Official 90 Adjusted90 % Undercount in Official 90
Total Pop. 1,203,789 1,265,771 5.15%
White Race
430,077
438,634 1.99%
Black Race
449,399
482,973 7.47%
Amer.Ind.Race
6,069
6,240 2.82%
Asian Race
35,562
37,331 4.97%
Other Race
282,682
300,593 6.34%
All Hispanics
523,111
558,107 6.69%
Non-Hisp.White
272,503
270,842 -.61% (overcount)
Non-Hisp.Black
369,113
396,191 7.34%
Non-Hisp.Others
39,062
40,631 4.02%
The Other Race category in the upper group includes those who do not wish to identify themselves with the four "traditional" races indicated. In the lower group, the category "non-Hispanic others" includes such people, but also the non-Hispanics who identify their race as Asian, Pacific Islander, or American Indian. More than 31,000 of the 39,062 identify themselves as non-Hispanic Asians, and, in fact, the number of non-Hispanics that would correspond to "Other Race" in the upper group is fewer than 5,000.
B. Problems with "Other Race" and Traditional Racial Designations Over the Past Decade
We can subtract non-Hispanic Whites from all Whites to get the number of Hispanics who identify themselves as "Whites." We can do the same for Blacks. And for "other race," we can subtract the 5,000 mentioned in the last paragraph from 282,682, and we note that over 275,000 Bronx Hispanics, a clear majority, refuse to consider themselves White or Black. But according to the Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program (PEP), most Hispanics in the US as a whole consider themselves White. Because of this, the national estimates from PEP omit the "Hispanic Other" category and fold most Hispanics who identify themsleves as "other race" into the Hispanic White population, with a small fraction included in the "Hispanic Black" category. Such procedures may work in the US as a whole, but they do not reflect reality in The Bronx, and so we must be careful in interpreting these recent population estimates.
We must emphasize that the main questions about ACS99 revolve around
the special way Hispanics in The Bronx define their own racial identification.
The overall Hispanic population figure does not seem to be in dispute.
We can see the point in a table comparing ACS99 and 1999 Population Estimates.
As a benchmark, the 1990 official counts are also included. The first
four rows below show a good fit between the ACS99 and the 1999 Population
Estimates. But in the last six rows, we see the dramatic consequences
of not realistically dealing with local Hispanic racial identities.
Paradoxically, both ACS99 and the 1999 Population
Estimates failed to anticipate the population increase for The Bronx over
the past decade. And the categories combining race and Hispanic identity
show inconsistencies between ACS and Population Estimates. The 2000
data released in March, 2001 shows that both ACS99 and Population Estimates
were far off the mark for many racial-ethnic categories in The Bronx.
The dominant position of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, with their
special notions of community and identity, may help explain the discrepancies.
1990 100%
1999
1999
2000 Official
BRONX POP
COUNT
ACS POP EST
TOTAL POP
1,203,789 1,194,099
1,194,099
1,332,650
ALL WHITES+ALL "OTHER"
712,759
634,287 631,778
ALL BLACKS
449,399 509,474
505,013
475,007
ALL HISPANICS
523,111 578,691
580,662
644,705
ALL WHITES
430,077 272,165
631,778
398,003
NON-HISP. WHITES
272,503 129,743
219,921
193,651
NON-HISP. BLACKS
369,113 437,135
348,744
416,338
HISP. WHITES
157,574 142,422
411,857
204,352
HISP. BLACKS
80,286
72,339
156,269
58,669
HISP. "OTHER"
278,275 354,191
---------
320,000
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