I feel really lucky to be working with the City of Houston on its 2010 Census effort. Not only is the work itself incredibly important and rewarding, it is affording our staff amazing insights on what a diverse population and individual cultures hold dear to their own identity as a people.
Just last week I sat in a town hall meeting and listened to a panel of esteemed African Americans discuss how they should be identified on U.S. Census forms. The issue at hand was the inclusion of the word “Negro” on the form, along with other descriptors. Most of the members on the panel, while not thrilled with this term, realize that there are those among their race who clearly still identify with it. They recounted their personal genealogy: from grandfathers who called themselves Colored, to mothers who adopted Negro, to themselves who choose Black as a moniker, and to their children who define themselves as African Americans.
Along these same lines, several months ago I was sitting with a couple of our Hispanic consultants who got into a similar, unsolicited discussion. They recited the litany of having evolved from Mexican to Chicano to Hispanic to their current preference, Latino. They laughed about “no wonder no one knows what to call us.”
The lesson I surely have learned in this is that no one word can, or should, define a person or a race. Before we go casting about for politically correct terms, perhaps we should spend a little more time first finding out how individuals regard themselves and how they refer to their cultural roots with pride. The terms we use to describe each other, will surely continue to change along with the political, economic and social climates. It is the seed of who we are as individual peoples that truly make us count.
