The New York Times ran an article over the weekend on how the government's racial categories don't fit Hispanics well: For Many Latinos Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color. It's like a dumbed-down version of one of my articles.
More than 18 million Latinos checked this “other” [race] box in the 2010 census, up from 14.9 million in 2000.
What's not mentioned is that that's actually a decline in percentage terms: there was a rise from 2000 to 2010 in the percentage of Hispanic ethnicity individuals calling themselves white on the race question. (This likely doesn't represent an underlying change in race or thinking about race. It probably had to do with minor changes in the wording of the race question on the 2010 Census that were intended to elicit more comprehension from Latinos.)
It was an indicator of the sharp disconnect between how Latinos view themselves and how the government wants to count them. Many Latinos argue that the country’s race categories — indeed, the government’s very conception of identity — do not fit them.
Of course, there's no mention that Latin American countries themselves use terms like "mestizo" and "mulatto" and "Indio" -- those words are considered multiculturally insensitive in America, even though they are considered useful in Latin America.
The main reason for the split is that the census categorizes people by race, which typically refers to a set of common physical traits. But Latinos, as a group in this country, tend to identify themselves more by their ethnicity, meaning a shared set of cultural traits, like language or customs.
Of course, there's no mention that Hispanics are the only ethnicity to get their own question on the Census. There were only about 9 questions on the last Census and one was Are you Hispanic/Latino? Ethnically, to the Feds, either you are Hispanic or you are non-Hispanic. If you are non-Hispanic, the feds don't care about your ethnicity.
The general tone of the article is the usual: that Latino political power through ethnocentric solidarity is an unquestioned good. To newspaper reporters, what could be more self-evident? All the Latino leaders in their Blackberries tell them that. Granted, in the real world, not that many Spanish-surnamed people seem to care all that much, but that's just proof that we need to write even more articles telling the Latino masses to Get With The Program that their leaders have laid out for them. (If only we could get Latinos to read the Times instead of the Post.) These people who return my phone calls so promptly are the Martin Luther Kings of the 21st Century. If you don't believe me, just ask them.
Personally, the fact that all these newcomers to my country are internally divided by race and ethnicity so that they don't wield all that much political power would seem to me to be a feature, not a bug. I think we should get rid of the ethnicity category altogether and have only two race questions on government forms: "Are you descended from African-American slaves?" and "Are you an official member of an American Indian tribe?"
Readers will not be surprised that the person featured in the article (shown in the photo) as most outspoken in her indignation over the feds' insensitivity doesn't have a Spanish-surname herself: Erica Lubliner.
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57 comments:
'Hispanic' is a purely a linguistic term and is thus perfectly useless in any ethnographic sense.Writers of scholarly articles about 'race' should avoid it, as they should avoid 'Latino'.Perhaps the other unsatisfactory term 'mestizo' is a better substitute.
As we all know language is absolutely no guide at all to ethnicity, it is sloppy thinking ever to use catch-all labels describing language groups in attempting to delineate distinctive anthropologically defined groups.
Hence terms such as 'europids', 'mongolids', 'negrids' etc should be used.
"...doesn't have a Spanish-surname herself: Erica Lubliner." I can only assume that's a mis-spelling of Dubliner.
"...we should ...have only two race questions on government forms: "Are you descended from African-American slaves?" and "Are you an official member of an American Indian tribe?""
And there should be three permissible answers: (i) yes (ii) no (iii) Bugger off, you neo-Nazi.
The general tone of the article is the usual: that Latino political power through ethnocentric solidarity is an unquestioned good.
As in all immigration stories. Immigration is that most wonderous of things - it has no downside, no cost, no opportunity cost, no negative side effects whatsoever. Its probably the most unique and beautiful thing in all of human history.
Anything you might mistakenly perceive as a problem is just your lying, racist eyes at work.
I suppose a few negatives might be acknowledged - the effect on housing supply for example. But in reality the only problem is that evil white rayciss might exploit that unease. There isnt actually a problem in real life.
