AP Botches Census Reporting

The AP reports:

Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.

Except that's not what the Census Bureau said, exactly:

Texas has now joined Hawaii, New Mexico and California as a majority-minority state, along with the District of Columbia, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. … (The minority population includes all people except non-Hispanic single-race whites.)

See the difference? The AP's interpretation is that Hispanics aren't "white". But, in fact, a goodly slug of Hispanics are "white" (or, more precisely, consider themselves to be "white", which is, for the Census Bureau, the only thing that matters). We've blogged about this before, but for some reason it's escaped the AP's notice.


Last Modified 2012-10-26 10:09 AM EDT