Of Loving and ZimmermanPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-07-05 23:33Z by Steven |
Univision Communications, Inc.
2013-06-26
Carlos Cortés, Professor Emeritus of History
University of California, Riverside
In my last blog I addressed the question of Latino identity by examining the controversy in “Is the New Pope Latino?” I responded with an emphatic “yes” (in about 500 words). Since then, three separate items relating to Latino identity have caught my eye.
First was the Census Bureau’s report that, between 2010 and 2012, the number of multiracial Americans grew faster (6.6%) than any other racial category. That figure does not include marriages between Latinos and non-Latinos, as the federal government correctly classifies us as an ethnic group, not as a race.
Second was the start of the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman for the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. Current articles often explicitly identify Zimmerman as Hispanic. Indeed, he is of mixed ancestry—his mother is Peruvian.
Third, June marked the 46th anniversary of the game-changing Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision, which voided state-level anti-miscegenation laws. That decision has given rise to the boom in interracial marriages (now around 15% annually). It also contributed to the recent outpouring of public support for General Mills when it was criticized by some for featuring a biracial family in one of its Cheerios commercials.
As an ethnic group with a long tradition of intermarriage stretching back to our Latin American roots, Hispanics have been way ahead of the U.S. curve. According to some estimates, by the third generation more than half of U.S. Latinos outmarry—that is, marry someone who is not Latino.
This raises two critical questions: How do children of such intermarriages identify ethnically? How are they identified by others?…
Read the entire opinion piece here.