2010 CENSUS
I received the 2010 census form in the mail 2 weeks ago and dutifully proceeded to fill it out. The first order of business was to flip a coin to determine whether Connie or I was to be “Person 1”. After that aleatory exercise, I began to enter our personal information in the designated boxes.
The form was very straight forward until I got to Question #5. In bold letters this question is prefaced as follows:
NOTE: Please answer BOTH Question 5 about Hispanic origin and Question 6 about race. For this census, Hispanic origins are not races
This instruction seems to imply that in other censuses Hispanic origin may be a racial classification. As I understand the term “Hispanic”, an individual of “Hispanic” origin in the Americas is likely to be a combination of 2 or 3 racial classifications, to-wit: Caucasian (European); American Indian/Asian and Black (African). [When I studied physical anthropology at Indiana U, the American Indian was listed as a separate racial classification. I understand that American Indians are now considered an ethnic subset of what was formerly called the Mongoloid (Asian) race.] This instruction was a foreboding of greater confusion yet to come.
Question 5 then read as follows:
5. Is this person of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?
This question confused me on at least 3 fronts. The first front is concerned with these terms are mutually exclusive. Are “Hispanic” and “Latino” overlapping terms? Are”Hispanic” and “Spanish” overlapping terms? Are “Latino” and “Spanish” overlapping terms?
The second front is the use of a slang term “Latino”. I understand the term to designate a man who was born in Latin America. Can a woman consider herself to be a “Latino” when in reality she is actually designated a “Latina”? Why is a Latin American designated by a slang term while a “Hispanic” or “Spanish” individual is not? Many Latin Americans are of Portugeuse, Italian, Dutch, French and other European origins. Are their descendants or family members in the United States “Latino/Latina” for purposes of this census.
Question 5 then offers 5 separate responses in the style of a multiple choice test.
When I was in school, I loved multiple choice tests. True/False tests were always problematic for me as I seldom found a test question statement that was absolutely true or false. I preferred multiple choice tests as a cursory first reading of all the questions and answers collectively often provided the answers to the individual questions. I hoped that this would be the case with the 5 choices offered. The 5 choices were:
___ No. not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.
___ Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
___ Yes, Puerto Rican
___ Yes, Cuban
___ Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin---Print origin, for example
Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard and so on.
Now, at this point you should be asking why I am wallowing in the ambiguity of Question 5 when it is highly unlikely that a blogger living in Southern Indiana with the surname of Wright is of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin anyway. One answer to this obvious question is that my habit of reading all questions and possible answers to a multiple choice test before answering carries over to surveys, questionnaires and census forms. The other answer to this obvious question is that I became interested in the subject of anthropology since I read Man: His First Million Years by Ashley Montague when I was a high school senior whose athletic career was ended by a mangled medial meniscus.
I clearly did not fall within any of the ethnic classifications offered except Spanish or Spaniard. This represents the third front for my confusion about census Question 5. According to genetic studies undertaken by Bryan Sykes, the current occupants of the British Isles genetically descend from several Mesolithic tribes from the European continent. The predominant tribe providing the genetic makeup of the British Isles is of Celtic origin and is called the tribe of Oisin. Sykes reports that this genetic group bears the haplotype of R1b and came to what became the British Isles from the Atlantic regions of the northern Iberian peninsula approximately 6,000 years ago.
My genealogy has been well researched on the American side of the Atlantic. My ethnic heritage is a blend of West English emigrants in the 1730s and German Protestant emigrants from the Palatinate in the 1730s. I participated in a Wright Family DNA project several years ago and learned that my haplotype was R1b1 which is a subclade of R1b. This was predictable as this is the most common haplotype in Western and Northwestern (including the British Isles) Europe today. This then raises the probability that a large percentage of my ancestors came from the Iberian peninsula to northwestern Europe about 6,000 years ago. The Iberian Peninsula, of course, has for many centuries been Spain. The predominant haplotype in northern Spain today is R1b.
This then leads to two new questions:
1. When did Iberian Celts and their progeny become “Spaniards”?
2. Am I a “Spaniard” of Spanish origin?
You can now understand why Census Question #5 presented me with a quandary. I placed an X in the box next to the 5th possible answer to Question #5 and then followed the instruction to print my specific Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin in the 19 [why 19?]box line at the bottom of choice number 5. I entered :
* SEE ATTACHED and stapled the above explanation to the census form.
I’m expecting a call.
Dudley Drewwright
