The Racial and Ethnic Identity of Latin American Immigrants in Census 2000

Jorge del Pinal, U.S. Census Bureau
Sharon Ennis, U.S. Census Bureau

Census 2000 marks the first time that respondents were asked to report more than one race if they chose to do so. The sample data from Census 2000 offers the opportunity to look at how respondents not born in the United States classified themselves by race and Hispanic origin. Our hypothesis is that a very high proportion of the responses to the race question by Latin American Immigrants are countries of origin and general Hispanic terms, rather than indicators of racial mixture. If so, that does not mean that the respondents are not in fact “racially mixed,” but rather current instruments fail to capture that mixture. Similarly, our hypothesis is that a high proportion of immigrants from Spanish speaking countries in Latin American identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino, and a small proportion of immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries do so as well.