Readers will not be surprised that the person featured in the article (shown in the photo) as most outspoken in her indignation over the feds' insensitivity doesn't have a Spanish-surname herself: Erica Lubliner.
Knew some MacLubliners back home in Ulster - nicest, kindest Presbyterian folk you'll ever meet.
'Hispanic' is a purely a linguistic term and is thus perfectly useless in any ethnographic sense.
Except that it's worthless even as a linguistic term - the tens of millions of Mexican indians [or aboriginals or whatever you want to call them] don't speak Spanish - even now, 500 years after the Castilians first tried to shove Spanish down their throats - instead, they speak myriad tongues like Nahuatl, Yucatec, Mixtec, Zapotec, and about 60 other pre-Columbian languages.
And they don't READ any language - literacy is completely unknown in their cultures.
Since this thread seems to be about the general question of the state of affairs [or at least the state of nature] down south of the border, let me just say that I was watching the FX channel last night, and they played a movie called Turistas, and HOLY COW was that the most intense purely HBD thriller that I've seen since Apocalypto.
It got so gruesome that I had to turn it off [although I did record it on the DVR], but the unmistakable message I got from what I saw was: "Stupid, gullible, naive white children - STEER CLEAR OF THE THIRD WORLD!!!"
Are you in favor of only having those two questions for political reasons, or because you doubt the existence of races and ethnicities as anything real?
"Hispanic" is BS. The feds are actually trying to CREATE an ethnic group, by binding together disparate peoples. A lot of them are Indians who are morphing to Latinos here. At my old school, guidance counselors told all the Indian kids to mark themselves as Latino. The media and the feds are basically waiting for this group to coalesce and make its mighty political roar, upon which we'll all tremble, while dollars shake out of our pockets.
"Hispanic" is BS. The feds are actually trying to CREATE an ethnic group, by binding together disparate peoples. A lot of them are Indians who are morphing to Latinos here. At my old school, guidance counselors told all the Indian kids to mark themselves as Latino. The media and the feds are basically waiting for this group to coalesce and make its mighty political roar, upon which we'll all tremble, while dollars shake out of our pockets.
Since ethnicity is so heavily based on self-identification, which is so closely tied to language, it makes sense to note that Hispanic is an ethnic term. (Ethnicity is also tied to race and religion, but is always, ultimately, a matter of self-identification.)
Other terms like Europid, Mongolid, and Negrid are excellent guides to race rather than ethnicity.
I agree about dropping "Hispanic and/or Latino" from the census.
The article gives a theory why second- and third-generation Hispanics don't show much if any upward mobility: the more successful of them no longer identify as Hispanic.
Peter
If you're gonna act like a computer geek, then do it right. You can't have the exclamation point at the right.
How 'bout FORTRAN:
IF (ETHNIC .NE. RACE) THEN
WRITE (1,"Blah, blah, blah."
or, as a comment
C Ethnicity ain't Race!)
or write in C, as you're pretending to be:
If (Ethnicity != Race) then
{
}
or, as a comment
/* Ethnicity != Race!, dammit */
like that, see.
Geeez!
The death of white America really scares you guys doesn't it?
They're some goulash soup of races and don't lend themselves well to any neat classification scheme. Funny how those lefties concerned with the subject twist and turn to come up with the right PC formula.
In my opinion they should have a checkbox titled "mystery meat" on all forms asking about race since everyday I see lots of people who seem to fall into that category.
Imagine that circa 1990 'Hispanic' immigration to the USA had stopped and Europen immigration had re-started?
"it is sloppy thinking ever to use catch-all labels describing language groups in attempting to delineate distinctive anthropologically defined groups.
Hence terms such as 'europids', 'mongolids', 'negrids' etc should be used."
I can just see "negrid" catching on in a really big way.*
Just the potential for jokes about getting rid of negroes makes this one cringeworthy.
*Yes, I realize it's a legitimate word with a legitimate use--but then again, so was "niggardly".
