|
 he top
headline in today’s Washington Post is “Hispanics Draw
Even With Blacks In New Census.”
The
article says that the number of Americans who describe themselves
as Hispanic grew by nearly 60 percent over the last ten years, and
now totals 35.3 million, which is about 3 million more than the
Census Bureau had predicted.
Whether there are now more Hispanics than blacks is a tricky question.
The new census for the first time allowed people to check off more
than one racial box, and the Post also reports that a “higher-than-expected
number of blacks … included themselves in more than one race.” If
you count the blacks who checked off more than one box, then there
are still more blacks than Hispanics; but if you don’t, there aren’t.
The Post also points out that “Hispanics can be of any race,”
so comparing the tally for blacks versus Hispanics is analytically
dubious.
The figures also indicate that about 3.6 times as many black children
younger than 18 were reported as belonging to more than one race
than was the case among African Americans 50 and older. This makes
sense. Earlier census data had found that, over the last 20 years,
the number of marriages between blacks and whites has more than
quadrupled (white-Hispanic and white-Asian marriages are even more
common). Amitai Etzioni points out: “In 1990, 84 percent of all
married black people over the age of 65 were in both-black marriages,
but only 53 percent of married blacks under 25 were.”
Indeed, the multi-race option was added to the census form in large
part because of pressure from the increasing number of those who
are either in multi-race marriages or are the product of them. Multiracial
and multiethnic newborns now make up almost 15 percent of the births
in California (behind Hispanics and whites).
The Post’s statement that “Hispanics can be of any race”
is emblematic of a larger problem. Race is a dubious construct,
especially in America, where there is so much intermarriage and
so many of us have mixed ethnicities. Harvard sociologist Orlando
Patterson refuses to use the word race now, unless it’s in quotation
marks. And the concept of ethnicity — which he prefers —
is only a little better. USA Today this week, also reporting
on census data (collected in a March 2000 survey), pointed out that
“wide differences exist for subgroups within the Hispanic population”
in level of education. Thus, 23 percent of Cuban Americans age 25
or older have at least a college degree, versus 17.4 percent for
Central and South Americans, 13 percent for Puerto Ricans, and 6.9
percent for Mexican Americans.
The same kind of discrepancies exist in the category “Asian and
Pacific Islanders.” For instance, 51.1 percent of Native Hawaiians
are born out of wedlock, according to the National Center for Health
Statistics, versus only 9.7 percent of Japanese Americans and 6.4
percent of Chinese Americans.
There are, likewise, significant socioeconomic disparities among
different subgroups of African Americans (e.g., West Indians), and
the disparities within the group we label “white” are perhaps greatest
of all. For instance, the percent of college graduates for the white
category overall is 22.0 percent and the overall white median family
income is $35,975, according to a table of 1990 data in Stephan
and Abigail Thernstrom’s American in Black and White, but
this ranges from Cajuns (11.8 percent and $28,640) to Latvians (49.6
percent and $54,806). As the Thernstroms also point out: “the socioeconomic
gap between Jews and Christians today is greater than the gap between
blacks and whites.”
Ironically, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week called
for Georgia to expand the definition of preferred “minority” subcontractors
to include Hispanics. The editorial acknowledged “the fear among
some African-American state legislators that black businesses would
lose if Hispanics gain minority status in Georgia.” It also agreed
that an earlier proposal was defective because “it would have allowed
anyone of just about any ethnicity to qualify as an ethnic minority.”
(The Post, too, acknowledged the friction that has sometimes
surfaced between the growing Latino population and African Americans.)
But it is hard to read all these new figures and conclude anything
except that it is futile at best and most likely dangerous and destructive
for the
| “It
is futile at best for the government to try to classify
its citizens according to blood and then treat them better
or worse on that basis.” |
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government
— federal, state, or local — to try to classify its citizens
according to blood and then treat them better or worse on that basis.
Futile, because, as we have seen, these categories are increasingly
meaningless. Dangerous and destructive because they create resentment
among those not preferred, as well as a perverse incentive for ethnic
minorities — and especially their “leaders” — to assert
and believe that they are victims and failures.
America is a nation of immigrants, and it is a nation of many ethnicities,
too. Preferential treatment was a bad idea when there were relatively
few Americans who were neither black nor white; as America becomes
increasingly multiracial and multiethnic, official discrimination
becomes even more untenable. The larger and more numerous our different
racial and ethnic minority groups, the more risky balkanization
becomes.
Let’s return to the Post’s headline. As Hispanics overtake
blacks in numbers, are we to give both preferences, or just blacks,
or neither? We really cannot equate the history and circumstances
of the two groups, even if we view each as homogeneous, and it is
hard to see why, if Hispanics are entitled to preferences, then
Asians and Cajuns aren’t, too. But if we give only blacks preferences,
then we will be discriminating not only against whites, but against
other racial and ethnic minorities that are growing in size and
political clout. That is not tenable either.
The only sensible solution is for the government to treat all Americans
equally, and for all of us to judge one another as individuals.
And the good news is that this is what our Constitution already
requires, and what the American Creed has always held.
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