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Hispanic May Be A Race On 2020 Census Despite Critics

Hispanic May Be A Race On 2020 Census
By 

Deputy Editor HuffPost Latino Voices & Voces

In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 18, 2011, people watch a musical performance at the Fiesta del Pueblo festival in Raleigh, N.C. According to the 2010 population census, even though the population with Mexican roots is still the largest Hispanic community in the state, people from Central America, the Caribbean and South America have seen their members largely increase in the last decade. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)
In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 18, 2011, people watch a musical performance at the Fiesta del Pueblo festival in Raleigh, N.C. According to the 2010 population census, even though the population with Mexican roots is still the largest Hispanic community in the state, people from Central America, the Caribbean and South America have seen their members largely increase in the last decade. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)

In the 1970s, the federal government instituted the word "Hispanic" to get a better handle on a mushrooming demographic group that was multiracial and multiethnic. In spite of criticism, that label stuck.

Now the U.S. Census Bureau is proposing a potentially more controversial change: to collapse two questions on race and ethnicity into one, creating a "Hispanic race" category. Congress won't decide it until 2018, when the wording of the 2020 census is approved. But Latino advocacy groups, scholars and others are criticizing the category as inaccurate, inadequate and ludicrous.

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