Why do you need to know how many people consider themselves descendants of African Slaves? And how many declare their official membership in Indian tribes? People change their identities according to the cultural wind and sometimes they say they are Hispanics and next time they declare themselves to be White or whatever category is available. Best abolish all official classifications and distinctions.
So our Wise Latina Supreme Court justice is actually a Wise White Person? Or Wise Person of No Color?
I just can't keep up anymore.
Erica Lubliner is Scotch-Irish.
Among other things, it seems to me that if anyone has any extra nice treatment coming from our government, it should probably be descendants of slaves and Indians, who really were monumentally f--ked over. I would prefer race blind policies, but its much easier to swallow AA type programs for those two groups than for, say, hispanics who are mostly descendents of relatively recent immigrants.
From the article:
"Erica Lubliner, who has fair skin and green eyes — legacies of her Jewish father and her Mexican mother — said she was so “conflicted” about the race question on the census form that she left it blank.
Ms. Lubliner, a recent graduate of the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, in her mid-30s, was only 9 when her father died, and she grew up steeped in the language and culture of her mother. She said she has never identified with “the dominant culture of white.” She believes her mother is a mix of white and Indian. “Believe me, I am not a confused person,” she said. “I know who I am, but I don’t necessarily fit the categories well.”
Another point on the absurdity of using the term 'Hispanic' to denote an 'ethnic category'.
Strictly speaking, of course, 'Hispanic' has but one meaning, it apertains to a native of the ancient Roman province of Hispania or the Iberian peninsula to quote an alternate description.
Now, the modern science of genetics, invoving techniques of comparing DNA haplotypes and autosomal DNA gives us a fair idea that an indigenous population has existed on the soil of Hispania, has existed for countless thousand years and what's more the indigenous population is clearly related to each other much more than it is to geographically distant populations.
Further analysis tells us that 'typical Iberian haplotypes' are spread throughout the western Atlantic seaboard of the European continent, hence it has been surmised that the indigenous population of the British Isles emigrated at a distant time from Iberia and later invaders of the British Isles only had a very limited impact on the haplotypes of those isalnds.
The upshot is that Irish, Scottish and English people are more worthy of the appelation 'hispanic' than many of the present day population of the south American continent.
When I was in the USMC 30+ years ago, the Mexican Marines would really take umbrage if you somehow implied that they were not white. Hence, the term "Anglo".
Back then, these were more of the old school Mexican/American, had been in the country for at least several generations and sometimes very many.
Back during Jim Crow, Texas officially classified Mexicans as white.
OTOH, the Puerto Ricans definitely did not consider themselves white. They also used to make fun of the (relatively) slower speech of the Mexicans and in general seemed to have little solidarity with them - they hung out much more w/blacks.
All the Marines (white/black/PR/mexican) were pretty well aware of these distinctions and nobody considered PR & Mexicans one ethny/race/culture, etc.
How will the dumb masses know what role they are supposed to play in history, unless a handful of Jewish agitators tells them?
Erica Lubina should refocus her current effort in ethnic rabble rousing to losing her unsightly weight.
If only we could get Latinos to read the Times instead of the Post.
Hahahahaha! You forgot the Talmud, and Portnoy's Complaint!
Some of the most vicious violence in the Western Hemisphere last century was in Central America between the Ladinos and Indios. The killings in Guatemala and El Salvador were essentially between Spanish speaking Christian Indians and Mayan speaking semi-Christian Indians. I am sure that the severity of the dirty war was intensified by the self hatred on both sides and the belief that as long as the pot was still alive the kettle might be called black.
Readers will not be surprised that the person featured in the article (shown in the photo) as most outspoken in her indignation over the feds' insensitivity doesn't have a Spanish-surname herself: Erica Lubliner.
http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=lubliner
Jewish (Ashkenazic) and German: habitational name for someone from the city of Lublin in Poland
Erica's shoes.
i'd suggest
whitos
indios
blackos
whitoindios
whitoblackos
blackoindios
that would be kinda accurate while offending everyone equally.
