I just finished reading Richard Alba and Victor Nee’s Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration for my sociology course on ethnicity. I’m in the middle of writing up a summary and critique on the 300-page book. It’s not a bad book, in fact it’s a great read if you really want to understand theories of assimilation and the gradual assimilation of past and recent immigrant groups. However, they fall short in some areas.
Alba and Nee believe Latinos who choose “white” on the census perceive themselves a white racially and are probably light-skinned. They don’t provide any evidence for this. Their assumption is that the people who chose white are probably less indigenous looking and are probably not black (e.g., Afro-Caribbeans).
I think this is simplistic. The 2000 census didn’t present us with much options for identifying ourselves racially. Our choices were white, black, American Indian & Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian & other Pacific Islanders. I don’t see myself as any of those, but I still marked something when I got my census form at my dorm room.
I chose white.
And I hated doing so because I don’t feel white and I know others don’t see me as white. I didn’t chose American Indian or Alaska Native because I didn’t want to falsely increase those numbers. Choosing this category also meant that I’d have to fill in a tribal affiliation. Despite wanting to feel more in touch with my indigenous roots, I can’t even tell you the names of the tribes my families come from in Mexico. I didn’t choose black or the other categories because I have no knowledge/evidence that I have black or Asian ancestry.
I chose white… but only because I had to choose something. There’s no mestiza/o option on the United States census.
They seem to keep changing the forms. When I was in school, I remember having to choose a race from these options:
A) White (non-Hispanic)
B) Hispanic
C) Black, African-American
D) Asian
E) Native American (write in tribal affiliation: _______ )
I chose B, but not because I even knew what ‘hispanic’ meant as a kid, but because I knew I couldn’t mark the ‘white’ category because it was exclusive for ‘pure’ whites.
But in the past 10 years, they decided “hispanic” isn’t a race but an ethnicity. Some forms offer an option for “race” AND ethnicity (option only for hispanic). So I end up being a “white Hispanic” on the form.
I researched the Census Bureau a bit in school, and have no trust in their data whatsoever. In 1996 (or 2000, off the top of my head I can’t remember) they allowed a write-in option. But when people wrote in “Black and Asian,” they took the first word they wrote and ignored the second. So that person was filed as African-American. If you wrote down “Chicana,” they put you in the “hispanic” category. So they’ve been manipulating data to make it easier on them. It’s totally frustrating to not really be able to do anything about it.
Btw, I filled out the form for Marketplace in your last post on identity politics
i’m sure that you’ve read a ton of stuff about the history of racialization and whiteness in the mexican origin community in the u.s. it’s a mess.
anyway, i checked “other” on the census and wrote “mestiza” on the line provided. i’m told that the census considers this to be an error on my part, but i couldn’t choose white. i suppose the other option would be have left it blank?
the other glaring omission on the census is a racial category for arab-americans. in the united states, they are not perceived as white, and yet that is the only box available for them to check.
I’ve been told race and ethnicity are two different things so like Nathan, whenever I have to give that information, I inevitably choose white hispanic. but the assumption that color only comes into play when we arrive in the US and have to or want to assimilate is wrong. from a very young age i was very aware of the fact that i was different. my white skin, green eyes and blonde hair were a subject a conversation more times than i can count and i was treated differently in el salvador because of it. both good and bad. i often felt, in fact, that people resented my coloring as if i chose it. coming to america, i felt like i finally fit in in terms of color but then i was out of rhythm because of my ethnicity. i may look or can pass for white, but that doesn’t make me caucasian. not that i’d want that anyway. but things aren’t that simple.
The Dominicans who live in my neighborhood will insist that they are white even if their skin is as dark as ever. For them black=Haitian=Voudoun=poor. Moreover, they see race being inscribed in hair, rather than skin – thus the desire to have straight (white) hair.
Latin American societies and the US are all highly racialized and racist societies, but in very different ways. We cannot understand one in terms of the other.
The ever changing meanings of race, ethnicity, nationality will continue to plague us (and social statisticians) for ever because ultimately these categories are only valid within their own micro-cultural milieu. Yet people insist on using them to understand broader categories and to define groups of people – hence the all around frustration.
While most anthropologists find the concept of assimilation problematic, it is definitely in the popular vernacular. Moreover, the assumption is that it is a zero-sum process, with two choices. Much assimilation can occur without immigrants becoming “white”.
hmmm… white? why white, why is this category less problematic than the others? there is such a thing as white privilege, a history of whiteness tied to imperialism and colonization. so why white? i guess many chicanas/os have made to feel “not indigenous enough to claim it” but then we make “indigenous” this distant primordial thing we can never know, but why is whiteness more accessible? (although “we are all white, except some whites are more equal than others”). same with mestizaje, it was created to place mestizos on top of “indians” and below whites, so even if it was an option on the census, it wouldn’t mean much.
I think that Xicanas/os need a definitions of “indigenous” not tied to any romanticism or idealized conceptions of indigeneity. for me and other indigenous people, “indigenous” is a political identity which signals a location in history and society, and a de-colonial stand, in other words, when i say indigenous i mean that i see myself as living with the legacies of colonization, that I claim myself sovereign and do not recognize the legitimacy of the US state over my body and consciousness, and that I want to further my decolonization together with other colonized peoples. “indigenous” does not mean that i fall an indigenous spirituality or that i have a specific culture, or whatever dominant understandings of “indians” are suppossed to be.
but really, i admire your honesty. i know that as a danzante, to have marked “white” must have been painful. but really, the census reassigns racial categories, so, you were reassigned as hispanic, which really means, “just another mexican.”
for the record, i marked American Indian, and for tribal affiliation I marked Xican@. when next census comes, i write over the form, and write, “xicano indigena Y QUE!”
(sorry for the long comment =)
I hate those arbitrary categories. I am 2rd generation German on my mothers side and Anishinaabe on my Fathers. I am not enrolled. White says nothing about me except for the melanin content of my skin. I will always mark “other” if I am given the choice, but other is a poor description for who I am. Just as soon have a barcode or a number. I agree that Decolonization is a very important concept and process. At 51 years old, I want to finally claim the right to define myself, as a mixed-blood person who is constantly in a state of re-definition depending on what the circumstances are in my life. I am more defined by place and kinship.
*THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS TOPIC*
Ya me decidí!
The day that Mexicans feel like native americans ENTITLED is the day of revolution.
I feel so sorry for you that you chose white.
I don’t know exactly the Native American background of my family but I know from my nephews I am not white. They all come out brown no matter who my sisters marry.
My dad also has memorized the catholic prayers in some indigenous language even he doesn’t know what language it is. He has a 3rd grade education who was taught by memorization. He still chants the prayer every now and then. We think he’s a Yaqui because he’s from Nayarit. In the end we all come from Pan-Africa, so we are originally black. A white person is in effect an albino of a black man, therefore, a defective genetic form of a black man. There is no way you can make a white man out of a black unless there was a recessive gene. Genetically you can make a white man out of a black man, and that’s by evolotion and the lack of use of the melanoma in albinoism.
Most of all, god, I almost wanna cry. It is a sad day indeed.