Column of the Americas: Census pushes for Indian removal
Years of U.S. governmental assimilationist policies have succeeded in convincing about half of all the people within the ''Latino/Hispanic'' Census category to see themselves racially as white. Now, for the 2010 census, the U.S. Census Bureau wants the other half. On its face, this move to eliminate the ''other race'' category appears to be neutral. Yet if the bureau gets its way, by 2010, the people within the category of Latino/Hispanic will essentially become a subcategory of ''white.'' The bureau should not prevail. And it probably won't, because Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., has blocked the bureau's move to eliminate the ''other race'' option through language in the recent omnibus bill. However, keeping ''other race'' is not a solution either, but is the problem. The bureau's perceived problem is of its own making. About 97 percent of all those who checked the ''other race'' category (10 million and 15 million in 1990 and 2000, respectively) are Latinos/Hispanics. The bureau has long believed that those who exercise this option are racially confused. Thus, without their consent, it has traditionally re-categorized virtually all of them into the white category. The bureau's 2010 proposal would have the same funnel effect of corralling them into the white category because they don't perceive the other categories as being designed for them. It's a bureaucratic way to arrest the browning of the nation. Anyone who reads a biology book knows that racial categories are unscientific. But if we play along with the bureau's fiction of forcing everyone into black/white/Asian and American Indian categories, what's undeniable is that the vast majority of Latinos/Hispanics are not white. Those who choose the ''other race'' category have long been sending out this message. [more]