The new census racial categories ‘erase’ Afro Latinos
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The new OMB standard now combines both inquiries into a single question of “What is your race and/ or ethnicity?” and collapses Latino/Hispanic ethnic identity into the list of ethno-racial categories with Black, White, Asian, American Indian, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian. While the OMB proposal is not technically naming Latino as a race, by inserting “Hispanic/Latino” as a category commensurate with “Black,” it not only situates blackness as foreign to Latino identity, it also encourages a view of the Black category as only pertaining to non-Latinos in ways that erase the very existence of Afro Latinos and discourages multiple box checking.