Race Census Aff – mags compiled by Lenny Brahin Jaden Lessnick Jillian Gordners Brian Roche 1AC

The black white binary is disempowering, not productive and destroys the real possibility of change

The question of whether racial identity contains implicit political identities has become an even more important issue given the changing demographics of American society. Confusion about the content and implications of racial positioning will serve only to reinforce the present racial status quo. In the United States, a bipolar black/white para-digm of race relations has been the framework upon which a vocabulary has been erected to deal with race issues. n64 As immigration has changed the demographics of American society over the last thirty years, and as African Americans have decreased as a percentage of America's population of color, legal scholars have taken an increasingly critical look at the old black/white paradigm and found it wanting. n65 In crucial areas--affirmative action, interracial conflict in the inner city, redistricting--the players are not simply black and white but a panoply of races and interests. n66 [*69]

Many scholars of color criticize the old paradigm because it cannot adequately account for the "new" players in the scenario. n67 Critics of the old paradigm note that it cannot even adequately consider class, gender, or any other identity that intersects with race. In fact, some say it fails in fundamental ways to address the growing phenomenon of multiracial identities. n68

Yet the process of deconstructing the old black/white paradigm carries with it new dangers. Although narrowly constructed, it has had real value for those wishing to raise issues of white supremacy and the subordination of people of color. The original paradigm, while constructing and reaffirming white dominance, also permitted a useful coun-ter-focus on the effect and operation of white supremacy. While progressive scholars and activists agree that the black/white paradigm must be dismantled to make room for more sophisticated and nuanced models, the focus on the effects of white supremacist ideology must remain at the core of the analysis. Academics and legal scholars, as well as popular media, are addressing the issue of whether the traditional bipolar black/white paradigm of race relations is a coherent framework. n69

American society has never been strictly black and white. Indeed, the "multiracialness" of America is no new phenomenon. "Black" has, in fact, long been a multiracial, multi-hued color: n70

Even on its own terms, race has never been a black and white matter. There have always been as many shades of black and brown as there have been individuals who identified themselves or were identified by others, by that concept. There have always been Native Americans, Chicanos, and Asian immigrants. In an earlier era, the various white ethnic groups were considered to be distinct races. n71

Unfortunately, in the current political context, it's had some really detrimental effects particularly as far as doing cross-cultural organizing. n78

Latina/o Identity

Racism =/= color

The census bureau is corrupt and the census centralizes state power

Prewitt, 14 - Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001 (Kenneth, “What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans” http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10032.html 2014)//jml

