Latinxs and the US Census

Author(s):  
G. Cristina Mora

The question of how to classify and count Latinxs has perplexed citizens and state officials alike for decades. Although Latinxs in the United States have been counted in every census the nation has conducted, it was not until the 1930s that the issue of race came to the fore as the politics of who Latinxs were and whether the government should simply classify them as White became contested. These issues were amplified in the 1960s when Chicano and Boricua—Puerto Rican—activists, inspired by the Black civil rights movement, demanded that their communities be counted as distinct from Anglos. Decades of racial terror, community denigration, and colonialism, they contended, had made the Latinx experience distinct from that of Whites. A separate classification, activists argued, would allow them to have data on the state of their communities and make claims on government resources. Having census data on Hispanic/Latino poverty, for example, would allow Latinx advocacy groups to lobby for anti-poverty programs in their communities. Yet the issue of race and Latinxs continued to be thorny as the Census Bureau struggled with how to create a classification broad enough to encompass the immense racial, social, and cultural diversity of Latinxs. As of 2020, the issue remains unresolved as the Bureau continues to officially classify Latinxs as ethnically Hispanic/Latino but racially White, even though the bulk of research shows that about half of Latinxs consistently check the “some other race” box on census forms. More recent Latinx census politics centers on the issue of whether the Census Bureau should include a citizenship question on census forms. Latinx advocacy groups and academics have long argued that such a question would dampen Latinx census participation and effect the usefulness of census data for making claims about the size, growth, and future of the Latinx community. These politics came to a head in the months leading up to the 2020 census count as the Trump administration attempted to overturn decades of protocol and add a citizenship question to the decennial census form.

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Cohen

ABSTRACTThe census is a social fact, the outcome of a process that involves the interaction of public laws and institutions and citizens' responses to an official inquiry. However, it is not a ‘hard’ fact. Reasons for inevitable defects in the census count are listed in the first section; the second section reports efforts by the US Census Bureau to identify sources of error in census coverage, and make estimates of the size of the errors. The use of census data for policy purposes, such as political representation and allocating funds, makes these defects controversial. Errors may be removed by making adjustments to the initial census count. However, because adjustment reallocates resources between groups, it has become the subject of political conflict. The paper describes the conflict between statistical practices, laws and public policy about census adjustment in the United States, and concludes by considering the extent to which causes in America are likely to be found in other countries.


Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”


Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.


Author(s):  
Martha Minow

Usually left out of discussions of school desegregation, the historic treatments of American Indians and Native Hawai’ians in the development of schooling in the United States was a corollary of conquest and colonialism. As late as the 1950s, forced assimilation and eradication of indigenous cultures pervaded what was considered the “education” of students in these groups. The social, political, and legal civil rights initiatives surrounding Brown helped to inspire a rights consciousness among Indian and Native Hawai’ian reformers and activists, who embraced the ideal of equal opportunity while reclaiming cultural traditions. Between the 1960s and 2007, complex fights over ethnic classification, separation, integration, and self-determination emerged for both American Indians and Native Hawai’ians. Their struggles, crucial in themselves, also bring to the fore a challenging underlying problem: are distinct individuals or groups the proper unit of analysis and protection in the pursuit of equality? The centrality of the individual to law and culture in the United States tends to mute this question. Yet in this country as well as elsewhere, equal treatment or equal opportunity has two faces: promoting individual development and liberty, regardless of race, culture, religion, gender, or other group-based characteristic, and protection for groups that afford their members meaning and identity. Nowhere is the tension between these two alternatives more apparent than in schooling, which involves socialization of each new generation in the values and expectations of their elders. Will that socialization direct each individual to a common world focused on the academic and social mobility of distinct individuals or will it inculcate traditions and values associated with particular groups? Even in the United States, devoted to inclusive individualism, the Supreme Court rejected a statute requiring students to attend schools run by the government and created exemptions from compulsory school fines when they burdened a group’s practices and hopes for their children. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court respected the rights of parents to select private schooling in order to inculcate a religious identity or other “additional obligations.”


2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Stanley O. Gaines

The 1960s have been described as the “civil rights decade” in American history. Few scholar-activists have been identified as strongly with the legal, social, economic, and political changes culminating in the 1960s as has African American historian, sociologist, psychologist W. E. B. Du Bois. Inexplicably, in 2003, the 100-year anniversary of Du Bois' classic, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), came and went with little fanfare within or outside of academia. However, in 2004, the 50-year anniversary of the initial U. S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) presents an opportunity for ethnic studies in general, and Black studies in particular, to acknowledge the intellectual and political contributions of Du Bois to the civil rights movement in the United States. In the post-Civil Rights Era, some authors have suggested that Du Bois opposed the initial Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling. In contrast, I observe in the present paper that Du Bois (1957) opposed the U. S. Supreme Court's subsequent (1955) ruling that invoked the much-criticized term “with all deliberate speed,” rather than the initial (1954) ruling that rendered the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. Moreover, I contend that Du Bois' own values and attitudes were fully consistent with his position on the (1954, 1955) decisions.


