[lbo-talk] On "whiteness"

[Carrol Cox]

See Barbara Fields on the source of the loopiness in 'racial'
classification. The core is that there is only one "race," Black. There are
presidential candidates and there are Black presidential candidates. There
are school teachers and there are Black school teachers. Etc.  This part of
U.S. mythology causes all sorts of problems.

Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of
America," NLR May-June 1990. 

I'm not doing well today on communicating links, but try this one:

http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=460

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 7:45 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] On "whiteness"

On Mar 19, 2012, at 8:05 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:


> Any early thoughts on this? Is it indicative of journalists writing their
> stories to fit within predetermined narratives? Are they just relying on
> the determinations of police, who would, as I recall the federal
> categories, classify any non-African-descended Hispanic person as "white"?

No idea how cops do it, but in government statistical data, racial/ethnic
classifications are based on self-identification. Hispanic/Latino is not
considered a racial category, but a separate "ethnic" identity, further
proof that these categories are kind of loopy. In the 2010 Census, 53% of
self-identified Hispanics/Latinos i.d.'d as white, and 38% as "other." Less
than 3% i.d. as "black," and 6% as two or more races.

It's all broken down in table 2, here:

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf

Doug
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