Southern California set to be less white, at least in census data

“I don’t think this changes the ‘seen’ part,” she added. “But at least the government is figuring out what’s real.”

Speaking up

In one sense, the new rules could shake up the demographic tallies in Southern California more than they will in any other region of the country.

About 3.2 million people who live in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties listed “White” as their race and “Hispanic or Latino” as their ethnicity in the 2020 census, and experts say it’s unclear which label they’ll choose when given an “either/or” option. And while the local numbers aren’t as big for people from the Middle East and North Africa, data from the Migration Policy Institute shows Los Angeles is the top county in the country for immigrants from at least 20 of the 43 countries that qualify for that category, while Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties often rank among the top 15 landing spots.

So it’s likely that the official tally of Southern California’s demography soon will shift dramatically, with the region possibly becoming much less white than it is now. That, in turn, could affect the things that census information is intended to sway, everything from political maps to some federal spending to the languages and messaging used in advertising campaigns.

But demographers and others are quick to point out that new racial categories are part of a long-running census tradition of shifting questions to reflect social and political realities of the time.

Questions and definitions related to race, in particular, have been tweaked routinely since the first census, in 1790, when the count centered on “free white males.” In much of the 19th century, for example, the idea of “black blood” was central to identifying different races. In the 1930s “Mexican” was listed as a race.

What’s more, the decision of who fit into what racial box was a decision typically made by an “enumerator,” an in-person census worker who visited households and and sorted out racial descriptions based on their perceptions of who was who. It wasn’t until 1960, when mail-in census forms started to become more common, that Americans were allowed to self-identify their race. Even something that’s now seen as a routine level of nuance – tracking people who identify as more than one race – has only been in play since the 2000 census.

All of which is why many experts say the importance of the census, as a communication tool, is that it runs two ways.

“The census, and people’s choices on the census, are opportunities for us, collectively, to say who we really are,” said Bey-Ling Sha, dean of the College of Communications at Cal State Fullerton and a former public affairs officer for the Census Bureau.

...continued

swipe to next page