Prometheus 6   

'Some other race?'
Louis Freedberg

Begin with the basics. Forty-seven percent of us are white, 32 percent are Hispanic, 12 percent are Asian and 7 percent are black. Hispanics make up California's largest minority group.

… On the 2000 U.S. Census, 40 percent of Hispanics classified themselves as "white," according to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California (check it out on www.ppic.org). Another 51 percent said they belonged to "some other racial group."

… The Census first asks us to indicate whether we're "Spanish/Hispanic/Latino." No matter if you're an astronaut born in Spain, a third-generation Mexican American neurosurgeon or a farmworker from Guatemala who came here last week, you can check that box.

… They do however have the option of checking an unspecified "some other race" box. In California, an astonishing 5.5 million Hispanics chose that option.

In fact, 99 percent of those who checked "some other race" were Hispanic. After whites, "some other race" Californians are now the state's largest racial group, dwarfing the state's 3.7 million Asians and 2.3 million African Americans.

… As of March, the [Department of Finance] began to recognize that Hispanics aren't really a unitary group. For the first time it issued statistics breaking down Hispanics by racial group. Progress, right?

Not really. Now we're told that of the state's 10.9 million Hispanics, 10.2 million are "Hispanic whites." Another 180,000 are "Hispanic Asians and Pacific Islanders" and 200,144 are "Hispanic blacks."

Now I'm really confused. Almost all of the state's largest minority are actually "white?" And in addition to deciding on whether to call someone a Latino, Hispanic or Chicano, I now also have to consider whether they are Hispanic Asian or a Hispanic black?