The US Census form asks an ethnicity question: Hispanic OR Non-Hispanic.
It then asks a race question: White OR Black/African American OR American Indian/Alaskan Native OR 7 Asian categories OR 4 Pacific Islander categories OR Other. If one checks “Other”, the form asks what specific other race. The form then says Hispanic is not to be considered a race.
Hispanics I know do not consider themselves to be any of the races named on the form, so how is a Hispanic person supposed to answer the Race question? It seems there is no way for them to answer.
"Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?
For this census, Hispanic origins were not considered races. Hispanic origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s parents or ancestors before arriving in the United States. People who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be any race."
" People who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be any race. "
True, but the brown-skinned people of Mexican heritage that I know do not consider themselves to be any of the races named on the census form. Certainly not white or black.
They can write in what they want, but one option would be mestizo, indicating a mixture of White and Native American. Mexicans of this heritage often refer to it as La Raza, “the race.”
In general, mixed-race people can put down whatever race they more strongly identify with, or simply include both. But I would consider “mestizo” a valid racial identifier.
I remember a post within the past few months in which someone mentioned meeting a Mexican or Mexican-American person who made a point of saying that they were of only European extraction. My guess is that person would have answered white on their US census form. So for some people, it matters.
I always answer that question as “Other (human)”. So shoot me. I knew a man of greek origin who married in Bloomington, IN. When applying for a marriage license, the clerk filled out the race question for him as “Other (white)” , while his fiancèe was simply “white”. Although he had black hair, he actually had rather light skin, not swarthy mediteranean.
As a former Census Enumerator, maybe I can shed a little light. On the iPhone 7 they gave us, first the question asked if you were of Hispanic, Mexican or Spanish descent. The next question inquired about your race, and “Hispanic” could indeed be written in. I did it many times and that answer was never rejected.
Panama has a complex racial mixture. According to the CIA World Factbook, it’s:
mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 65%, Native American 12.3% black or African descent 9.2%, mulatto 6.8%, white 6.7% (2010 est.)
All Panamanians could potentially be considered Hispanic if they moved to the US. Some mixed-race people are of mostly Spanish descent, and could be considered white. (Locally, they tend to be upper-class, and are called rabiblancos, "white-tails). Some are mostly Native American, and some are Black (although the Black community includes both people descended from slaves during the colonial period, and more recent immigrants from the West Indies during the Canal construction days, who speak English as their first language). Also due to Canal construction, there are also significant Chinese, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Spanish (more recently from Spain), Italian, French, and American communities. So a Panamanian could potentially put down both Hispanic and any other race.
Although it is in South America, Guyanese are not considered to be Hispanic, since they are English-speaking and their culture is not of Spanish origin. (Neither are people from Belize or Surinam.) For census purposes, such a person would be Non-Hispanic, Asian.
My former brother-in-law was Guyanese. He is 3/4 Black, 1/4 (Asian) Indian. My niece and nephew could put down Black or Other on the Census, or for that matter White if they chose to, since they have as much Irish ancestry as they do African. They would be identified as Black by American society, although they say because of their appearance they are sometimes misidentified as Latino or even Middle Eastern.
I did not know that. OK, for another example, wasn’t a former Peruvian president or PM of Japanese descent? So were he in the US, he might answer Hispanic to one question and Asian to the other.