Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic whites in Texas, according to 2022 census

boem@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 282 points –
Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic whites in Texas, according to 2022 census
english.elpais.com
50

I’m a bit lost… are Hispanic whites latinos too or not?

If you identify as both white and Latino, yes. If you identify as white and Hispanic but not Latino, then no. [In the U.S.]*, Latino is considered a race as well as ethnic identity.

*Edit for clarification

I was born in Argentina (part of Latin America). My family is all from Spain. Am I considered a Latino? I mean, I’m from Latin America after all. What does being a “latino” implies? Because as someone from a Latinamerican country, I always thought myself as a “latino”. But apparently I’m a white hispanic?

This is actually a decent summary that helps with the tendency to conflate race/ethnicity.

To paint with a very broad brush, "white hispanic" is folks with Spanish ancestry and a few other areas, but NOT central/South America (except for Brazil). A lot of it is determined by colonial history (which country controlled which place and when). There are probably a few exceptions or examples I'm leaving out but that's a loose rule of thumb. It gets murky because who is considered "white" is the result of a social construct. Hence why, for instance, Polish/Italian people are now "white" in the US. They didn't used to be considered white.

Racism is stupid.

No, you're right. It would be valid for you to select Latino regardless of skin color. I'm just referring to how the US surveys are often defined. Latino is under race but there's a separate question asking whether you are Latino/Hispanic.

There are all range of colors in Latin America. Same thing than in the USA, however, our white people are decendants of southern Europeans: Spain, Portugal and Italy mostly.

1 more...

Probably not technically Latino, but almost certainly Hispanic

The official definition of Hispanic is something like "almost everyone who considers themselves Hispanic". It's weird, but being raised in Latin America, having a family member from there, or just growing up in a neighborhood with that culture could all qualify you

So why is Texas a red state?

latinos tend to be pretty catholic

Plus gerrymandering.

Plus people who can’t be bothered to vote.

plus shutting down voting locations in predominantly non-white citizen areas in texas, especially in houston and the areas south of san antonio.

plus shutting down key locations in certain areas of the city throughout every major blue city to make it really inconvenient to vote.

plus understaffing specific locations in certain areas of the city to make it inconvenient to vote

plus a fair number of automatically “accidentally”changing votes on evoting machines in favor of the republicans that, if the person didn’t refuse to confirm and go back and correct choices they made, oops you voted all republican.

plus ken paxton withholding mail in votes because “it would have turned the state blue if the mail in ballots from austin area weren’t blocked.”

voter suppression tactics are disregarded by most and especially in texas; point this out only brands you a malcontent.

I looked this up because I thought Catholics traditionally leaned heavily democratic. According to wikipedia, that was the case into the 60s. The past few decades they've split fairly evenly between democrats and republicans, so I don't think that alone i's too much of a driving factor.

Your question assumes that many Hispanic people aren't Republican which is unfortunately not true

A lot are catholic, which means prolife. It doesn't matter anything else politically due to abortion being a sin.

Source: in-laws are Hispanic 1st gen illegal (now legal)border crossers who vote republican. I love them, but they can't see past the one ticket item.

I'll never forget the news article about one woman who was married to an illegal immigrant, voted for Trump, and was shocked when her husband was deported.

Because Latinos don't vote in huge numbers. There is also this misconception that just because someone not white that they would automatically vote Democrat. Latinos (especially older ones) tend to be VERY traditional and VERY religious. Democrats typically do terrible with those groups. Even with all the shit that Republicans do, some 40% of Latinos swing red (on a national level and I am sure TX is similar).

The only people surprised by this are ones who get all their news from sites like this one or Reddit who have been repeated told the lie that the GOP is solely made up of old white men.

Lots of immigrants from catholic countries that lean conservative. One of the biggest qanon nuts I knew was Hispanic.

Census actually does count any undocumented immigrants. I believe the requirement is that they live in a typical home.

It was supposed to. But I doubt the last one was very concerned about it, considering what trump was doing.

They were also very not concerned about accurate accounting of minorities, etc, either

Which actually hurt red states. See, the number of representatives is based on total population, both citizen and non-citizen. So when it came time to reapportion congress, the undercounted data was used, because it was the official data.

Depends. Sanctuary states have a lot of undocumented as well. Those are universally blue.

And census takers counted as many people as possible in those blue states.

Red states said fuck it, don't count any non-citizens.

And red states suffered from their racist policy in the re-apportionment.

It's a classic story that's repeated over and over again. Racists put in place a racist policy to appease their racist supporters, and that racist policy hurts them.

Look at Florida, where republican racists put in place a policy to punish anyone who works with undocumented migrant workers, and now, no one is picking Florida produce because the migrants went elsewhere.

Whereas, blue states are open and accepting (for the most part) and offer help obtaining paperwork and even help navigating the citizenship process.

The census was a federal campaign. The states had nothing to do with it, it was administrated by the Feds.

States had nothing to do with it except supply local workers and resources for said workers, and then republicans made noises about using it to track down and deport undocumented migrants, especially in places like Texas and Florida.

the "States" didn't "supply" jack shit. The program wasn't run by the states. the census takers and everyone else weren't state employees. they were federal employees.

yeah. sure, they were hired locally. That means jack shit. this is like saying that New York manages the FBI because the current director happens to be from there. People were hired and are employed by the Census Bureau. the resorces for taking the census was funded and supplied by the Census Bureau. the policies of census taking -and indeed, using it to out undocumented immigrants- were established and managed by the Census Bureau.

and lets not forget the threat to undocumented immigrants was meant to bypass sanctuary states not cooperating with ICE. it may have lead to undercounting in red states, but there is way more documented cases of under counting in blue states, simply because of the failure to adequately allocate resources in blue states. which is why those blue states are going through the courts to have the census overturned.

Usually, but they tried hard not to count them during the last census. We really should redo the census now that Covid is less of an issue and try to get an accurate count.

If you do it like Putin, you could say these parts of the US belong, historically speaking, to Mexico anyway.

Countdown to a certain segment of white Americans saying they are the oppressed minority, need their guns to fend off the 'colored majority,' and need food stamps.... (I think this is already happening with some religious groups) (I'm white - but I do not hold these beliefs!)

If only they would vote more...

Latinos are not in any way a political monolith, and taking them as such is both reductive and a little racist.

Just ask the Cubans in Miami-Dade county.

Same with us Black people, we're not a monolith either. I know many right-wing black people. 80% of us Black Americans self-identify as Christian for instance, so criticism of Christianity really doesn't sit well at all within black communities

Unfortunately they typically vote against their own interests and go republican. Of all the Mexican friends I've had I can only remember one not being conservative even though she comes from a conservative background.

It's almost like it's a quasi form of Stockholm syndrome.