This marketing campaign came into my inbox earlier today and I wanted to know what others thought about the efforts. There are a series of videos by the AfroLatin@ Forum that encourage Afr@-Latin@s to check both “Latino” and “Black” boxes for the US Census this year. They have provided the following statement along with the films they have created:
Afro-Latin@ facts addresses the undercounted of Afro-Latin@s in previous census drives. Such an undercount not only denies the African aspect of Latin@ identity. It deprives organizations of resources they need to improve the lives of this community.
By proclaiming Check Both!/¡Chequea las dos! the bilingual spots highlight the importance for Latin@s of African descent to self-identify as such on the Census.
The implications of the count are far-reaching, determining how $400 billion in federal funds are distributed to local governments each year. Over 10 years, a community could lose a projected $1.2 million of federal funding for housing, health and education programs for every 100 persons that are not counted, according to the NAACP. Studies have established that despite a higher educational level Black Latin@s have the highest rate of unemployment and are more likely to live below the poverty level than other Latin@s.
Below are the other videos that are uploaded. What do you think, convinced? Good arguments? How will this data be used for/against/with us? Take a look at the various ways Latinos identified in the 2000 Census in this article Criollo, Mestizo, Mulato, LatiNegro, IndÃgena, White, or Black? The US Hispanic/Latino Population and Multiple Responses in the 2000 Census
- Tags: 2010 census, afro-latino, afro-latino forum, LatiNegr@s, latinos, race
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12 Responses to Counting Afr@-Latin@s On US Census
Bubbles
March 9th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
The Latino/Hispanic category also includes questions about race and national origin. If they check both Latino and AA, the census will count it as an “error.” They might choose the category for them.
la Macha
March 9th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
that’s freaking infuriating, @bubbles–I can’t believe that after all this time, we still haven’t figured out how to accommodate “mestizo” or “multi-racial” or any other mixed identity….
Maegan La Mala
March 9th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
I hate, hate this about the census and a million other forms. With my older daughter it is even more of an infuriating pain because she is part indigenous.
Bubbles
March 10th, 2010 at 12:32 am
I think it does accommodate a multi-racial identity, if you are Hispanic/Latino. Unless they’ve changed the form for 2010, it looks like this:
Are you Hispanic or Latino? (yes or no)
What is your country of origin? And then it has choices such as Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.
Then it has choices for race:
White
Native American (what is your tribe?)
Black
Asian
Other (fill in)
If you are more than one race, you can choose more than one. If you are Native, but not in a tribe, you can write it in. For instance, you can write “Spanish and Native American.”
As for terms like mestizo, I don’t want those Spanish colonial caste terms on the US census. I find them degrading.
Sabina Gonzalez
March 10th, 2010 at 2:45 am
Yea I always wonder how to fill in the “race” part and I don’t want to ignore it because I do see why it’s important to be counted in the census.. I mean I put down that I am “Hispanic or Latino” but then I don’t really know which race i’m supposed to be. Is it cheating to check em all (except asian I guess)? Or maybe just rotate every ten years. what will it bee…
la Macha
March 10th, 2010 at 11:13 am
@bubbles: what about “hispanic” or ‘latino’? I refuse “hispanic” altogether, and will most generally deal with Latino although I have problems with it. I most comfortably call myself Chicana–but it’ll be a fat chance before that ever winds up on a census….
this is one of those recurring themes here at VL–nobody knows what to call Latinos not even Latinos!!! lol.
Bubbles
March 10th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Re: “Chicana”
You can write it in. Then they will code you as “Mexican.” I usually leave the race section blank, but now I think I should write something in, or somebody with an agenda might choose a race for me.
Sabina Gonzalez
March 10th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
@bubbls- Yea, but what to write?! either way there’s an agenda. Maybe I can just cross out “white” and “asian” and check the rest?? since those are the only two I will never pass for…
bianca
March 10th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
When i first filled out the census on my own in 2000 I wrote in Puerto Rican and picked Other as my racial classification and wrote in african/taino/etc. b/c back then they only gave you a certain amount of boxes to write letters in.
From the ads above it looks like they allow you to write in an ethnicity and select a racial classification. In the second video at the 23 second mark it seems that the question is if the person identifies as “no not hispanic,” “yes, mexican/mex-am/chicano,” “yes, Puerto Rican,” “yes, Cuban,” or “yes, Other Latino” with a box to fill in. The 2nd part of the form seems to ask “what is the person’s race” with options for people to select. It also looks like you can check more than one box and that the instructions say that.
My question is more about how they will be coded and what will be done with that information, if anything. At the same time I love the varied responses people included in 2000 census and wonder if that will be present this year as well.
Sabina Gonzalez
March 10th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Yea that’s the part that makes a lot of people nervous, is the coding they’ll use to make statistics and how that information will be used. Especially when we’re getting to that point where the “minority”/”majority” concept is changing so fast. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Filling Out the Census While Latina or How My Mom is White and I’m Not | VivirLatino
March 18th, 2010 at 9:31 am
[...] it says “Hispanic Origin”) followed by race. As exemplified by the conversation after Bianca’s post on claiming Afro-Latinidad, many Latinos struggle with the concepts of race as they play out in the [...]
Ms November
March 19th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Soy una Afro-Latina!!!!! I am proud to be and WILL acknowledge it on the Census!!!
I live in a country where people that look like me (African-Americans) paved the way for me to live the successful life I live. I give thanks to them.
Being totally honest, non-black Latinos discriminate against me because they simply think I am “Black”. It’s not until I speak Spanish or say where my family is from do I get any love, if at all.
So, I will alway show my pride for the black and brown blood that flows in my veins.