describe herself in the United States census, she says, she would choose the racial category selected by nearly 15 million Hispanics in 2000: ''some other race.''

''I'm not black and I'm not white; we don't define ourselves that way,'' said Ms. Mendez, a 25-year-old hair stylist who has lived in the United States for nine years. ''So I would choose 'some other race.'''

But now census officials are hoping to eliminate the option from the 2010 questionnaire in an effort to encourage Hispanics to choose one or more of five standard racial categories: white, black, Asian, American Indian or Alaska native, or a category that includes natives of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands...
.

The proposal to eliminate the category, which was used almost exclusively by Hispanics in the 2000 census, has stirred a furious debate among Hispanic advocacy groups, statisticians and officials over how the nation's largest minority group should be defined racially. If approved, it would be the first time since 1940 that officials have eliminated a racial category from the census, Census Bureau officials say.

Critics say the change would ignore the evolving views of race emerging in communities across the country as immigration from Latin America has surged in recent decades. Nearly 40 million Hispanics -- almost half of them immigrants -- live in the United States and many embrace a kaleidoscope of racial identities that transcends traditional notions of black and white.

Many Hispanics refer to themselves as jabao, indio, trigueno or moreno, depending on their skin color and birthplace, while others think that all Hispanics, regardless of color or national origin, should be viewed as a single race.

In the 2000 census, 48 percent of Hispanics described themselves as white and 2 percent as black. Six percent identified themselves as belonging to two or more of the standard racial categories. And 42 percent chose ''some other race,'' with the vast majority writing in responses like Hispanic, Latino or geographic backgrounds like Mexican, Puerto Rican or Dominican.

Carlos Chardon, chairman of the Census Bureau's Hispanic advisory committee and an opponent of the proposed change, said census officials were ignoring America's shifting racial realities by trying to force Latinos to choose from the standard categories. Advocates at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund have also expressed concerns.

''We don't fit into the categories that the Anglos want us to fit in,'' Mr. Chardon said. ''The census is trying to create a reality that doesn't exist.''

Census officials say they will consult with the Office of Management and Budget, Congress and advocacy groups before a final decision is made. But they say change is necessary to improve the accuracy of the data in the bureau's Modified Age/Race and Sex, or MARS, file, which many federal agencies rely on.

In the MARS file, census officials assign a race to those who select ''some other race'' to accommodate federal agencies that do not use the ambiguous racial category. The agencies use the MARS estimates to track population and birth and mortality rates, among other things.


...In 1930, the census introduced a racial category called Mexican, which was intended to capture the growing number of Hispanics in Southwestern states. But it was dropped in 1940, and by 1960 census officials were instructing its interviewers to record ''Puerto Ricans, Mexicans or other person of Latin American descent as white unless they were definitely of Negro, Indian or other nonwhite race.''

The ''other race'' category was made up of mixed-race people who claimed some combination of white, black and Native American descent and some people of Asian heritage when it was first included in 1950. By 1980, it was largely Hispanic, reflecting, in part, the increased immigration from Latin America.

At Arelis Beauty Salon, Ms. Mendez and her colleagues marveled at the differences between the Dominican and American racial palettes as they styled hair and waxed eyebrows and debated whether the census reflected their racial identities.

Zunilda Diaz, 48, said she would describe herself as white, though her mother is dark-skinned and would be considered black in the United States. Nelly de la Rosa, who is 33 and has chocolate brown skin, said she would choose ''some other race.''

Without that option, she said, she would be hard pressed to pick a racial category.

''We have so much mixture,'' said Ms. de la Rosa, who said she is described as morena or india at home. ''These other census categories just don't reflect who we are.''