Gorton to Present at SfAA Annual Meeting

Recently, we introduced you to SoA undergraduate Henry Gorton, who was featured earlier this year in an Honors College student spotlight. He is working with Dr. Diane Austin to complete his Honors thesis. With generous funding from the Thomas Bogard Bequest, Henry was able to attend this month’s Society for Applied Anthropology 2021 Annual Meeting. He received a fifteen-minute pre-recorded presentation slot to discuss his thesis research, “Changes to the American Indian category on the 2020 U.S. Census.” Henry’s project uses expert interviews and archival research to explore potential consequences of new language on U.S. Census Bureau survey forms that asks Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Latin America to identify as Native American. For those attending the SfAA Annual Meeting, Henry’s pre-recorded presentation is part of the “Institutional Responses and Encounters of Immigration” session, and will be available on-demand for the duration of the conference. 

The website page for the SfAA annual meeting includes a link to the program. 

Abstract: Prior to 2020, decennial censuses and American Community Surveys used the racial category “American Indian or Alaska Native” on both English and Spanish forms. In the 2020 Census and ACS, “Indigenous person of the Americas” replaced “American Indian” on the Spanish form, and both forms now include “Maya” and “Aztec” as examples of American Indian groups alongside federally recognized tribes. Although Mexican and Central American Indigenous groups never appeared by name on Census forms before 2020, Census and American Community Survey respondents who identified as part of a Mexican or Central American tribe have been classed as “Mexican American Indian” or “Central American Indian” on U.S. Census Bureau data for the past twenty years. This classification results from the White House Office of Management and Budget's 1997 decision to include Indigenous peoples of both North and South America under the “American Indian” category in federal statistics. Despite 175,000 people identified as “Mexican American Indian” on the 2010 Census, including 21,000 Maya and 28,000 Aztecs, little published research has used this data or examined the origins of the "Mexican American Indian" grouping. While the changes to the 2020 Census form indicate continued interest in collecting data on “Mexican American Indians,” the Census Bureau has not publicly discussed their reasoning for the change or its possible consequences.