Pasadena Tidbits 2

* Census stuff requires some extra calculations if you think the Bureau's system of separating Hispanic "ethnicity" from "race." Here's some numbers I think are accurate (also from http://factfinder.census.gov/):
-33.4% Hispanic ("of any race"--aka Mexicans, Argentinians, and Puetro Ricans all count the same)
-39.1% white non-Hispanic
-14.0% black non-Hispanic
-0.2% American Indian/Alaskan Native non-Hispanic (aww, only 324 people!)
-9.9% Asian non-Hispanic
-?.?% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander non-Hispanic (We don't know... the Census won't give info about how many of them are Latino because there are too few of them to allow for that without an invasion of their privacy. Latino or not, the 2000 census found 132 of them, so roughly 0.1% of the population, unless they're all Latino as well?)
-?.?%- Some other race alone non-Hispanic-- they also won't say.
-1.5% Some other race alone or with another race non-Hispanic
-3.1% Multiracial non-Hispanic

So that effectively must mean...
-14.3% of Pasadena is "white Hispanic"
-0.4% of Pasadena is "black Hispanic"
-0.5% of Pasadena is "American Indian/Alaskan Native Hispanic"
-0.1% of Pasadena is "Asian Hispanic"
-14.5% of Pasadena is "Some other race alone or with another race Hispanic"
-2.3% of Pasadena is "Multiracial Hispanic"
=32.1% of the population... (suppose those billions of Pacific Islander Hispanics and significant figures explain the difference?)

I have no idea what "Some Other Race" must mean to most people-- I always want Middle Easterners to check that box because they don't get one of their own, but NO, they're supposed to call themselves "white"-- I think it'd be much more useful to elimate "white" altogether and instead ask for "European" ancestry or something of that nature. Having lighter skin doesn't make anyone automatically Anglo, or Finnish or Hungarian or Greek for that matter. I am proud that InterVarsity usually provides a "Middle Eastern" box and sometimes even distinguishes between regions of Asia. ;o)

Back to the topic of race in Pasadena: I actually had a friend tell me this summer, "Sometimes I forget you're moving to California and think you're just moving to Asia!" A rather interesting/awkward/funny comment, I thought. Ironically, I occasionally find myself thinking I'm moving to Latin America. Fittingly, Fuller offers classes in both Korean and Spanish.