There was a racial classification scheme in america’s first census (1790), as there was in the next twenty-two censuses, which brings us to the present. Though the classification was altered in response to the political and intellectual fashions of the day, the underlying definition of America’s racial hierarchy never escaped its origins in the eighteenth- century. Even the enormous changing of the racial landscape in the civil rights era failed to challenge a dysfunctional classification, though it did bend it to new purposes. Nor has the demographic upheaval of our pres- ent time led to much fresh thinking about how to measure America. It is, finally, time to escape that past. Twenty-first-century statistics should not be governed by race thinking that is two and a half centuries out of date. They poorly serve the nation, especially how it understands and manages the color line and the nativity line—what separates us as races and what separates us as native born and foreign born. what are Statistical races? On April 1, 2010, the American population numbered more than 308 million. When the Census Bureau finished with its decade population count it hurried to inform the president and the Congress how many of those 308 million Americans resided in each of our fifty states. The nation requires this basic fact to reapportion congressional seats and electoral college votes, allowing America’s representative democracy to work according to its constitutional design (see chapter 2). Immediately after this most basic population fact was announced, the Census Bureau told us how many of the 308 million Americans belonged to one of these five races: White, African American, Amer- ican Indian, Asian, Native Hawaiian. The bureau reported that a few million Americans belonged to not just one of these five but to two or more. Simultaneously, the bureau reported how many Americans were Hispanics—which, the government insists, is not a race at all but an ethnic group. Incidentally, not all Hispanics got that message, be- cause about half of them filled in a census line allowing Americans to say they belonged to “some other race.” Hispanics, however, are not a race. Hispanics are expected to be Hispanics and also to self-identify as one or more of the five major race groups listed above (this is explained in chapter 6). What perhaps puzzles the reader is why race statistics are so terri- bly important that they are publicly announced simultaneously with the population figures mandated for reapportionment. You may also be puzzled that the census form (fig. 1) dedicates so much of its space to the race and Hispanic question but has no space for education, health, employment, or marital status questions. Are such matters less import- ant than the country’s racial profile? We will examine such puzzles. It is important that we do so because the race and Hispanic questions used in the census have a very long reach. A version of these questions is used in hundreds of government surveys—federal, state, and local—and in official administrative record keeping that captures traits of Americans from the moment of birth to their death: vital statistics, military records, and education and health data. Further, because the statistics resulting from a voracious appetite for information in our modern nation-state are embedded in law, regulations, and policies, there are thousands of private-sector institutions—universities, hospitals, corporations, volun- tary organizations—doing business with the government that collect matching race statistics. America has statistical races. What they are, how we got them, how we use them, and whether today we want or need them are questions that shape this book. America’s statistical races are not accidents of history. They have been deliberately constructed and reconstructed by the govern- ment. They are tools of government, with political purposes and policy consequences—more so even than the biological races of the nineteenth century or the socially constructed races from twentieth-century anthro- pology or what are termed identity races in our current times. Whether these biological, socially constructed, or identity races are “real” is a se- rious matter, but they are of interest in this book only as they condition what the government defines as our statistical races. What, specifically, are statistical races? Organized counting of any kind—and certainly a census is organized counting—requires counters to know what they are counting, which in turn depends on a classifi- cation scheme. Statistical races are by-products of the categories used in the government’s racial classification. And what do the actual 2010 census categories produce? Though you cannot easily tell by looking at the census form, the categories are designed to produce two statistical ethnicities and five statistical races. The ethnicities are Hispanic and Non Hispanic, though this is not evident from a question in which the term ethnicity does not appear. The five statistical races are White, Black, American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, which we will learn in chapter 2 directly derive from a color-based division of the world’s population by eighteenth-century natural scientists—white, black, red, yellow, and brown. With these basics established, the census form then unleashes the combinations that result from the “mark one or more” instruction. We will see later how these many combinations have not, as yet, been used to make public policy. They became part of the census to fulfill expressive demands for recognition. Then there is whatever appears on the “some other” line, though again these counts do not become statistical races. So, whatever you think might be going on in these census questions, the political and policy intent is to count the Hispanics separately from everyone else, and to then sort every American, including Hispanics, into five primary races. When I use the term statistical races, it refers to these five groups plus the Hispanic ethnicity. If you are now confused, you are on your way to understanding why I’ve written this book. That statistical races are real there is no doubt. Law courts, legislatures, executive agencies, media, election campaigns, advocacy groups, corporate planners, university admission offices, hospitals, employment agencies, and others endlessly talk about “how many” African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American In- dians, Whites, and Hispanics there are—and how fast their numbers are growing, how many have jobs, graduate from high school, are in prison, serve in the military, are obese or smoke, own their homes, or marry each other. If the statistical races are real and important, why does the census form fail to make that clear? In fact, if you take a closer look at the ques- tions you will be even more confused. You should be perplexed that one census-designated race—White—is simply a color. Nothing else is said. The next race is a color, Black (and Negro, which is another way to say Black), but also a descent group—that is, Americans whose ancestors are from the African continent—and in some respects an “ethnicity” as well. Today’s immigrants from Ghana or Ethiopia also go into that cate- gory. Then color drops out of the picture altogether. A civil status enters. American Indians/Alaska Natives belong to a race by virtue of tribal membership, which has a clear definition in American law; they can also belong to that race by declaring membership in a principal tribe, which is not a legal status but a self-identification. Look at the census question again. With Whites, Blacks, and Native Americans now listed, there fol- lows a long list of nationality groups. If we read the question stem liter- ally, each of these is a race. The Chinese, the Koreans, the Samoans are presented as if they are independent races. We are not, however, sup- posed to understand the question literally, but to understand that we become part of the Asian race or the Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander race by checking a national origin or writing one in. Oddly, however, the term Asian only incidentally appears in the question, defining persons from India in a way that doesn’t confuse them with American Indians, and inviting write-in responses, where the examples listed are again na- tionality groups. With this nationality nomenclature in mind you might look back at the question on Hispanic/Latino/Spanish origin (terms used inter- changeably), where you will see that it is similarly constructed. There is no box indicating Hispanic, but several boxes labeled with nationalities and a write-in space again guided by nationality examples. In a nation famous for its ethnic diversity, you might now be asking, is the census telling us that there are only two ethnic groups that matter (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) while ignoring all white European national origin groups (Swedes, Germans, Italians, Irish, Poles, and Russians, among others)? It seems so. It’s hard to find the underlying rationale for what appears, and what doesn’t, in these two ethnoracial questions. We will discuss in detail the absence of a coherent rationale. As an astute scholar has written, the Census Bureau “has no choice but to rely on incoherent categories if it hopes to measure race in the United States” because, he continues, “race arises out of (fundamentally irrational) social practices.”1 A large part of the story told in the chapters to follow explains how “incoherent categories” result in incoherent statistical races, which derive not only from social practices but equally from policy goals.

