Yahoo! News - What's in a Racial Identity? American Latinos All Over the Map, Study Finds: "The analysis of Census data and recent surveys is perhaps the most detailed in a relatively new field of research on how Latinos adapt to the rigid racial categories they encounter in the United States. It is the first to probe the differences between Latinos who consider themselves white and those who say they are of some other race.
In many Latin American countries, race is a flexible concept and can change with a person's status in society. Historical and contemporary evidence shows that a Latin American strain of racism favors lighter-skinned over darker-skinned people, but as an old Caribbean proverb says, 'Money bleaches.'
In the United States, Latinos are an ethnic group made up of people of different races, often mixed, and with a variety of ancestral homelands. In the 2000 Census, they mainly selected two racial categories to describe themselves. Forty-eight percent identified themselves as white, and 42% chose 'some other race.'
Latinos who perceive themselves as white appear to feel that their place in American society is more secure, the report found."
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