03-27-2023  3:57 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

Idaho Hospital to Stop Baby Deliveries, Partly Over Politics

A rural hospital in northern Idaho will stop delivering babies or providing other obstetrical care, citing a shifting legal climate in which recently enacted state laws could subject physicians to prosecution for providing abortions, among other reasons

Water Contamination in Oregon Could Prompt EPA to Step In

It's been three decades since state agencies first noted high levels of nitrate contamination in the groundwater in Morrow and Umatilla counties and residents have long complained that the pollution is negatively impacting their health.

North Portland Library to Undergo Renovations and Expansion

As one of the library building projects funded by the 2020 Multnomah County voter-approved bond, North Portland Library will close to the public on April 5, 2023, to begin construction processes for its renovation and expansion.

Report: 119K People Hurt by Riot-Control Weapons Since 2015

The report on casualties from a largely unregulated industry cites an alarming evolution of crowd-control devices into more powerful and indiscriminate designs and deployment, including dropping tear gas from drones.

NEWS BRIEFS

Motorcycle Lane Filtering Law Passes Oregon Senate

SB 422 will allow motorcyclists to avoid dangers of stop-and-go traffic under certain conditions ...

MET Rental Assistance Now Available

The Muslim Educational Trust is extending its Rental Assistance Program to families in need living in Multnomah or Washington...

Two for One Tickets for Seven Guitars on Thursday, March 23

Taylore Mahogany Scott's performance in Seven Guitars brings to life Vera Dotson, a woman whose story arose in August Wilson's...

PassinArt: A Theatre Company and PNMC Festival Call for Actors and Directors

Actors and directors of all skill levels are sought for the Pacific NW Multicultural Readers Series and Film Festival ...

Hearing on New Burnside Bridge Construction

The Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge Project team will present HB 3323 and 3301 this Thursday, March 23 from 5-6:30 p.m. ...

States' divisions on abortion widen after Roe overturned

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A group of Tennessee Republicans began this year’s legislative session hoping to add narrow exceptions to one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, armed with the belief that most people — even in conservative Tennessee — reject extremes on the issue. ...

Factory or farm? Oregon may alter land use for chipmakers

NORTH PLAINS, Ore. (AP) — Aaron Nichols walked past rows of kale growing on his farm, his knee-high brown rubber boots speckled with some of the richest soil on earth, and gazed with concern toward fields in the distance. Just over the horizon loomed a gigantic building of the semiconductor...

Texas without star Dylan Disu for regional final vs. Miami

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Texas forward Dylan Disu, one of the bright stars of the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, was ruled out of the Longhorns' game against Miami for a spot in the Final Four on Sunday with a left foot injury. The 6-foot-9 Disu was the MVP of the Longhorns'...

March Madness: Alabama and surprising bunch remain in South

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Alabama was expected to be in the Sweet 16 as the overall top seed in the NCAA Tournament. Few thought the teams standing between the Crimson Tide and a trip to the Final Four would be No. 5 seed San Diego State, sixth-seeded Creighton and 15th-seeded...

OPINION

Celebrating 196 Years of The Black Press

It was on March 17, 1827, at a meeting of “Freed Negroes” in New York City, that Samuel Cornish, a Presbyterian minister, and John Russwurn, the first Negro college graduate in the United States, established the negro newspaper. ...

DEQ Announces Suspension of Oregon’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program

The state’s popular incentive for drivers to switch to electric vehicles is scheduled to pause in May ...

FHA Makes Housing More Affordable for 850,000 Borrowers

Savings tied to median market home prices ...

State Takeover Schemes Threaten Public Safety

Blue cities in red states, beware: conservatives in state government may be coming for your police department. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

India expels Rahul Gandhi, Modi critic, from Parliament

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top opposition leader and fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expelled from Parliament Friday, a day after a court convicted him of defamation and sentenced him to two years in prison for mocking the surname Modi in an election speech. The...

1st Black editor named to lead Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday named Leroy Chapman Jr. as its new editor-in-chief, making him the first Black editor to lead the newspaper in its 155-year history. Chapman, 52, has worked in journalism for nearly three decades and has spent the past 12 years at the...

Lawsuit: Slurs, coercion at BBQ chain with racist history

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina barbecue chain known for its pro-segregation stance in a landmark 1960s case and its embrace of the Confederate flag in 2000 is facing allegations of racism and sexual harassment by the fired general manager of one of its restaurants. According...

ENTERTAINMENT

Review: Lana Del Rey's 'Ocean Blvd' is an intimate epic

“Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” by Lana Del Rey (Interscope Records) Lana Del Rey is a complicated, enigmatic pop star — since the height of her breakout album, “Born to Die," the singer has been labeled one of the best songwriters of her generation....

Book thief in plot that duped famous authors avoids prison

NEW YORK (AP) — It was the stuff of novels: For years, a con artist plagued the publishing industry, impersonating editors and agents to pull off hundreds of literary heists. But the manuscripts obtained from high-profile authors were never resold or leaked, rendering the thefts all the more...

Darcelle, world's oldest working drag queen, dies at 92

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Walter Cole, better known as the iconic drag queen who performed for decades as Darcelle XV and a fearless advocate for Portland's LGBTQ+ community, has died of natural causes in Portland, Oregon. He was 92. Darcelle, who died Thursday, was crowned the...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Black, Hispanic investors struggle with faith in crypto

NEW YORK (AP) — A software developer twice invested his savings in cryptocurrencies, only to lose it all. But he...

