More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White

*This isn’t a new discussion, it’s a technical issue where the U.S. Census form gave Latinos an option for racial identification as a subset of a larger “Hispanic” identifier. This article takes-up where the old discussion ends – what does it mean for more Latinos to identify as white? I like that this piece brings up questions of assimilation, demographic assumptions, and the overall understanding of “white identification.” These are conversation must-haves. VL

By Nate Cohn, The New York Times

Hispanics are often describes as driving up the nonwhite share of the population. But a new study of census forms finds that more Hispanics are identifying as white.

An estimated net of 1.2 million Americans of the 35 million Americans identified in 2000 as of “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin,” as the Census form puts it, changed their race from “some other race” to “white” between to 2000 and 2010 censuses, according to research presented at an annual meeting of the population Association of America and reported by Pew Research.

The researchers, who have not yet published their findings, compares individual census forms from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. They found that millions of Americans answered the census question about race and ethnicity differently in 2000 and 2010. The largest shifts were among Americans of Hispanic origin, who are the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group by total numbers.

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