Each decade, the release of new census figures provides a brief moment of reflection on the nation as a society. Then the meditation turns into one about what groups are jockeying for political representation.
After all, that's how the founding fathers wanted it. They wrote a requirement in the Constitution for a decennial census, which determines how many congressional representatives each state gets and the number of electoral votes the states have in presidential elections. It's been that way since 1790.
The release on March 24 of the 2010 census figures shows that Hispanics drove more than half of the nation's population growth and Latinos now exceed 50.5 million U.S. residents. The uptick, in part, reflects both natural growth and also success in curbing some of the vicious undercounts of the past. It has taken extra efforts since 1970 to get a more accurate enumeration like this.
We now know that the 34 percent Hispanic growth in the six Southwestern states basically pulls the political center of gravity more toward the mountain and Pacific states and away from the East. The population count justifies about 10 new congressional districts with a Hispanic majority.
Actually, how the world looks today following the March 23 announcement is not different from how it was the day before. But the census is the basis -- trigger, if you will -- for realigning representation to the changing demographics. But how else the census is important to Latinos is often overlooked.
U.S. Latinos have had a long struggle to get recognized as a group the way they are now, one that persisted from the 1890s to the 1950s. In those times, Hispanics were mostly thought of as a regional, mostly inconsequential population group. Candidates with presidential aspirations hardly ever noticed and the nation remained in deep denial that Latinos existed.
As various regional Latino groups found a common voice in the 1960s, their theme centered on going beyond invisibility to full participation and representation in local and federal politics. There was push-back to be sure, not only by incumbent majorities but also from other competing groups, as in the case of African-American groups, who were asserting their own power in pursuit of representation. Yet, often the media of those times egged on popular culture -- whether white or black -- with notions that could be easily misinterpreted.
Competition for recognition and representation was often mischaracterized as strife.
The flaw came from a fissure in how non-Hispanics whites think, a worldview, as their anthropologists like calling it. It was memorialized in how the Constitution created a political fiction, the original three-fifths as a way for the census to enumerate slaves and apportion representation.
That was the origin of a mentality that persisted and formed a ridiculous way of thinking that the world is black and white. This nation's leaders and its media have had trouble with some social categories ever since. Sometimes nationality, ethnicity, identity and culture are confused with the notion of race and pigmentation. But the idea of "race" has pretty much outlived any meaningful purpose. "Group origin" or "identity" in these times might fit better.
The 2010 census comes like mental floss for one other misconception. Many in the media have used the cliche "majority-minority." It's an oxymoron if ever there was one. It seems to refer to former "minority" (i.e. non-white) populations that have become, if you can count, majorities in communities throughout the country. or that several former "minorities" form a "majority." It also suggests that there's a lingering diminished value in the new situation.
In reality, when no one population category forms a majority, the largest group is the plurality.
The founding fathers understood. This is why they put E pluribus unum, "Out of many, one," on the Seal of the United States.
Let's just hope the "majority-minority" notion now goes away for keeps. It fills no useful purpose. Let it drown from the vapors of its own miasma.
The notion of a more plural society, validated by census numbers, is a much more liberating mindset.
Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail him at joseisla3@yahoo.com.
Dale Whiting posted at 8:46 pm on Wed, Mar 30, 2011.
Fascinating work, Jose!
Leon Ceniceros posted at 10:51 pm on Wed, Mar 30, 2011.
Jose de la Isla must be living on one (Isla = means island in Spanish).
THE US CENSUS COUNTS .............BODIES.......LEGAL OR ILLEGAL CITIZENSHIP IS NEVER, EVER TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT.....SOMETHING....THE COLUMNIST SOMEHOW OR OTHER (MY BET IS ON...."OTHER".....CONVENIENTLY FORGOT TO MENTION WHEN HE WAS GOING ON ABOUT......AMERICA BECOMING ONE BIG BOWL OF MENUDO.....I MEAN ....MELTING POT
OF THE 50 MILLION .....SO-CALLED ..."HISPANICS"....MAYBE 10-20-30 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM MAINLY MEXICO AND OTHER CENTRAL LATIN-AMERICAN COUNTRIES.
JUST THINK ABOUT THIS SCARY SCENARIO, FOLKS....A POOR, HOT (WE ARE TALKING ...."TRIPLE DIGITS"), CENSUS TAKER IN SOUTH PHOENIX OR SOUTH MESA....KNOCKING ON A...
"DROP-HOUSE".. DOOR AND ASKS....."HOW MANY ADULTS ARE LIVING AT THIS ADDRESS ???...AND THE "COYOTE" LOOKS AROUND AND SAYS...MAYBE ....23. THE CENSUS TAKER THEN ASKS WHAT ETHNIC GROUP ARE THE 23 ADULTS ?. HISPANIC, CAUCASIAN, BLACK, NATIVE AMERICAN ??? AND THE POOR, PUT-UPON "COYOTE" REPLIES...."HISPANIC"...AND SLAMS THE DOOR.
SO GUESS WHAT, FOLKS......THE CENSUS TAKER WRITES DOWN ...23 HISPANIC ADULTS AT SO-AND-SO ADDRESS AND THAT IS THE TYPE OF STATISTICS THAT SADLY, WILL GO TOWARD GIVING ARIZONA OR CALIFORNIA OR NEVADA.....A BRAND-SPANKING NEW CONGRESSIONAL SEAT.
DONCHA....JUST LOVE HAVING SOME ONE WHO WORKS FOR A CALIFORNIA NEWS SERVICE AND LIVES IN ...............TEXAS............PREACHING TO YOU.
KINDA REMINDS YOU OF SOMEONE ELSE.
SOME ONE WHO WAS BORN IN HAWAII (HEY...YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE...HE WON'T LET US SEE THE ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE...), WENT TO AN ISLAMIC GRAMMER SCHOOL IN INDONESIA, RAISED IN HAWAII (NOW WE HAVE "REAL" RECORDS OF THAT), OFF TO CALIFONIA (OH...OH !!!), THEN TO HARVARD AND YALE, WAS A NEIGHBORHOOD "ACTIVIST" IN SOUTH CHICAGO, A ILLINOIS LEGISLATOR, A US SENATOR AND NOW.........PRESIDENT....LOVES TO LECTURE AMERICANS ON NOT ONLY....HOW TO THINK..BUT WHAT TO THINK (AND NOW HIS WIFE IS LECTURING US ON WHAT TO ....."EAT").......BOY, THESE ...PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER LIVED, PAID TAXES OR VOTED IN AN ARIZONA ELECTION........SURE LOVE TELL US...ARIZONIANS... HOW TO LIVE OUR LIVES............DON'T THEY ???
Dale Whiting posted at 9:22 am on Thu, Mar 31, 2011.
Jose,
I guess we'll have to give up on Leon. Apparently he has no concept of what pluralism means. Apparently he does not get the concept that a society composed of many different cultures having many different customs and practices, can learn to respect each others uniquenesses and get along famously.
Unfortunately for all of us, for you, for me, for Leon, for all, Leon might be right. We as a society might be so ethnocentristic, so caught up with oursleves [as if feared Linda Turley might be] that we dissintegrate. Signs of such a dissintegration are all about us.
Let us pray for peace and remember that peace starts at home and within our own hearts.