• White Hispanics have the highest socioeconomic standing, they live in closest proximity to non-Hispanic whites, and their neighborhoods have a more affluent class composition than those of other Hispanic groups.
• A strong predictor of racial identification of Hispanics is the racial mix of the metropolitan region where they live.  Among metros with the largest Hispanic populations, Miami has the highest share of white Hispanics; New York has the highest share of black Hispanics. In California and Texas, Hispanic Hispanics generally are the majority of Hispanics.

Technical issues: measuring race among Hispanics 

The Census Bureau treats race and Hispanic origin as distinct concepts, although often users of census data and the Bureau itself combine them to compare information about non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics.  Background information about the Bureau’s approach can be found at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/compraceho.html.  Census 2000 switched the order of the “Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?” question and the race identification question, asking the Hispanic origin question before the race question.  This change may have affected Hispanics’ response to the race question. 

One source of information for this report is microdata from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses (Public Use Microdata Samples, or PUMS).  These data files allow maximum flexibility in the creation of categories of race and Hispanic origin, and they make it possible to tabulate many social and economic characteristics of Hispanics by their self-reported race.  However they are sample data, and they are most reliable at the national level. 

For information on specific metropolitan regions and census tracts within them, we rely on pre-tabulated summary files from Census 2000 (SF1 and SF3).  Use of these files is complicated by the fact that people were able to report multiple races in this census, but summary files available at this time report data for only a few of the possible combinations.  

For the purposes of this study, we classify Hispanics into the following categories: 

• Hispanic Hispanics.  Persons who identified as “other race” (most often writing in “Hispanic” or a similar term) alone or in combination with another specific race.  The census refers to these people as “some other race” Hispanics.

• Black Hispanics.  Persons who identified as “black” alone or in combination with another race.  There is some overlap in the summary file data between this category and the Hispanic Hispanic category.  About 120,000 Hispanic Hispanics also identified themselves as black.

• White Hispanics.  Persons who identified neither as “other race” nor as “black.”  A more complete label for this group would be “white, Asian, or Native American.”  However analysis of microdata shows that 96% in this category identified only as white.