Official Statement of the Afrolatin@ Project, Inc. Regarding Proposed 2030 Census Changes
Amilcar Priestley, Director of the Afrolatin@ Project
An earlier version of this article was published by the Afrolatino Festival/ March 09, 2023: (https://www.afrolatinofestnyc.com/trending?author=5338585ce4b0686edd529860). (Reprinted with permission)
In the last 10 years, Black social movements in Latin America have made progress entering the political space--a testament to their decades of social and political activism. The 2018 inauguration of Epsy Campbell as Vice President of Costa Rica, the 2022 inauguration of Francia Marquez Mina as Vice President of Colombia, the recent cabinet appointments of the new administration of Brazil's President Lula, the establishment of the U.N. Permanent Forum of People of African Descent are all reflective of the social and political progress of Afrolatins in Latin America.
Similarly, Latin American nations have started to embrace demographic recognition of its Black populations as in Mexico's 2020 Census (2.5 million self-identified AfroMexicans counted) and in Panama's 2023 Census (1.4 million self-identified Afrodescendants counted).
(https://aldianews.com/en/culture/heritage-and-history/finally-visible)
(https://www.laestrella.com.pa/nacional/230213/datos-preliminares-censo-poblacional-panama-2023)
Given such heightened visibility of the Black presence in Latin American countries, it is ironic that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the agency responsible for the Census design, recently proposed a drastic shift in the Census. They seek to in effect, change "Latino"/ “Hispanic” from an “ethnic” category to a “racial” category for the 2030 Census (https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151608403/mena-race-categories-us-census-middle-eastern-latino-hispanic ).
Doing so will effectively reverse the progress made by the Black Latino/a/x/e community in the United States for recognition.
THE DATA SAYS WE EXIST! JUST ASK!
A 2022 study by the Pew Center for Research noted that approximately 25% of Latino/a/x/e's self-identified as Afrolatin, and among those 1/3 identified as Black, effectively 4-6 million self-identified as Afrolatins in the U.S. (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/02/about-6-million-u-s-adults-identify-as-afro-latino/ ).
Given these facts, advocates of Afrolatinx identity believe that changing the U.S. Census categories will severely hamper further opportunities for the Afrolatinx community to be recognized and counted.
The racial and ethnic identities of those in Latin America and, by default, those descended from the region are not monolithic. Similarly, the terms “Hispanic” and "Latino,” while themselves are U.S. ethnic constructs, they do actually describe a multi-racial and multi-ethnic grouping that includes Afrodescendants, Indigenous, Mixed race/Mestizos, Whites, Asian and Middle Eastern.
Ironically the U.S. Census Office, while seeking to aggregate the Latino category, is simultaneously proposing to make Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) its own category, separate from "white".
This disaggregation of MENA into its own ethnicity will raise this group’s statistical and demographic visibility, an effort long sought by many of that community. In fact, every proposal under consideration by OMB now is asking for a disaggregation of data, itself a professed goal of OMB itself. However, the only one NOT being considered for disaggregation is the Latino proposal.
The change OMB proposes is one that will homogenize Latinos/ Latinx/Hispanics into one undifferentiated pool. OMB’s decision to condense race and ethnicity into one thing is being presented as a way to “simplify” the racial and ethnic questions on the Census, which they claim have "confused" Latinos for some time.
They suggest it is also a way to reduce undercounting by those who check the "some other race" category.
We disagree…
There are many who strongly opposed this Census change, including a coalition of Black Latinx organizations (https://www.latinoisnotarace.info/ ); this coalition states unequivocally that “Latino/Hispanic Is Not a Race”( my emphasis)
The Opposition to Making Latino into a “Race”
The Afrolatin@ Project has joined the coalition in opposition to these proposed changes for the reasons set forth in the coalition statement and highlights several reasons below:
In one fell swoop, Afrolatins will lose hard fought gains in statistical visibility (including the 2022 Pew Center results of 25%) as we near the end of the United Nations International Decade for Afrodescendants. This change by the U.S. is the exact opposite of what the U.N.’s international commitment intended and in fact undermines its obligations as U.N. signatories.;
It undermines disaggregation of health, economic, legal and social disparities based on race within Latino communities;
It will mask historical and current racial prejudices, biases, and disparities in treatment of Black Latinx within the Latino ethnicity by non-Black Latinx; and
In attempting to shift the foundational reality for how race and ethnicity exist simultaneously in Latino communities (because Afrolatinos are both a racial group and an ethnic group), the proposed change by OMB unwittingly facilitates and essentially codifies the continued invisibilization (e.g., erasure) of Black Latinxs that was experienced in Latin America and continues in the United States. In fact both proposed Forms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5104999/)
Disparate treatment based on race has and continues to be an underreported but very critical issue in Latin America, and has been transplanted to the United States. Afrodescendant racial identity within Latino ethnicity is critical as Black Latinx are racialized whereas many non Black Latinx are not. To be clear, regardless of the US one drop rule or Latin America's racial imaginary, this racialization manifests similarly in Latin American and in the U.S. Making Hispanics into one “race” gives the appearance that Latinxs are all the same—we are not!
