Pinpointing Another Reason That More Hispanics Are Identifying as White |
Pinpointing Another Reason That More Hispanics Are Identifying as White
The New York Times
2014-06-02
Recently, I wrote about new research that showed that a net 1.2 million Hispanics changed their racial identification from “some other race” to “white” between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
Manuel Pastor, a professor at the University of Southern California, added an important detail to the story. Between 2000 and 2010, the census question on race and ethnicity changed in a subtle way.
The salient difference is the second line of the “Note” preceding the two questions on race and ethnicity. The 2010 census prefaces the otherwise identical questions with the statement: “For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.” The 2000 census offered no such clarification. Both questionnaires offered the “some other race” option at the bottom. The instruction could have led some Hispanics, who otherwise might have checked “some other race” because they thought their race was “Hispanic,” to switch their answer to “white.”…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Manuel Pastor, Nate Cohn, New York Times, The New York Times