Author(s):  
Maureen Ly

The Occupation of Alcatraz was a movement in 1969, which sparked National Debate in the United States. The Occupation lasted from 20, November 1969 till June 1971 when 15 last occupiers were peacefully escorted off the island. The protest did not end with a change in government policy but inspired other protests and an activist group to be created for Native American rights. Reflecting on why the occupation at Alcatraz was ineffective, Vine Deloria, Jr. argued in 1994, “we want change, but we do not know what change.” Deloria was a well-known activist during the 1960s and was invited to the island of Alcatraz during its occupation. The Occupation of Alcatraz was seen as an unsuccessful protest because it did not spur government action to address Native American grievances. The occupation occurred at a time when tensions between minority groups and the government were rising due to the civil rights movement. Native Americans were forcibly removed from reserves due to relocation and assimilation programs, and land was being taken away for resources as well. The Occupation was a response to what seemed to be the continuous cycle of abuse from the American government. Termination and assimilation policies divided and separated families and tribes, which created disconnections among Native Americans, making it hard to unify against the American government. Though the Occupation did not end with government action or policy change, it started a collaboration of Native American protests, which revived Native American identities for many people. Native Americans’ reactions to federal suppression at the Occupation of Alcatraz led to a legacy of protests that changed Native American life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. BB102-BB118
Author(s):  
Helma Van Lierop-Debrauwer

In 2014, the American writer Jacqueline Woodson published Brown Girl Dreaming, the story of her childhood in free verse, which was classified as young adult literature. Most US reviewers characterized and appreciated the book both as a human rights narrative of a young brown girl’s coming of age against the socio-political background of racism and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of the 1960s, and as a personal history of her development as a writer. In this article the major focus will be on how Brown Girl Dreaming as both a political memoir and an autobiographical narrative of identity formation is fleshed out. On the basis of my analysis of these two plot lines, I will further argue that its categorization as young adult literature disguises that the novel addresses a dual audience of adult and young readers. In my argumentation related to the political and personal character of the novel, as well as in my discussion of the crossover potential of Brown Girl Dreaming, I will focus on the presence of voice and silence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-277
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur ◽  
Anna Beshlian

AbstractThis paper offers a broad overview of Black citizenship within the United States, concentrating on the major shifts in Black life that have transpired since the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We examine several critical aspects of Black citizenship including economic status, education, criminal justice and mass incarceration, and political participation. Our report reveals that Black progress toward equal citizenship is inconsistent at best; at worst, it is stagnant and at times, regressive. As such, we conclude that dramatic solutions beyond traditional reformist approaches are needed in order to realize genuine citizenship and equal rights for Black people within the United States. In closing, we briefly highlight a specific example of a strategic approach to advancing substantive social and political change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Poe ◽  
Melody Fisher ◽  
Stephen Brandon ◽  
Darvelle Hutchins ◽  
Mark Goodman

In this article, we consider music as the praxis of ideology in the 1960s within the framework of Burke’s rhetoric of transformation. The 1960s were a period of cultural change in the United States and around the world—the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, challenges to communism in Eastern Europe, liberation politics around the world. The role of music as a unifying element among those people advocating change is well established in scholarship. We take that consideration of the role of music into a discussion of how music became the praxis of ideology, providing a place where millions of people could advocate for change and be part of the change by interacting with the music.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Harris

The author discusses three historical civil rights movements in the United States—Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; the Million Man March; and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The author compares and contrasts each movement and event from his perspective as a participant in each and identifies similarities and differences among them. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was born out of a desire and need to end legalized segregation, better known as Jim Crowism, in the south. Strategies included direct action, passive resistance, and redress of grievances through the judicial system. The Million Man March, which occurred in 1995 in Washington D.C., brought together more than a million Black men from across the United States. Moreover, it was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. Whereas the latter was established as a response to legalized racial segregation in the south, the former was designed to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among Black men as leaders in their communities. In addition, the Million Man March attempted to bring greater awareness of the unkept promise of racial equality. The BLM Movement provided an opportunity for multiple generations from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups to coalesce around the issue of police brutality. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and continuing to the present time, the BLM platform has become the principal venue through which outrage is expressed over the deaths of innocent, unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement and White vigilantes.


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