Combining the race and ethnicity question is actually going backwards as a country.
By Yalidy Matos, Rutgers University
As an imposed and elite-driven panethnic term, Hispanics/Latinos—individuals who can trace their ancestry to Latin America and the Caribbean—can be of any race. Within academic and non-academic scholarship, there is a gap in the literature at the intersection of racial identity (race-based categorizations), racial identification (centrality and importance of identities), and Latinidad. Latinidad is often defined as the particular geopolitical experience shared by individuals from Latin America and the Caribbean based on the complexities of factors such as immigration, legal status, class, and language as well as produced by institutions (Mora, 2014). Although the common narrative is that Latinos occupy a space between white and Black—as an almost racial identity (Gómez, 2020)—and scholarship calls for moving beyond the Black-white binary (Alcoff, 2009), we should also contend with how some Latinos also reify the binary (Feagin & Cobas, 2008), a long-standing tradition in Latin America (Clealand, 2017; Cruz-Janzen, 2007). Latinos are, indeed, racially diverse and their lived experiences and life chances are connected to their racial background (Jiménez Román & Flores, 2010).[1] Logan (2010), for example, finds that Black Latinos’ socioeconomic profile is more like non-Hispanic Blacks than to other Latino subgroups, while white Latinos’ standing is closest in proximity to non-Hispanic whites.
The literature on racial disparities among Latinos is indicative that political scientists should take racial differences among Latinos seriously. For example, in the health field, Black and white Latinos have different health-related outcomes (Araújo & Borrell, 2006; Borrell, 2005; Codina & Montalvo, 1994; Cuevas, Dawson, & Williams, 2016; Garcia, Sanchez, Sanchez-Youngman, Vargas, & Ybarra, 2015; Laveist-Ramos, Galarraga, Thorpe, Bell, & Austin, 2012; B. Ramos, Jaccard, & Guilamo-Ramos, 2003), with Black Latinos often reporting negative health outcomes. Even Latinos whose race is ascribed as white report better health status than Latinos who were not socially assigned as white (Jones et al., 2008). Black Latinos have lower median household income, higher unemployment, and a higher poverty rate (Arce, Murguia, & Frisbie, 1987; Logan, 2010; Monforti & Sanchez, 2010), all of which can lead to poorer health and contextual differences among Latinos.
There is also evidence that darker-skinned Latinos experience more racial discrimination in the United States compared to lighter-skinned Latinos (Arce et al., 1987; Logan, 2010; Monforti & Sanchez, 2010; Ortiz & Telles, 2012; B. Ramos et al., 2003; Rodriguez, 1990; Torres-Saillant, 1999)}. At a psychological level, more discrimination can lead to negative emotions, depressive symptoms, stress, anxiety, and health risk behaviors (e.g., smoking) and chronic disease (Borrell et al., 2010; Cuevas et al., 2016; Lewis, Cogburn, & Williams, 2015; Pascoe & Richman, 2009). A combined question would be eliminating researcher’s possibility of understanding these nuances.
Since America’s inception, race has structured the formal and informal political, economic, and social lives of its residents. A lasting racial hierarchy was “invented” (Allen, 2012), where white Americans sit at the top of the hierarchy and hold higher status than non-whites (Haney Lopez, 2006; Jordan, 2012; Masuoka & Junn, 2013). After the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act and the dramatic growth of Asian and Latino populations, scholars have tried to understand where new immigrant groups fit. Focusing on Latinos, scholars have argued that a Black-white paradigm does not fit given Latinos’ middle-ground racial positioning (Alcoff, 2009). Bonilla-Silva, for example, has argued for a tri-racial understanding, where Latinos are in the middle but split by skin color (2004). Masuoka and Junn offer a diamond-shape Racial Prism of Group Identity Model where whites are the top of the diamond, Asians and Latinos are the two sides, and Blacks are at the bottom (2013). Although not an exhaustive understanding of racial hierarchy, where one is in the hierarchy is important because group positioning is important for politics (Blumer, 1958; Bobo, 1999). The elimination of a separate race question for Latinos would only reify that race is non-existent and unimportant for Afro- and Black Latinos who live their lives as Black individuals.
In recent years, Afrodescendant peoples throughout the Americas have fought for inclusion and recognition (Contreras, 2008; Moreno Vega, Alba, & Modestin, 2012). In 2015, for example, a Mexican activist group successfully campaigned to include Afro-Mexicans in Mexico’s national census, marking the first time Mexico has recognized this community (Agren, 2020). These more recent events are grounded in a much longer history of Afrodescendant peoples, in particular women, across the Americas fighting for rights and humanity. Combining the race and ethnicity question is actually going backwards as a country.
