Dr. Maria Abascal, New York University, Associate Professor, Sociology
Title: Is "Hispanic/Latino" a Racial Category?
Abstract: Are Latinos in the United States seen (or destined to be seen) as a racial group? On the one hand, the U.S. Census is adopting a question format that treats the “Hispanic/Latino” category as a race, a decision based, in part, on how self-identified Latinos themselves identify. On the other hand, people who self-identify as Hispanic/Latino are phenotypically diverse, and recent research uncovers substantial ambiguity around who is classified as Hispanic/Latino, more so than around who is classified as White, Black, or Asian. This project explores the racialization of the Hispanic/Latino category using an original survey that captures how people who self-identify as Latino are classified by a race-stratified sample of non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic/Latino Americans.
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