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Race by the Numbers

Race by the Numbers

In the essay Race by the Numbers, Orlando Patterson, claims that whites are going to remain the majority in the U.S.--because Hispanics are really white! Sounds a lot like Ellis Cose in his essay, The Colors of Race, “Today it is becoming increasingly harder to define what it means to be “white” in America…” It is a known fact that since the framers of the Constitution reached a compromise to count black slaves as three-fifths of a person; racial numbers have been about political power. In contemporary America, the distribution of political power on the basis of population, the use of race in the drawing of legislative districts and racial block voting have prompted people to inflate their numbers. Or at least fear their dilution. Patterson's essay addresses the political dynamics of racial quotas that have even noticed that Hispanics are eligible for preferences.
Since the census allocates political power as much as it ...

Posted by: Quentina Green

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