In the Washington Post, David Byler shows us how often people decide to change their self-identified race:
About 14% of Hispanics switch to white, as do 26% of multiracial folks.
The multiracial category is fairly small, so the switchers don't affect the overall racial picture much. But that's not the case for Hispanics, who make up 19% of the total US population. If 14% of them switch to white, that's about 2.5% of the entire population choosing to switch from Hispanic to white.
Byler points out that this is good news for conservatives, since those who switch to white are more likely to vote Republican. In fact, they're more likely to vote for conservative Republicans. And these days, 2.5% is more than enough to tip an election one way or another. This is hardly the biggest electoral issue of our time, but it's worth keeping in mind.
Wait. So if an Hispanic voter elects to call themselves White, they automatically become a "conservative" Republican? Is Kevin saying that racial identification = political identification? I wish someone had told me this. I'm 68 years old and White, and have never voted Republican. Am I doing it wrong?
Yes.
(Hint: if you're conservative and Hispanic, you're more likely to call yourself white)
When language becomes weaponized (ie you are "the enemy" if you use the wrong words for whatever random group has been chosen as special this month; latinx is probably of special relevance in this case) then you have been FORCED to choose a tribe, whether you wanted to or not.
And plenty of hispanics, looking at this landscape, conclude that the "white and unapologetic" tribe seems a whole lot more sane than the tribe that insists everything about their language is terrible and oppressive.
Your immediate sarcasm, rather than a willingness to think through what is happening, why it is happening, and what it means, is precisely the sort of hostility to real people's real feelings that is driving so much of this.
Plenty of Asians are starting to be headed down the same road, and for essentially the same reasons. Not language (not yet anyway, though it doesn't help the idiotic harping on 那个 ...) but the fact that so much of the left seems so hostile to the bourgeois values that are so important to many Asian Americans.
""white and unapologetic" tribe seems a whole lot more sane"
Yeah, you MAGAts seem really well balanced and rational.
Your bafflegab is hilarious! Do you do stand-up at GOP conventions?
So you're the exception that proves the rule?
No, you have the direction backwards.
Segmentation, even self segmentation, of the US by race feels way to precise than the reality.
- There is a significant rise in multi racial people: it doubled between 2010 and 2020
- Racial identity, versus the optics of race likely matter more, in practice. For example, I have a friend who, I believe has one black grandparent: she appears, to my eyes, to be white. Yet, she strongly identifies with her black heritage. I am unsure how the US census counts her...
- Many ethnic 'communities' are much broader and diverse than politicians seem to understand: speaking of, say, the Hispanic community is a misnomer. Examples include, Cuban Americans versus new immigrants Honduras. Japanese Americans versus Cambodians. Black Americans versus new immigrants from Nigeria. etc
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html
The US Census counts her as however she identifies, so....
cmayo - to clarify, as my words were vague on this point. My friend, I believe, when asked would say she is white: she is .125% black. However, in terms of culture her black heritage is meaningful to her.
So, I SPECULATE, the census would list her as white. However, I don't think that the census category reflects her ethos, and perhaps, her voting bias.
Point 125 percent? That is 1/8 of 1%, or roughly one 4th great-grandmother. That woman likely had zero-to-no influence on the person in question.
Did you mean "12.5%" and just write it as a decimal rather than a percentage?
I'm saying your speculation is incorrect.
The Census will list her as whatever she tells the Census that she is. If she identifies as black as strongly as you say, then wouldn't she be telling the Census that she's black? Ergo...
I've long thought that the only people who see "Hispanic" as a category are the people who want to be the leaders of "the Hispanic community". Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Venezuelans, and Argentines don't see themselves as part of the same group.
Hispanics are undergoing the same process that Italians, Irish, and Jews did in the 19th century -- they're turning "white" to a great degree.
Jews will never be “white” no matter how we self identify. If you don’t believe me ask Robert Kennedy Jr.:
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Note how European Jews are separated out from “Caucasians”. “White” means white Christian. Jews who think otherwise are deluding themselves.
Uh...
https://www.jscreen.org/learn-more/lifestyle-and-planning/getting-married/
"Medical professionals agree: the emerging consensus is that every Jewish adult should be offered genetic testing before having children"
This is not exactly some ground-breaking novelty! The issue of common genetic diseases in the Jewish community has been known for 2+ generations.
