[Rndouglas]

I don't believe these numbers at all!! Maybe someday the Census will add the Mestizo category

Here's a personal anecdote that I've previously mentioned here before:

As everyone in the US knows, the last census included some rather awkward additional options for Latinos/Hispanics to choose from. Previously, the questions just wanted to know if you were Latino/Hispanic, and from which of the major groups or some other. In this case, they added an additional 'racial' option, except the options of course only confused the great majority.

So what does say, a Colombian girl I personally know do? Please note the following before I proceed with what happend in real life:

-She primarily self-identifies as Colombian (nationality).
-She knows she is Latina/Hispanic.
-When it comes to 'race', she does not self-identify as white, neither here in the US or Colombia and neither is she seen as such.


So what did she pick from choices given? She choose white. Why? Because none of the others made sense to her (actually none of them), and white was the closest match (based from what I can perceive on lighntess of skin and more Euro. influenced phenotye). She is obviously mestiza/castiza. There is no desire or fantasy of her wanting to be white. There is no deep thoughts or pondering about this, it was done in a matter of seconds. She refers to American whites as blanquitos, not herself. I think you guys get the point.


I share this story, because it seems that if the right questions are not asked, (in other words they must be tailored to the target population ), then there's going to be the chance that you're going to get weird answers which are at odds with the reality most of us know (as in how the lay person really thinks).

I just think there is too much theorizing and pseudo-psychoanalyzing on forums and some bureacrats and even ivory tower academics. Get out in the streets, get to know the population, and you'll soon see why they'll sometimes seem to give out weird results or answers. For one, lay people do not commonly use terms like 'tri-racial' or castizo, no one here in Nj would even know what I'm talking about. And biracial? (Say it to them in Spanish).Most non-Americanized people would think there is some bi-sexuality involved with race or that it refers to Americans. LatinAmericans think of race in terms of national (their country is their race) or PanEthnic (Latinio/Hispanic) or even Ethnolinguistic grouping (Spanish speakers of the New World).