The concept of race and the black/white binary excludes Latina/Latino identity

Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law, “LATINA/0 IDENTITY AND PAN-ETHNICITY: TOWARD LATCRIT SUBJECTIVITIES: Five Axioms in Search of Equality” 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 231. Fall, 1997. LexisNexus.)JG

Axiom II. The concepts of "Race" and "Racism" must be amplified to promote Latina/o equality.∂ Our understanding of race must be amplified so that it encompasses all peoples afflicted by racism. As Joel Kovel wrote insightfully, "racism antecedes the notion of race, indeed, it generates the races." n9 Our understanding of race and racism must [*234] be amplified so that the concepts also encompass ethnic characteristics, which often form the basis for prejudice and racism against Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Blacks. The concept of ethnicity, in turn, must also be amplified and informed by an understanding of racism, which all too often is left out of discussions of ethnic groups and their presumed ability to assimilate. Neither the concept of "race," as currently understood, nor the concept of "ethnicity," standing alone, will enable us to better understand the racism that affects Blacks, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native Americans and other racialized groups.∂ As we currently understand "race," it is entirely dominated by a binary Black/White paradigm in which only two races exist with legitimacy in the United States: the Black and the White. This binary paradigm has a stranglehold on the consciousness of most people in this country. It excludes Latino/as from public view and consideration comprehensively and with regularity. I will give one example: the national reporting of the recent Los Angeles riots and what we take to be facts about those riots.∂ The media presented the riots as though they were a conflict between Blacks and Whites, symbolized by the videotaped violence against Reginald Denny, and between Blacks and Korean-Americans, the latter presented as "good," upwardly striving ethnics. With the possible exception of local California media, the national media ignored entirely the multiple roles of Latinos/as in these riots:∂ Most of the early victims of crowd violence were Latino/a;∂ One-third of the dead were Latino/a;∂ Between twenty and forty percent of the businesses damaged were Latino/a owned;∂ One-half of those arrested were Latino/a. n10∂ ∂ [*235] These statistics all make perfect sense, because fully half of the population of South Central Los Angeles is Latino/a; the Latino/a community there was bound to have been deeply involved in the riots.∂ The lesson I draw from the missing stories of Latino/a victimization and criminality in the Los Angeles riots is that significant racial events in this country are perceived and understood only within a binary Black/White paradigm, n11 and sometimes with little regard for what actually happened.∂ The persistent reproduction of the binary Black/White paradigm occurs as well across time in some of the leading literature on race in America: from Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma, n12 to the 1968 Kerner Report which concluded that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal" n13 to Andrew Hacker's book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. n14∂ The concept of race, understood as the Black/White binary paradigm, does not promote equality for Latino/a people because, in part, many races and ancestries constitute Latino/a people, one of whose salient traits is racial mixture. Many races, in a genetic or biological sense, constitute Latino/a people, since racial mixture with Europeans began after the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. This includes blacks, browns, beiges, whites and colors in-between. This high degree of racial mixture is well illustrated from the beginnings of European colonization of the [*236] current United States by the first census of Los Angeles, conducted by Spanish authorities in 1781. Only two of the forty-six persons counted, approximately four percent, were Spaniards; the vast majority were identified as Indians, mestizos, mulattoes, and blacks. n15 Historians and scholars of racial mixture have noted that "virtually all Latinos are . . . multiracial." n16 Racial mixture, in a genetic or biological sense, does not fit a binary Black/White paradigm and disrupts this paradigm.∂ Because "race" is commonly understood to mean Black or White, arguments by analogy to race have generally not been helpful in recognizing or redressing claims of discrimination against Latinos/as. The virtual failure of Title VII and jurisprudence under the equal protection clause to provide any redress for claims of discrimination brought by Latinos/as illustrates the failure of arguments by analogy. In Hernandez v. New York, n17 the case allowing the peremptory exclusion of bilingual jurors from jury service, the Court reasoned that "it may well be . . . that proficiency in a particular language, like skin color, should be treated as a surrogate for race under an equal protection analysis." n18 "It may well be" according to the court, but language is not treated as a proxy for race under the equal protection clause and it receives no protection by the courts under Title VII. n19