I think we should get rid of the ethnicity category altogether and have only two race questions on government forms: "Are you descended from African-American slaves?" and "Are you an official member of an American Indian tribe?"
The legal term of art is "enrolled member of a federally-recognized Indian tribe", but otherwise agree 100%.
Its curious that the Times reporter, Mireya Navarro, didn't bother noting that our first African-American President will very likely be facing a Hispanic Republican nominee.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/mitt-romneys-foreign-policy-advisers.html?showComment=1318070838484#c2776156990994073701
Mitt Romney isn't just of Hispanic descent, he's a natural born citizen of Mexico [that is, he was automatically a citizen at birth since his father George was born in Mexico). In fact,if they'd knocked out physical residency period, both George and Mitt Romney could have run for President of Mexico.
I'm surprised really that no one at the NY Times finds that interesting. Maybe Mireya is saving that colorful detail for a story on Romney's inauguration day.
"Erica Lubliner, who has fair skin and green eyes — legacies of her Jewish father and her Mexican mother — said she was so “conflicted” about the race question on the census form that she left it blank."
Lol. Since when are green eyes implied to be a legacy of the typical Mexican. Maybe typical upper-class Mexican descended from Catalans or Basques, sure, but still...
Categories of ethnicity are becoming more and more of a joke.
This "Are you descended from African-American slaves?" and "Are you an official member of an American Indian tribe?" would be great.
BTW just to mess them up, when they ask if we are Latino, I think that all of us with some Italian ancestry should check yes. Who could be more Latino than Italians.
"The death of white America really scares you guys doesn't it?"
Yes, it does. It'd scare you, too, if you had the sense God gave a goat.
Even though our Latino population identifies as a single people only when participating in anti-White agitprop, I think it's a mistake to conclude that they do not form a demographic fully distinguished from our Amerinds, Whites, and Negroes. Common cultural features among them include: The Spanish language, Roman Catholicism, a preference for fairer partners when obtainable, stronger bonds with extended kin, and the historical folk traditions of Latin American countries.
I am in agreement on the need for HBD to play a role in these discussions, but it seems foolish to underestimate the importance of culture here.
Anyway, Latin America's history of massive miscegenation and its demographic self-reporting hardly help. "White" Latin Americans are supposedly the largest ancestral group. They are followed by Mestizos, whose proportions of admixture vary wildly. Then you have genetic circuses like Brazil and Puerto Rico. Good luck forming a coherent region-wide classification out of that.
So what exactly do we call our Hispanophone underclass? A sphere? A cultural tribe? We have to call them something.
And after all these years, I'm still confused about "ethnicity" vs RACE.
Would someone care to attempt an explanation that makes sense?
- Ivan the Mestizo, because a heathen is at least somewhat better than a savage
I had a Spanish teacher in high school who was born in Cuba and he was as white as any northern European. You would have no idea he was "Hispanic" until he opened his mouth.
The general tone of the article is the usual: that Latino political power through ethnocentric solidarity is an unquestioned good.
If you're the writer, New York Times employee Mireya Navarro, then it IS an unquestioned good. And every last person she knows agrees with her about it being a unquestioned good. There are probably more atheists working in the Vatican than there are non-liberals working at the Times.
The death of white America really scares you guys doesn't it?
It would scare you, regardless of your own color, if you had an IQ above room temperature.
Anonymous: But if you're half-black and half-white, that should cancel out any preferential treatment. One half is slave but the other half is slave-master.
Actually, I think the most appropriate solution takes would follow this sort of analysis but come to a slightly different conclusion...
Remember, only a tiny fraction of American whites in 1865 had ever owned black slaves, and obviously none of the vast number of later arriving whites (and Hispanics and Asians) ever did. So only an absolutely minuscule percentage of American non-blacks today have any slave-owning ancestry.
By contrast, most current American blacks are around 1/4 white, and their white ancestors were very likely almost all slave-owners. So the fairest approach to paying compensation to the descendents of slaves by taxing the descendents of slave-owners to pay money to blacks by punitively taxing...blacks.
