Census Reveals Experimental Form, Muddles Latino Question More

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

If there’s such a thing as a Census placebo the federal government gave out about a half million of them in 2010. Two years later they’re fessing-up to the fact and letting us know why and what they found. Don’t worry, no damage done – but in the end there could be a change in the options Latinos are given to self-identify (as if the options aren’t confusing enough as they are).

Remember all the noise that was made when Latinos self-identified as ethnically Hispanic but specified nationality and race in the US Census? Remember all the writing and opinion making and speculating about what Latinos should call themselves, about who’s right it was to do so? Well, all that time  the Census had, unbeknownst to us all, slipped 500,000 altered forms along with the rest. Those altered forms had different options for ethnic and racial self identification. How sneaky, right?

This is what the stealth forms revealed, the Census tells us now, as reported by the Associated Press (Seattle Times):

The findings show that many people who filled out the traditional form did not feel they fit within the five government-defined categories of race: white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native; when questions were altered to address this concern, response rates and accuracy improved notably.

For instance, because Hispanic is currently defined as an ethnicity and not a race, some 18 million Latinos – or roughly 37 percent – used the “some other race” category on their census forms to establish a Hispanic racial identity. Under one proposed change to the census forms, a new question would simply ask a person’s race or origin, allowing them to check a single box next to choices including black, white, or Hispanic.

But, this doesn’t clarify anything. It merely changes one set of options for another. And some observers believe that changing the ethnic/racial options in the 2020 Census form would undercount Latinos. Again the AP:

While individual Hispanics have expressed dissatisfaction with census forms that don’t count Latino as a race, Latino political groups have been reticent about pushing for a change. The main reason: Past research has sometimes shown that treating Latinos as a mutually exclusive group on survey forms leads to a lower Hispanic count.

“Why would Latinos want to give up their own question on the census form that specifically asks if they are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?” asks Falcon of the National Institute for Latino Policy. He notes that the current wording, which first asks people if they are of Latino origin and then prompts them to fill in their race, fostered a strong count in 2010 that yielded a new census milestone for Latinos of 50 million, or 1 in 6 Americans.

¡Que lío! See, the thing is that with the old way you get a mixed bag of self-identities, but with the new proposed way Hispanic/Latino officially becomes a race – which it isn’t – and thus forced to be in competition with other racial options. And in a blended-racial community like the Latino community, this is a bad idea.

This placebo form was an experiment, a secret one at that. And the fact that it was secret may be the best decision made about it – imagine the confusion if they had let it be known…  The government has a handful of years to figure this thing out. Why am I worried?