Census Comparison Paper

Physical Project: Census Comparisons

Anthropologists have always been pondering the age old issue on what defines ethnicity and race? Even through all the complex and complicated research and debates of the issue, a common consensus or idea has not been found or created on how to manage ethnical and racial categorizations. That is not to say that anthropologists have not yet reached an accord, as Professor Gonzalez’s suggests that an accord has been reached. This is explained by Conrad Kottak’s Introduction to Anthropology, who suggests that race is a construct by the social environment and is not defined in a biological category as believed by the people. Ethnicity has to do with self and public identification with certain culture or group

Race and ethnicity are both social constructs, but ethnicity is different from race as it is about the feeling of belonging and identifying oneself to a social group that may share a common cultural or national tradition. When compared to race ethnicity only has two choices on the census, of Spanish/ Hispanic/Latino Origin and Not of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino Origin, whereas race has 6 choices. The US Census Bureau thinks that the categories are actually not different enough to distinguish one person apart from another phenotypically and disqualifies them as a race. Instead, the categories are now used as identifications that people of differing races can identify as. There is a distinct difference between identifying as Latino and Hispanic, as being Hispanic is a word that originally was used to show the relationship back to Hispania. It is now used to define people who can be traced back to a Spanish speaking country and as such can cause overlap with being Latino. Being Latino however, is usually used to characterize those of Latino ancestry with an emphasis on North and South America. The data received from the Census shows that large majority of people who pick to be Hispanic or Spanish or Latino usually also pick the “Some other or White Race” option as they most likely think that their physical characteristics resembles the “White” option the most, or that none of the racial choices above are adequate enough to describe themselves. The government feels that the ethnicity categories are far too broad and they limit the variations on ethnicity as it only denominates two choices, Non-Hispanic or Hispanic. Many groups then choose the Non-Hispanic option and are simply lumped together, such as identifying yourself as Asian-American or Egyptian -American; where despite being extremely diverse you are forced to be place in the same