Or more precisely, the punitive taxes should be levelled against the lighter-skinned blacks and paid to the darker-skinned ones. I suspect that this proposal might prove *wildly* popular among the darker-skinned blacks...
Ha ha, in SC GOP debate, Juan Williams started a immigration question with, "Governor Romney, your father was born in Mexico and you still have family there"....
At which point, you could hear the audience booing (a natural enough response to cognitive dissonance)
And Romney was OK, said he was against giving amnesty to illegals while there were still legal visa applicants still waiting outside the country (last I heard, the waiting list for sibling green card applicants from the Philippines was 14 years).
"...she was so “conflicted” about the race question on the census form that she left it blank."
Hey, all's well that ends well.
The death of white America really scares you guys doesn't it?
Yeah, in the same way that the death of you scares YOU.
Are you for real?
When I was in the USMC 30+ years ago, the Mexican Marines would really take umbrage if you somehow implied that they were not white. Hence, the term "Anglo".
???????????????
When I was in the USMC 30+ years ago, the Mexican Marines would really take umbrage if you somehow implied that they were not white. Hence, the term "Anglo".
???????????????
Ok, I should have been more clear although I thought it was obvious. Hence the term "Anglo" for non-Mexican whites used by the Mexicans (and other latinos who consider themselves white) to differentiate between themselves and the non-Mexican (or other latinos who consider themselves white).
My great-great grandfather fought for the Union and survived Andersonville. So if the was about slavery, surely his descendants should at least be exempt from any reparations tax.
A little bit of gratitude from the slaves descendants would be appreciated as well.
If whites, blacks,indians and "mixed" that arrive from south of Rio Grande are Hispanics, why blacks, indians, chinese, etc... are not Anglos?
So only an absolutely minuscule percentage of American non-blacks today have any slave-owning ancestry.
A native American black guy like Barack Obama would be more likely to have been related to a slave owner than a white guy.
To Anonymous 01/16/12 at 4:24 am,
We have had our second murder in as many years by one of those folks who claim not to speak English, or Spanish, etc and demand a translator in Mam.
My wife knew the victim and knows the perp. He speaks perfect English.
Better question is why we let them in our country in the first place. This murderer not only killed the mother of his child, he impregnated her when she was 14 a felony in any State. And he was a drug dealer.
A sincere, 'Thank You' is due to all of those open borders and sanctuary types.
Does anyone else think Ms. Lubliner is overcompensating a bit for not being quite as ethnic looking/acting as the rest of those other Mexi-indians she claims com-patriotism with?
If I were you I'd not have the "African-American slave" question either. All their descendants benefitted from their enslavement. Whereas the Red Indians, like the Maoris and the Australian Aborigines, arguably did not benefit from their ancestors' conquest (semi-conquest for the Maoris).
I've pretty much given up saying Hispanic' and go with Mestizo, or Mexican if I'm including the white ones.
>If whites, blacks,indians and "mixed" that arrive from south of Rio Grande are Hispanics, why blacks, indians, chinese, etc... are not Anglos?<
The definitions are not really based on tongue, but on whether one is white, on the one hand, or one-drop or more on the other.
No-drop = Anglos. Drop = all the other categories. No one pushes this categorization further that purported antiracists.
Or more precisely, the punitive taxes should be levelled against the lighter-skinned blacks and paid to the darker-skinned ones. I suspect that this proposal might prove *wildly* popular among the darker-skinned blacks...
Oh my God, don't give her the idea!!!
PS: FLASHBACK to the funniest comment ever posted at iSteve.
"BTW just to mess them up, when they ask if we are Latino, I think that all of us with some Italian ancestry should check yes. Who could be more Latino than Italians."
It irritates the hell out of Hispanics when you remind them that Latin people descended from Italy, Romania, France and Portugal as well as Spain. Rudolph Valentino was known as the Latin Lover, but he was definitely not Hispanic.
