The government soon will view Latino as a race, not an ethnicity. Same for Middle Eastern and North African and South Asian. What will that affect?
In this file photo, Isabella Xelhuantzi, 6, twirls with her dance partner while her dance group, Las Estrellas Ballet Folklorico, performs during the second annual Fiesta Latina in Irvine in 2023. For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity, an effort that federal officials believe will more accurately count residents who identify as Hispanic and of Middle Eastern and North African heritage.
And while the census won’t entirely dump the long-running “ethnicity” question that in recent decades has alternately pleased and vexed some Latino people and groups that advocate for them, it will merge the idea into a single, catch-all question: “What is your race and/or ethnicity?” In this file photo, Las Estrellas Ballet Folklorico from the Long Beach Parks and Recreation wait to perform at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona in 2017. For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity, an effort that federal officials believe will more accurately count residents who identify as Hispanic and of Middle Eastern and North African heritage.
“For years, a government form would say I was one thing. But when I’d go to the store or whatever, particularly if I’m not in Southern California, that’s not how I was seen,” Sasani said. But demographers and others are quick to point out that new racial categories are part of a long-running census tradition of shifting questions to reflect social and political realities of the time.
“The census, and people’s choices on the census, are opportunities for us, collectively, to say who we really are,” said Bey-Ling Sha, dean of the College of Communications at Cal State Fullerton and a former public affairs officer for the Census Bureau. “When the 2000 census happened, and they let you check more than one separate race, it was important, but not because it was discovering anything new,” Sha said. “Multi-racial Americans have always existed.”
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