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Investors Business Daily: Hispanics' clout--how big is it?
http://www.investors.com/stories/IF/1998/Aug/10/96.html
HISPANICS' CLOUT: HOW BIG IS IT?
Census' Racial Mixing Clouds Minority's Numbers
Investors Business Daily
Date: 8/10/98 Author: John Berlau


Hispanics will become the largest minority within seven years, the Census
Bureau says. There's just one problem with that forecast: The bureau has
no clear way to define who Hispanics are.


Yet pollsters for both political parties, citing Census data, prophesy
about the ''sleeping giant'' of the Hispanic vote and the coming of the
''Hispanic political juggernaut.''


Census forecasts Hispanics will grow to more than 12% of the U.S.
population by 2005 -passing blacks as the biggest minority.


Latino groups cheer the statistic, while anti-immigration groups fear it.


Hispanics benefit from affirmative- action programs, including race-based
college admissions and government set-asides. Voting districts are drawn
to virtually ensure Hispanic office- holders.


Hispanics are classified in a congressional research document as one of
five races. The others: native American, white, black and Asian.


But Census does not view Hispanics as a race. On the '90 Census form,
there was no race checkbox for Hispanic.


So how did Census count Hispanics?


It asked a separate ethnic question: ''Is this person of Spanish/Hispanic
origin?''


A majority - 52% - of those who checked ''yes'' also checked ''white'' in
the race box. About 3% marked ''black.'' And most of the rest checked
''other race.''


In fact, so many Hispanics are mixed in with whites that Census and many
demographers have created a ''white, not Hispanic'' category for their
research. There is also a ''black, not Hispanic'' section.


''What does it mean to say to say that Hispanics are going to be the
largest minority?'' asked Brookings Institution fellow Peter Skerry.


Not much, he asserts.


''They're treating Hispanics as a totally nonwhite category,'' Skerry
added. ''If you break it down and look at how many Hispanics say that
they're white, then it's not quite so clear.''


Dress rehearsals for the 2000 Census use the same formula, with some
slight changes.


Respondents are asked if they're ''Spanish/Hispanic/Latino,'' adding the
preferred designation of many Hispanic activists. All respondents will
also have the option of putting in more than one race.


The Hispanic origin question is largely self- defined.


''If you had an ancestor 300 years ago that came from a Spanish- speaking
country and you consider yourself Hispanic, that's all that matters,''
explained John Reed of Census' Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics Branch.


There are some limits.


Reed said the bureau wouldn't count as Hispanic someone who checked off
Hispanic and listed, say, Polish as his ethnic group.


But you can be counted as Hispanic if you have at least some ties to a
Latin American or Spanish-speaking country - including Spain.


This strikes researchers like Skerry, who's writing a book on the Census,
as strange. While Hispanics may share the same tongue and Catholic faith,
groups under the Hispanic umbrella differ in many respects.


''It's pretty clear that Cubans don't have the same problems, the same
situation and the same socioeconomic profile as Puerto Ricans or
Mexican-Americans,'' Skerry said. ''Putting them in the same category is
not the prudent thing to do.''


Indeed, Hispanics seem skeptical of being lumped in a pan-ethnic category.



In the National Latino Politicial Survey of 3,000 Hispanic Americans
published in 1992, 75% of respondents preferred to be designated by their
country of origin, such as ''Puerto Rican'' or ''Mexican-American'' than
with a pan-ethnic term, such as ''Hispanic'' or ''Latino.'' Eighteen
percent preferred the pan-ethnic terms; 7% just wanted to be called
''American.''


And then there is the increasingly common case of mixed ancestry.


The intermarriage rate for U.S.-born Hispanics is about 25%. And Skerry
expects it will rise. The intermarriage rate for third-generation Hispanic
Americans is above 50%.


This may make all the talk of the Hispanic juggernaut look as foolish as
the fears of Italian domination earlier in the century, contends Linda

Chavez, head of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think
tank.


Reed says that even adopted children of Hispanics can be counted as
Hispanics if they want.


Take the case of Paul Rodriguez, whose mother is a white, non-Hispanic
Texan and whose father was Afghan.


When Rodriguez was about 10, his mother married a Cuban immigrant who
adopted him. Since Rodriguez also lived in Venezuela before that, he
considers himself ''Latino.''


''That combination of the early years coupled with the middle years was
predominantly a 20-year Hispanic cultural upbringing,'' he said.


But Rodriguez, managing editor of the newsmagazine Insight, just fills out
''other'' for race and doesn't fill in his ethnic group.


''I just have a streak in me that doesn't like classifications,'' he said.
''And the census forms are classifications.''


Indeed, some complain that the race and ethnicity questions balkanize
Americans and should be scrapped.


''I think that race and ethnicity are private concerns of no relevance to
the government,'' said John J. Miller, author of ''The Unmaking of
Americans,'' a new book that backs immigration but denounces
multiculturalism.


''Just as the census form does not ask us our religion or whether we're
gay, I don't think it should ask us our race,'' Miller added. ''There
ought to be a separation of race and state in this country.''


Skerry does not go that far. But he does think Census should get rid of
the separate ''Hispanic origin'' question.


''It contributes to a feeling of separateness,'' Skerry said, noting that
the term ''Hispanic'' caught on only when Census started using it in '80
at the behest of Hispanic activists, who lobbied for a pan-ethnic
category.


But Gilbert Casellas disagrees. He's former chairman of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission and a Clinton appointee to the
bipartisan Census Monitoring Board.


Casellas thinks Hispanics share ''sufficient commonalities'' to be viewed
as a minority group.


''What we do know is that if you look at some of these communities,
whether it's African-American (or) Hispanic, there are certain needs that
are greater, certain disparities that are greater, with respect to these
communities,'' he said.


Yet Chavez argues that the ''Hispanic'' category gives policy-makers and
bureaucrats the mistaken idea that all Hispanics' needs are the same.


This was brought home to her 16 years ago. Her son Pablo Chavez Gersten
was almost placed in bilingual education in kindergarten because of his
Spanish first and middle names. She says thousands of other Hispanic kids
each year are placed in bilingual classes even if they speak English at
home.


''My children are one-fourth Hispanic,'' said Chavez, whose father was
Mexican-American and mother was English- Irish. ''They are still counted
(in government documents) as if they just crossed the border yesterday.


''The whole notion of pan-Hispanic identity, and the emphasis on
continuing to check the (Hispanic) boxes, all increase the constituency
for programs like bilingual education and preferential college
admissions,'' she said.


''They create a large constituency for special treatment. And that is why
the heads of Hispanic organizations that push for these (programs) want to
continue to expand the definition of Hispanic,'' Chavez added. ''They want
it as broad and encompassing as possible.''