IF you believe in actual biology, as opposed to this being some bizarre choice by god on the birth of every Jewish child, then we have something different here. Not worse, not better, but a real and measurable difference.
And differences that are relevant to the transmission of, eg Gaucher or Bloom may also be relevant to the susceptibility to a virus. We know this, for example, in the case of CCR5 and AIDS.
Honestly the more I see these attacks on RFK Jr, the more he comes across as the guy who's actually HONEST and KNOWLEDGEABLE about biology, whereas it's the people attacking him who refuse to understand the reality of the world.
"comes across as the guy who's actually HONEST and KNOWLEDGEABLE"
Gee, what a surprise. You like the guy spouting anti-Semitic tropes.
The sickle cell allele of adult beta globin is more prevalent among African Americans. That doesn't define their race (whatever "race" means) any more than the higher frequency of Tay-Sachs in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent defines their race.
I'm a PhD geneticist. There's nothing honest and knowledgeable about RFK Jrs speculations about COVID-19 and engineered ethnic targeting. It's the people defending him who refuse to understand the reality of the world.
Lots of subgroups have high incidences of particular diseases. Scandinavians, for example, have some diseases that are more prevalent among them than other subgroups. That doesn't make Norwegians not White. It's a byproduct of historic genetic isolation. After the Viking Age, they just didn't get out as much.
Yeah, I inherited Scoliosis from my Swedish forebears.
Note that RFK Jr. didn’t say “other Caucasians” when referring to white people other than Jews. He separated Jews out as if they weren’t “white”. People like him (and you I gather) will alway consider European Jews as non-white even if they have blue eyes and blonde hair. And when the next AH comes along I, an atheist, will be “weeded out” the same as an Orthodox Jew.
Also note that when people recognize RFK’s anti-Semitic remarks for what they are that is not an “attack” on him.
The Ashkenazi population has for many decades been known as having some unique genetics, particularly as regards genetically transmitted conditions that are not conducive to long life.
You don't actually need to bring religious affiliation/ancestry into it.
The Jewish population has one important genetic trait, well known to most of us--INTELLIGENCE. Which apparently confirms that Mr. 99 is a fake, trying to pass.
I'm pretty sure stupidity doesn't discriminate in whom it afflicts.
The ones that have a significant Spanish heritage might "pass". But the "Indios" whose ancestors have been in North America for fifteen millennia won't. They may be hard-working go-getters, but they won't be let into the Country Club where the GOP transacts business, except as greenskeepers of course.
It depends where they live, unless they are all in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania it’s not gonna matter, so Trump wins Texas and Florida by larger margins, not gonna change anything
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Hispanic should simply be abandoned as a category, it's way too broad.
23andMe can't distinguish between French and German but no one thinks they're the same thing.
Well, TBF, the Franks were a Germanic tribe...
The premise of this article and/or Kevin's summation of it is questionable (no, let's be frank about it, stupid). It presumes that if someone changes their racial identity it causes their political preferences to change. In reality it appears to be going the opposite way. So how is making more whites going to help the GOP if the formerly-not-whites weren't voting for Republicans before, and only the Republican ones are switching?
That said, I could have predicted this. If gender is a personal choice, why not race? Rachel Dolezal was truly ahead of her time.
I think what these numbers are is a delayed indicator of movement of party affiliation.
Conservative-leaning moderate Hispanics become more Republican, which then inspires them to self-identify as White. By the time they take the survey, the political shift is done. But the shift is a good indicator that the politics have substantially changed.
It's a bit like the growth in White people saying they are Evangelical at the same time they are less likely to go to church. Evangelical becomes a political marker, not a statement of religious practice.
As a white Hispanic I didn’t realize I had to choose between both. At least the U.S census allows me to pick both. To be clear, being Hispanic is not a race and if you ask a question that presupposes so the first thing that will happen is confusion and the answers would be of limited value.
So these “switchers” never voted before? Haha. Are they the old “Pull the ladder up” folks, as old as time? Btw, I’m sure they voted R before the switch or are very likely to vote however they did before regardless. Very odd analysis.