week 3 pre-reading

Living in the USA, we experience a vast mixture of races and ethnicities in our everyday lives.  Take San Francisco State University for example, we have a broad range of students attending our school from all over the world and with unique backgrounds.  I believe a major ethnicity in the United States would come from our neighbors down south, the Hispanics.  With constant immigration from Central America to Northern America, in hopes to live a better life, anywhere you travel to, there will be a large group of Hispanics in the community.  Before taking this class, I would’ve easily have said Caucasian was the majority of ethnicities in America, but I consider them the largest race in America.  To be white in this country is to be at the top of the pyramid.  I have come to understand that a lot of people identify as white in order to break their own molds and fit into society easier.  I’m referring mainly to immigrants who find it struggling to transition into the states due to racial profiling and discrimination.  I believe the census itself is a form of discrimination.  Not including Mexican as a race is basically saying, “You’re not what we tolerate in this country.”  As I fill out the census form for myself I am upset that I have to write down the race that I identify as, especially since there are so many Mexican-Americans in this country.  Another thing I found strange was how many different type of Asians are listed under the race section.  As if being a certain type of Asian is better than being Indian or Persian.  With this in mind I do believe the census has a heavy influence on racial and ethnic categorization in our everyday lives.  Unfortunately it’s not an accurate or positive influence.  If I were to “re-do” the census, I would have it done electronically and broken down into sub-groups.  For example: for race, I would have basic categories, such as; Asian, Hispanic, white, African, etc. and from what you check off, it would lead you to another link that would give specific racial identification options.  Such as, if you were to check off Hispanic/Latino, it would lead you to a link that would specify whether you identify as Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Chilean etc.  I feel as though that would make things more progressive and accurate in how the census would create a forward moving influence on racial and ethnic views in the United States.

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