With Latinos in sight everywhere, they’re confused about how to perceive us

It seems that nobody is quite sure what to make of the growing Latino population these days.

Is there truth here?

The Chicago Tribune published a report this weekend claiming a scandal in that sheriff’s police in suburban McHenry County, Ill., were identifying Latinos caught in traffic stops as “white” when it came to compiling statistics meant to find if racial profiling was a problem.

IT SEEMED LIKE a cover-up to some, who think the police are harassing Latinos, then trying to doctor statistics to show they are not. To me, it just seems like a holdover from the past when what we now call Latinos were classified racially as “white,” albeit not quite as white as certain other individuals.

Then again, the Census Bureau population count for 2000 showed that 48 percent of Latinos identified themselves racially as white. Some studies of the partial results we have seen thus far for the 2010 population count shows that many Latinos are calling themselves “white.”

Heck, I once had a Census Bureau enumerator doing a canvass on my block classify me as “white” after taking one look at me. So it’s not the most outrageous claim I have ever heard for Latinos to be perceived as such (although those of us who are honest will admit there likely is a racial mix in our family trees).

If anything, it is just evidence that we haven’t quite figured out what to think of the growing Latino population in this country – perhaps because it doesn’t fit into the “black/white” convenient AND simplistic categories in use in the past.

THOSE WANTING TO know more about this situation ought to check out this site’s sister weblog, the Chicago Argus, for more detail.

For those looking for more reading material to start off the week, this commentary is worth reading, because it applies in so many ways to so many places far beyond Stockton, Calif.

There also is a glimpse from what the nativist types want to think of as the “old country” about the fact that more than 50 million people living in this country identify as “Latino.” And some people just couldn’t wait until Thursday to celebrate their memories of the life of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

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