The black/white binary silences Latinos from civil rights discourse

Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law, “LATINA/0 IDENTITY AND PAN-ETHNICITY: TOWARD LATCRIT SUBJECTIVITIES: Five Axioms in Search of Equality” 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 231. Fall, 1997. LexisNexus.)JG

[*237] Axiom III. The concept of Civil Rights is so dominated by the Black/White binary understanding of American racial identity that it is currently of little utility for Latinos.∂ The binary conception of race operates to exclude Latinos/as from important forums for the discussion of racial issues and justice. Typically, but with exceptions, Latinos/as have no place at the table to voice our conception of civil rights and wrongs.∂ All the civil rights enactments and court decisions in this area that most of us would consider to be major, even if of limited effect, attempted to redress harms to Blacks, and to a lesser extent, women. The Reconstruction Amendments have frequently, and correctly, been understood to have been enacted to reverse the Dred Scott n20 decision and to protect newly freed slaves from hostile state action. The pre- and post- Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts intended Blacks to be the principal beneficiaries. Brown v. Board of Education n21 abolished separate but equal education and was widely understood as a vindication of Black equality interests, although Latinos too benefitted from the abolition of segregated education. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to attempt to establish equal treatment for Blacks in crucial social, educational and economic institutions. The history of these Civil Rights enactments corresponds, of course, to the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws and violence directed at African Americans. While Latinos/as have benefitted from these reforms, the intended beneficiaries were African Americans.

The black/white binary marginalizes Latinos and excludes them from racial discourse

Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law, “RACE, ETHNICITY & NATIONHOOD: ARTICLE: The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:

The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought” 1997. 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1213) JG

The Black/White Binary Paradigm of race has become the subject of increasing interest and scrutiny among some scholars of color. This Article uses Thomas Kuhn's notions of paradigm and the properties of paradigms to explore several leading works on race. The works the author explores demonstrate the Black/White paradigm of race and some of its properties, among them extensive paradigm elaboration over the years. Paradigms have limitations, however. Among them is a tendency to truncate history for the sake of telling a linear story of progress. The author demonstrates how one constitutional law text truncates history, by omitting entirely Mexican-American struggles for desegregation, and presenting a linear story of the Black struggle for civil rights. Omitting important history from the narrative of civil rights history becomes extraordinarily damaging, since it distorts history and contributes to the marginalization of non-Black peoples of color. While recognizing the centrality of slavery and White racism against Blacks at the core of American history and society, this Article seeks to expand our understanding of racism through the use of legal history. The author contends that mutual and particularized understanding of racism as it affects all people of color has the potential to enhance our abilities to understand each other and to join together to fight the common evil of racism.∂ ∂ American society has no social technique for handling partly colored races. We have a place for the Negro and a place for the white man:the Mexican is not a Negro, and the white man refuses him an equal status. n1∂ ∂ [*1214] This Article is about how we are taught to think about race. In particular, I intend to analyze the role of books and texts on race in structuring our racial discourse. I believe that much writing on racism is structured by a paradigm that is widely held but rarely recognized for what it is and what it does. This paradigm shapes our understanding of what race and racism mean and the nature of our discussions about race. It is crucial, therefore, to identify and describe this paradigm and to demonstrate how it binds and organizes racial discourse, limiting both the scope and the range of legitimate viewpoints in that discourse.∂ In this Article, I identify and criticize one of the most salient features of past and current discourse about race in the United States, the Black/White binary paradigm of race. A small but growing number of writers have recognized the paradigm and its limiting effect on racial discourse. n2 I believe that its dominant and pervasive character has not been well established nor discussed in legal literature.∂ I intend to demonstrate the existence of a Black/White paradigm and to show its breadth and seemingly pervasive ordering of racial [*1215] discourse and legitimacy. Further, I intend to show how the Black/White binary paradigm operates to exclude Latinos/as n3 from full membership and participation in racial discourse, and how that exclusion serves to perpetuate not only the paradigm itself but also negative stereotypes of Latinos/as. Full membership in society for Latinos/as will require a paradigm shift away from the binary paradigm and towards a new and evolving understanding of race and race relations.∂ This Article illustrates the kind of contribution to critical theory that the emergent Latino Critical Race Studies (LatCrit) movement may make. This movement is a continuing scholarly effort, undertaken by Latino/a scholars and other sympathetic scholars, to examine critically existing structures of racial thought and to identify how these structures perpetuate the subordinated position of Latinos/as in particular. LatCrit studies are, then, an extension and development of critical race theory (and critical theory generally) that focus on the previously neglected areas of Latino/a identity and history and the role of racism as it affects Latinos/as.∂ I identify strongly, and self-consciously, as a Latino writer and thinker. It is precisely my position as a Latino outsider, neither Black nor White,that makes possible the observation and critique presented in this Article. My critique of the Black/White binary paradigm of race shows this commonly held binary understanding of race to be one of the major impediments to learning about and understanding Latinos/as and their history. As I shall show, the paradigm also creates significant distortions in the way people learn to view Latinos/as.∂ I begin with a review of the principal scientific theory that describes the nature of paradigms and the power they exert over the formation of knowledge. I then analyze important, nationally recognized books on race to reveal the binary paradigm of race and the way it structures race thinking. After reviewing these popular and scholarly books on race, I analyze a leading casebook on constitutional law. Like other books, textbooks on constitutional law are shaped by the paradigm and reproduce it. Then, by describing some of the legal struggles Latinos/as have waged, I will demonstrate that paradigmatic presentations of race and struggles for equality have caused significant omissions with undesirable repercussions. Thus, I demonstrate the important role that legal history [*1216] can play in both correcting and amplifying the Black/White binary paradigm of race.