So what exactly do we call our Hispanophone underclass? A sphere? A cultural tribe? We have to call them something.
And after all these years, I'm still confused about "ethnicity" vs RACE.
Would someone care to attempt an explanation that makes sense?
Here's an easy way to distinguish ethnicity and race. Wear a silly hat (a sombrero, perhaps) and talk in funny fake accent: people you don't know who aren't part of the ethnic group you're pretending to be will sometimes think you are a member of that ethnic group, but they will have no problem figuring out what race you are.
Many people are confused by race vs ethnicity because most people end up with the same or related ethnicity as their parents: children of ethnically Italian people tend to be Italian if they were born in Italy or Italian-American if they were born in the US. There are tons of exceptions: Yankees who move to the South often wind up with children who are ethnically southern, and vice versa. Baby Asians from China who are adopted by American whites will not be ethnically Chinese: they won't speak much Chinese, will speak English...But they will remain racially yellow, also called Asian.
Racially, if someone's parents are, for eg. both African, also called negro or black, that person will be racially African wherever they happen to live.
Some people are mixed race, so racially they're mixed race. Barrack Obama is half white and half black, so his race is mulatto, sometimes called halfrican, indicating that he's half African, with the half white assumed. If his mother had been a (yellow) Chinese woman, he'd be half Asian, and half African.
People don't have lots of choice about what race they are, since most people can tell if someone's lying about it just by looking. Ethnicity is sometimes more fluid: Barrack Obama is African-American because white Americans think he is, he says he is, his wife is, his children are ~3/4 African, and other African-Americans think he is.
Despite the potential for fluid ethnic identity, most parents have biological children and raise them in their ethnicity: almost everyone who thinks he's African-American is largely African by race.
continued:
In the US, American-Americans (racially white, ethnically English-speaking American) mostly use 'hispanic' to refer to people from bunches of countries and a variety of races because Hispanics aren't very interesting or important to us. Guatemalans and Hondurans might hate each other, eat different foods and totes think they're super different, but we don't care at all: they're short, squat biological robots that mow lawns, wash dishes, and talk funny talk...sorta like when people from Oklahoma and Kansas considered themselves totally separate and really distinct peoples. When tons of them moved to California, the Californians didn't care: they were all Okies: more similar to each other than to the Californians. On a local level, most places in the US that have many hispanics have either the mulatto or mestizo, with a big buffer free of Caribbean and central American non-whites.
When Spanish-speaking whites immigrate, they tend to be 'hispanic' for a generation so, then meld in with white Americans, probably because they have more in common with us in terms of behavior, temperament, and intelligence than they are to the little brown peasants. The Central American mestizos from various places blend into an ethnic group because they really are more pretty much alike when they and we compare them to whites. Nixon named the nascent ethnic group, and maybe accelerated it's development, but the Spanish-speaking non-whites would eventually have realized coalesced into an ethnic group on their own.
Further confounding race-ethnicity for most people is that psychology is partially inherited: people make cultures that "work" for them: blacks like singing and dancing, so black churches have lots of singing and dancing. When blacks from Africa or Haiti move to the US (assuming they aren't hyper-selected from de-racinated elites) their children will find black american culture more appealing than white culture, and they'll stop being Nigerians, or Haitians, or whatnot, and become African-Americans.
People are much more willing to define ethnicities very finely: is my ethnicity American, WASP, Southern cu I live there, Midwestern cuz I grew up there? It's any of 'em depending on how ethnically distant someone is: in Europe I'd be American. I go visit Tennessee, and they'd prolly think I'm a Yankee. Hope that helped, assuming the question was serious.
The death of white America really scares you guys doesn't it?
We aren't dead yet, so don't get your hopes up, but if non-whites and off-whites kill "White America" (we call it America) it will be the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. Especially all the Hispanics and blacks who will starve and freeze to death once they eat through the capital we created. It'll be rough on the Hispanics and Africans even in their homelands: the dieback will make things like the potato famine and Great Leap Forward look Utopian.
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