Counting the State: State Resistance and Federal Enumeration of Latinos 1930

Counting the State: State Resistance and Federal Enumeration of Latinos 1930–1970

Published:2023-10-02 Issue:3 Volume:8 Page:397-420
ISSN:2056-6085
Container-title:The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
language:en
Short-container-title:J. Race Ethnicity Politics

Author:

Jacobson Robin Dale^ORCID

Abstract

AbstractBetween 1930 and 1980, the U.S. census bureau moved from using a Mexican as a racial category to Hispanic as an ethnicity. In between, the census bureau tried multiple ways to count Mexican Americans, Spanish Americans, or Latinos. Each measure the bureau tried ran headlong into differing subnational understandings of ethnicity, race, and Americanness. To understand Latino racial formation in this critical period, then, requires looking to the states. This paper explores the census counts in the southwest states between 1930 and 1970. Contextualizing these numbers with a history of differing state policies on language, marriage, and political inclusion reveals the importance of state-specific understandings of race and identity to understanding United States racial formation.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Sociology and Political Science,Anthropology

Reference60 articles.

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