The racists always do the classifying, the victims cannot classify themselves. Who decided that you were a Black person or a Latino person? White people did. They created the race concept. Who made up the terms "Hispanic", "Latino" and "Negro"? The same people who made up the terms Tostitos, Doritos and Africa! [MORE]. The only purpose of race is to practice racism.
If the ONLY purpose of “race” is to practice racism, and whites are the only group or “race” (in a white supremacy system) that can practice racism, then it is logical to assume there is only one race: the white race. [MORE]
According to Dr. Blynd, race is an artificial "European" invention with real consequences. Race is not real but racism is. Race has been created to be wrongly confused with ethnic identity in order to establish the sense of "otherness" and dehumanization of melanated peoples around the globe. [MORE]
Mexico moves to do something it has not attempted in decades and never on its modern census: ask people if they consider themselves black.
Or Afromexican. Or “moreno,” “mascogo,” “jarocho,” or “costeño” — some of the other terms sometimes used to describe black Mexicans.
What term or terms to use is not just a matter of personal and societal debate, but a longstanding dilemma that the government is hoping finally to resolve.
An official survey of around 4,500 households this month asked about African descent and preferred terms as part of plans to include the question on a national housing and population survey of 6.1 million households next year, a broad snapshot of the country in between the main censuses. It has not yet been decided if the question will be on the full census in 2020.
The sample next year would allow for a rare, official estimate of the total black population in Mexico — a number that until now has been the subject of educated guesses of tens of thousands.
When it comes to official classifications of race and ethnicity, the census has typically asked only if an indigenous language is spoken at home and, if so, which one. That information has been used to evaluate the size of the Indian population (about 6 percent of the total of 112.3 million).
Although Mexico’s indigenous peoples persistently rank at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, the country takes pride in its indigenous heritage and carefully preserves the remnants of ancient civilizations.
But African-Mexicans say their role as Mexico’s “third root” is ignored in textbooks and by society as a whole. They are seeking the census count as a prelude to official recognition in the Constitution, which could mean deeper study and commemoration of their history and better services for their communities.
The coalition of scholars, community groups and activists that has been pushing for the census question has gained traction for a number of reasons: renewed attention to non-Spanish cultures after a 1994 indigenous uprising in the southern state of Chiapas; a civil society grown more vociferous since the first democratic handover of the presidency after the 2000 election; and a sense that Mexico was falling behind in international agreements it had signed over the years to confront racial discrimination. Mexico has increasingly looked out of step with other Latin American nations, including Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, that have included questions of race on their census forms.
“Gradually, we have been moving toward this step,” said Ricardo Bucio Mújica, president of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, a government agency formed 11 years ago. As for Mexico’s black population, he added, “If it is not known how many there are, their conditions, there can’t be an agreement on the part of the government for their inclusion at large.” [MORE]