Putting ‘Latino’ As a Race: Good or Bad Idea?

The Biden administration announced that they are proposing the incorporation of Hispanic / Latino as a new race —and that is just adding more confusion to an already confusing topic.

Let’s backtrack and see what anthropologists, not politicians, think about it.

A human race is defined as a group of people with certain common inherited features that distinguish them from other groups of people. “All men of whatever race are currently classified by the anthropologist or biologist as belonging to the species, Homo sapiens.” Period. That means we are all the same race. And that is because the differences between the so-called human races are not great, even though they may appear so. “All races share 99.99+% of the same genetic materials which means that division of race is largely subjective,” especially since there has been so much interbreeding among them at this point.

However in the US Census there are the following five races, and maybe a sixth one soon:

• White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
• Black or African American.  A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.
• American Indian and Alaska Native  A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment. This category includes people who indicate their race as “American Indian or Alaska Native” or report entries such as Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe, Mayan, Aztec, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, or Nome Eskimo Community.
• Asian. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent.
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
• Two or more races. People may choose to provide two or more races either by checking two or more race response check boxes, by providing multiple responses, or by some combination of check boxes and other responses. The race response categories shown on the questionnaire are collapsed into the five minimum race groups identified by OMB, and the Census Bureau’s “Some Other Race” category. For data product purposes, “Two or More Races” refers to combinations of two or more of the following race categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Some Other Race.

If we add Latino as a race, what race would that be? In the end, instead of adding races that divide us more, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields’ brilliant conclusion about it: “Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves.”