links for 2011-04-07

That NY Times article about whites as a minority (cue the scary headline) had me remembering about another article I read that talked about how future government policies given priority will be a tussle between the older white population demanding improvements to medicare and social security and younger POC populations demanding that the government focus on improving education and health care for POC’s. If this tussle really does occur political rhetoric will get even uglier unfortunately.

Also I’m wondering why the Hispanic population is counted as being like a separate race by mainstream media. Do they even consider the fact that white Hispanics exist? Or is this group ignored or conflated with the larger non-Hispanic population? It seems they’re using the term Hispanic as a code word for a specific type of Hispanic, namely the ones who look indigenous/mestizo/and sometimes also Afro-Latino.

I agree, I dont understand why White Hispanics are continually categorized apart from white people, but then what about Black Hispanics, should they be categorized as “black”? many Black Hispanics identify as Hispanic, and as far as i know, many white Hispanics also identify as Hispanic and refuse to call themselves white…

Sad but possibly true about a minority not having ‘arrived’ until it can be marketed to… Reminds me of Rick Mercer’s most recent rant, where he discussed vote targeting. How the parties seek to target the ‘youth vote’, the ‘ethnic vote’, etc. He joked that if there were more than three paraplegic lesbian Inuit women, they would be a vote target too. Sadly his joke is probably not far off…

re: the pills to “cure” racism — I don’t like this. Racism has NOTHING to do with mental problems. It’s purely LEARNED, period.

Next, people will plead insanity or mental problems if they are charged in racist or homophobic or misogynist hate crimes. and then they’ll be crying that if they had those pills, they wouldn’t even commit those henious crimes in the first place. Bollocks!

on the NYC, I wonder if this has to do with the increase of multi ethic/racial children? My father is a white American and my mother is Mexican woman, I tend to check myself a Hispanic or other. I have seen in some case were a lot of bi racial/bi- ethinc kids are pegged as part of the minority group.

The Hispanic label is such a misnomer. In MSM, the image that comes to mind when the term Hispanic is called is the indigenous/mestizo appearance, like RCHOUDH said. Someone too dark-skinned and “exotic-looking” to be white, but does not possess enough African features to be considered Black. And white Hispanics benefit from white privilege as well as POC privilege due to being listed as Hispanic, from what I understand.

Due to the stereotype, this article is to scare the hell out of the white population.

That’s true ultimately Hispanics of any race should be able to identify however way they wish. I guess I was just questioning why American mainstream media likes to categorize Hispanics as being only Brown/mestizos when there are plenty of both black and white Hispanics in the US. I get the feeling they don’t want to acknowledge the complexity because it becomes harder to “otherize” this group too much. It’s sort of similar to how they portray Muslims as being only Brown/Middle Eastern/South Asian; they wish to stay away from making an issue too complex.

“Will the older generation pay for educating a younger generation that looks less like itself?”

We already have the answer to this question don’t we? Just look at how poorly non-White kids are being educated in this country now.

I think it’s because the term “Hispanic” is a political term and not a cultural term. Richard Nixon came up with that term in the 1970′s as a political grouping. And that’s why it makes so little sense with regard to ethnicity.

“Racist? Angry?”

As though the only kind of racism is angry racism. Right…

“Also I’m wondering why the Hispanic population is counted as being like a separate race by mainstream media.”

Because immigrants from Spain and Portugal, as well as the descendants of white Europeans in South & Central America, will never let the MSM call them Hispanic; they are white Europeans, period.

Also, somewhat OT, but was I the only one who read that NYTimes headline and thought, “well they certainly can’t fall faster than 9.8m/s^2″? #nerd

ITA, AB. The thing is folks *already* try to use mental illness as a cause for racism. That’s how, far too often, quite a few progressives attempt to dismiss white right-leaning people, e.g. Tea Party members. I’ve also heard a variation of such reasoning when some men go on campus shooting rampages, e.g. the Montreal shooting several years ago.

Plus the fact that on the census Hispanics were considered white. So if you add the Caucasian whites of the census to the Hispanic whites you still get a white majority. Think that’s why they did the census that way?

The Census does not consider Hispanics white. What the Census does is ask people who consider themselves to be ethnically Hispanic/Latino to then also choose what race they are (i.e. white, Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaska Native).