The Problem of Race

Last night my boyfriend and I were having a discussion about the problem of race and being Latino/Hispanic.  This is not a new conversation for us considering my past work in diversity in higher education and his academic teaching on Latin American and Latino US American politics.

Depending on who you talk to, being Hispanic/Latino can be racially framed, i.e. being "brown" or culturally framed, e.g. being "Mexican" or "Cuban."  All of this got a bit complicated when in 1980 the US government decided to change the way census demographics would be noted and collected. So instead of being of being Hispanic, one must choose a race (White, Asian, etc.) and Hispanic or Non-Hispanic.

I've often talked to friends who are Hispanic/Latino and they lament the fact that it was not racial category especially when it is racialized and they experience the racialization every day through stereotyping, microagressions and outright racism because of features deemed as being "brown."

In fact the census change in collecting demographic information reinforces how race is socially defined and not "real"; yet we are reminded again and again that race is indeed quite real in the US in the way laws have been enacted over the history of the nation.  Case in point of the most recent report of an Indian man being mistaken for being Black was beaten and is now paralyzed. 

A problem indeed.


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