The Biden Administration submitted a proposal on Thursday that would consider Hispanic a race on federal documents. The government wants to update the Census questions, as well as other official forms, with the objective of eliminating the duality between race and ethnicity. The change would not only affect Hispanics, but would also include people from the Middle East and North Africa (known as MENA).
Telemundo reports that the proposal comes after an extensive review of the definitions of "race" and "ethnicity," which were set more than 25 years ago and are somewhat outdated. The solution, the government believes, would be to unify the questions that include such words, one in the Census and in another official data collection.
The suggestion will be published today, Friday, in the Federal Register, giving people the chance to make any comments they deem appropriate, which will be used to draft the final document and may be reflected in the questionnaire for the next Census, scheduled for 2030.
People confuse the terms "race" and "ethnicity"
The decision to make this proposal comes after Pew Research Center conducted an analysis on the racial identity of Latinos. In it, says the institution's Director of Race and Ethnicity Research, Mark Hugo Lopez said, "the nation does periodically examine how it asks about race and ethnicity and the ways we report out those findings can be important."
Pew Research Center found that splitting the question into two parts, race and ethnicity, confuses many people who believe the two terms can function as synonyms. This is misleading because, as Telemundo points out, the Census Bureau defines Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity and not a race. Many Latinos either do not check the answer to that question or choose the "other race" option. The Census is conducted every ten years, and the Household Survey is conducted periodically.
This confusion could be reduced by combining all questions with the terms "race" and "ethnicity,” as this would reduce the number of people marking "other race" as an answer.