Despite the purported confusion about ethnicity in the U.S., the mestizo/Latino/Latin American agenda has always intentionally sought to hide or relegate ethnic and racial distinctions especially those that were not Eurocentric or that rejected Eurocentricity, in what they claim was/is in the interest of nation building and identity formation.
The Latin American desire to impose a pan-ethnic, "crisol de razas" under the false guise of an imaginary racially democratic societies is a deception.
Despite some progress, the contemporary Latin American society is structured into a racial hierarchy derived from a pigmentocracy that categorize people based on the proximity in skin color/tone to whiteness and the distance from African phenotypical features (or proximity to Eurocentric features) with Indigenous features "ranked" in between. The same hierarchy exists among U.S. Latinxs.
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739986313511306)
"Ethnic-racial inequalities... make up one of the structuring axes of the matrix of social inequality in Latin America and racism is a central element of the culture of privilege that still persists and is reproduced in our countries."( translated United Nations, CEPAL) (https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/46191/4/S2000226_es.pdf)
Thus, the OMB’s proposed changes places Black identity outside of the framework of Latino in fact facilitating the very racist invisibilization that Black Latinxs have fought against.
The goal for increased political representation of Latinos, while of critical importance cannot come at the expense of 25% of Latinos who identify as AfroLatino, who have already been marginalized by non-Black Latinxs. The historical and contemporary, repeated and systemic attempt to otherize Black identity in the Latino context needs no assistance.
We summarily reject the proposed changes that will do nothing more than serve as a continuation of a status quo—keeping Black Latinxs hidden. OMB has asserted that testing it has conducted has borne out the conclusions they have reached however we also have concerns about the conclusiveness of the testing itself and the proposals. The discussion is an important and insightful one. For example under the current system are Black Latinx tabulated as Black racially or solely as Hispanic ethnically? Under the proposed combined race/ethnicity question will people who select Hispanic and Black or White, Asian etc now be considered Multi-Racial? Will they be counted/tabulated under more than one race, as has been contemplated by OMB? Despite the dismissal that no harm will come from the changes, history warrants the current apprehension.
Whatever changes occur in U.S. Census they should not abandon and undermine the United States' own obligations as a signatory to the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent to adhere to its declared principles of justice, recognition and development (https://www.un.org/en/observances/decade-people-african-descent). They should be consistent with the UN declaration, which states:
“In proclaiming this Decade, the international community is recognizing that people of African descent represent a distinct group whose human rights must be promoted and protected. Around 200 million people identifying themselves as being of African descent live in the Americas. Many millions more live in other parts of the world, outside of the African continent (emphasis added)”
The discussion on these proposed changes also seemingly validates the sentiments of many that we are counted as Hispanics but often not counted by Hispanics; we are counted by Blacks but not counted as Black. This despite the self identification imperative professed by Census.
Call to Action
The proposal for this change to transform Hispanic into a “race” is currently open to public commentary to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) until April 12, 2023. We ask the public to voice their concerns by going to : (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/27/2023-01635/initial-proposals-for-updating-ombs-race-and-ethnicity-statistical-standards).
We offer this alternative solution—maintain the two-part question design, engage in an educational campaign, listen to and gain an understanding of how race actually works in Latin America and among Latinos, and then bring all members of the Hispanic/Latinx communities to the table and listen to their proposed alternatives of which there are many that do not harm us. Do not wait to invite us posthumously—after the deed is done.
Raising the Afrolatino voices now may be our most important opportunities to be heard and recognized in the way we consider important and respectful.
©2023 Amilcar Priestley
Amilcar Priestley, Esq. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/coiconsulting/) is the Executive Director of the Afrolatin@ Project (https://afrolatinoproject.org/ ), founded in 2006 by his father, the late Dr. George Priestley, an Afro-Panamanian scholar of race and identity in Latin America and the U.S, with a grant from the Ford Foundation. Today, the ALP is a digital , archival website, that includes “Conversemos Afro—100 recordings of the AfroLatinx experiences from 17 countries (https://afrolatinoproject.org/category/conversemos-afro/. It is also an educational partner with the Afrolatino FestNYC.