Counting Race, Miscounting Identity: The Census and Latine Racial Self-Identification

• In Event: 41061 - Section on Latina/o Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Latinx Racial and Ethnic Identity: Self-Perception, Census, and Fluidity

Abstract

Scholarship posits that the state is the single most powerful actor in “race-making” via its institutionalization of racial categories, especially through its use of national censuses. Yet, whether census ethnoracial categories correspond to experientially existing social groups crafted through everyday ethnoracial boundary making is an empirical question. When census ethnoracial categories misalign with ethnoracial boundaries at the micro level, inferences social scientists draw from census data may seriously misrepresent intergroup relations. Using unique, multidimensional data on self-identified Latines in the United States, I estimate the degree and correlates of (mis)alignment between Latines’ racial self-classifications on the census race question and their racial self-identification on an open-ended question. I find substantial misalignment across census racial self-classification and racial self-identification, some of which is correlated with skin tone, reflected appraisal, and immigrant generation. I conclude that although the state exhibits “race-making” power, relying on census race categories misrepresents self-identified Latines’ ethnoracial boundary making practices, ultimately impacting inferences about the larger U.S. racial structure. The inclusion of a Hispanic/Latine category on the census race question represents an improvement in overlap between state and everyday racial categories, but Latine racial self-identification is by no means a universal convention.

Author

• Kyle E. Waldman, Harvard University