Not identifying Hispanics or Latinos as a race projects Whiteness onto them

Trucious-Haynes 01 (Enid Trucious-Haynes is a professor of law at Brandeis School of Law of the University of Louisville, and has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, “Why ‘Race Matters: LatCrit Theory and Latina/o Racial identity” 2001. La Raza Law Journal Vol. 12: 1.) JG

Latinas/os are a force to be reckoned with, and we now require our own room in the "Master's House."' Yet, we must not forget it is the "Master's House," and we are constrained by the basic home rule that is White supremacy. Latinas/os are not exempt from the oppression of White supremacy, yet, as a group or individually, we often are seduced into thinking we are White' Latinas/os must be vigilant to avoid the seduction of Whiteness. And we, Latinas/os, more than other groups of color, are vulnerable to the seduction of whiteness. We carry the desire for Whiteness, inscribed on our souls, from Latin America and transported across the border or from our neighborhoods where our parents and generations before have lived Latinos/as, more man others, are seduced by Whiteness because we are not called Black.' we are not even identified as a race--at least not officially. We are seduced by whiteness because we do not see that the foundation of the Master's House, the Black-White paradigm, includes the racialization of our language, our culture, our history. We must see — Tenemos que ver

The black/white binary racializes Latinas/os and reinforces the racial hierarchy

Trucious-Haynes 01 (Enid Trucious-Haynes is a professor of law at Brandeis School of Law of the University of Louisville, and has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, “Why ‘Race Matters: LatCrit Theory and Latina/o Racial identity” 2001. La Raza Law Journal Vol. 12: 1.) JG

Part II examines how Latinas/os have been constructed as an indeterminate racial group by the hegemony of the Black-White paradigm for racial discourse in the United States, the legal system through Judicial opinions and legislation, and how Latinas/os have been racialized as Non-White historically and today. I also address how the indeterminacy of the Latina/o racial identity reinforces racial hierarchy because of the manipulation of the Latina/o image. Part III explains how the process of Latina/o racial identification may vary from the process of racial identification assumed by the Black-White paradigm in the United States, but may nonetheless reinforce White supremacy. This section also assesses how LatCrit scholarship reflects the Latina/o indeterminate group racial identity. Part IV identifies the impact of the Latina/o indeterminate racial status on developing new approaches to antidiscrimination law and the legal remedies available to Latinas/os, the reinforcement of White supremacy, and the obstacles it creates to coalition building with other communities of color

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