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

“If self-determination is an important characteristic of a democratic republic, then it should include the ability to pick the labels that we most identify with,” Sha added.

Others agree, suggesting the new race categories will give voice to a lot of people who sometimes aren’t depicted in popular media or included in discussions about racial identify. Pew Research, for example, found that about 6 million American adults identify as Afro-Latino, and many might list themselves as Black or Latino in the next census.

Some experts predict the new categories will benefit people on both sides of the census form.

“Skin color matters, but it’s not as simple as just that. It’s also the Census Bureau trying to get at more detail about who the country really is,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity at Pew Research Center, which sometimes uses census data to conduct race-related studies.

“The census is always trying to understand how Americans are identifying themselves,” Lopez added.

“So, in that sense, the new categories will be important for a lot of people, I think.”

New description, not new reality

Still, demographers and others point to another thing about the new race categories – they won’t actually change anything.

Nobody’s race or ethnicity will be altered based on new census options. If Southern California loses a million white people in the 2030 census, a possibility given the new categories and the region’s currently sluggish population growth, it’ll mostly be because those people already identify as something other than white. Any actual shifts in racial composition, locally or nationally, will be driven by the factors that typically drive demography – births and deaths and immigration.

“When the 2000 census happened, and they let you check more than one separate race, it was important, but not because it was discovering anything new,” Sha said. “Multiracial Americans have always existed.”

The same dynamic, she added, will play out as people from countries as diverse as Iran and Sudan identify as their own distinct race. If the new numbers point to a previously unseen level of diversity, Sha suggested that, too, will be highlighting a long-standing reality, not creating a new one.

“The very concept of the United States being a ‘White’ country has always been mythical and historically inaccurate.”

Still, Sasani, the Pasadena nurse, said the new categories feel less about big data or politics than they they are about her comfort in a country that’s been her home since she was in second grade.

“The feeling of having the census allow me to identify as something other than ‘White’ is probably something that’s hard to understand unless you’ve looked at a form and not seen a label that applies.

“It’s not that I don’t like the label,” Sasani added. “It’s just never really described me. Now, I guess it will.”

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