In Macron's France, streets and fields seethe with protest

PARIS (AP) — A big day has come for French high school student Elisa Fares. At age 17, she is taking part in her...

March Madness: pair in Final Four, Monday settles last 2

March Madness has reached the Elite Eight! And unlike in the men's bracket, two No. 1 seeds are still playing in...

Travel disruption hits Germany on eve of transport strike

BERLIN (AP) — An increased number of travelers in Germany boarded trains and planes on Sunday, a day before a...

Eyes on abstention as Cubans vote for National Assembly

HAVANA (AP) — Cubans voted Sunday in National Assembly elections with attention focused on voter turnout amid a...

Tokyo demands China free Japan national detained in Beijing

TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo has demanded that China release a Japanese national who was detained in Beijing earlier this...

Hope Yen the Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the 2010 census asked people to classify themselves by race, more than 21.7 million - at least 1 in 14 - went beyond the standard labels and wrote in such terms as "Arab," "Haitian," "Mexican" and "multiracial."

The unpublished data, the broadest tally to date of such write-in responses, are a sign of a diversifying America that's wrestling with changing notions of race.

The figures show most of the write-in respondents are multiracial Americans or Hispanics, many of whom don't believe they fit within the four government-defined categories of race: white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native. Because Hispanic is defined as an ethnicity and not a race, some 18 million Latinos used the "some other race" category to establish a Hispanic racial identity.

"I have my Mexican experience, my white experience but I also have a third identity if you will that transcends the two, a mixed experience," said Thomas Lopez, 39, a write-in respondent from Los Angeles. "For some multiracial Americans, it is not simply being two things, but an understanding and appreciation of what it means to be mixed."

Lopez, 39, the son of a Mexican-American father and a German-Polish mother, has been checking multiple race boxes since the Census Bureau first offered the option in 2000. Marking off the categories of Hispanic-Mexican ethnicity, "other" Hispanic ethnicity and a non-Hispanic white race, Lopez opted in 2010 to go even further. He checked "some other race" and scribbled in a response: "multiracial."

More than three million write-ins came from white and black Americans who appear to have found the standard race categories insufficient. They include Arabs, Iranians and Middle Easterners, who don't fully view themselves as "white" and have lobbied in the past to be a separate race category. They are also Italians, Germans, Haitians and Jamaicans who consider ancestry a core part of who they are.

Roughly half a million black Americans - between 1 and 2 percent of their total population - wrote in answers to signify their preferred term for black. Among them: African-American, Afro-American, African, Negro, mulatto, brown and coffee. More than 36,000 described themselves as "Negro" in whole or in part. The term, which was listed as an example on the 2010 census form, drew criticism from some black groups for being outdated and insensitive.

Lopez, a mechanical engineer who helps run a multiracial awareness group, said he believes the government should provide a wider range of choices on survey forms. "Right now there's a significant segment of the population who feel that the boxes do not adequately represent them," he said.

While the issue of racial identity can be deeply individual, it is also highly political: census data are used to enforce anti-discrimination laws, to distribute more than $400 billion in federal aid for roads, schools and health care, and to draw political districts based in part on a community's racial makeup. Over the past decade, the number of people identifying as "some other race" jumped by 3.7 million, or 24 percent. Experts say an increase in the write-in responses could signify limitations to the form and potentially skew government counts.

"It's a continual problem to measure such a personal concept using a check box," said Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in demography, identity and race. "The world is changing, and more people today feel free to identify themselves however they want - whether it's black-white, biracial, Scottish-Nigerian or American. It can create challenges whenever a set of people feel the boxes don't fit them."

In an interview, Census Bureau officials said they have been looking at ways to improve responses to the race question based on focus group discussions during the 2010 census. The research, some of which is scheduled to be released later this year, examines whether to include new write-in lines for whites and blacks who wish to specify ancestry or nationality; whether to drop use of the word "Negro" from the census form as antiquated; and whether to possibly treat Hispanics as a mutually exclusive group to the four main race categories.

"Part of our research efforts moving forward is to examine what is happening when you see more people writing in responses," said Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census Bureau's racial statistics branch.

Jonathan Brent, 28, an attorney in Charlottesville, Va., said he was able to select the race boxes he needed to indicate his multiracial identity - part white, and part Asian-American, with an individual check box available to indicate Japanese. But he said others do not always find the boxes to describe themselves.

On the census form, currently only the Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native race categories have separate boxes and write-in lines to specify ancestry; those write-in answers are broken down in official census results.

Other findings from the data:

-About 2.8 million people wrote in responses falling in the white category. The answers, used to describe themselves in whole or in part, included Italian (307,000); Iranian (289,000); Arab (241,000); Armenian (185,000); German (140,000); Irish (126,000); Caucasian (123,000); Middle East (114,000); and Polish (113,000).

-Roughly 1 million respondents were in the black category. They wrote the following terms to describe themselves in whole or in part: black (366,000); Haitian (222,000); African-American (137,000); Jamaican (104,000); West Indies (83,000); African (73,000); Ethiopian (46,000); Negro (36,000); Trinidad and Tobago (34,000); Nigerian (15,000); and Afro-American (7,000).

-Some 18 million were from Latinos who indicated a Hispanic origin both as an ethnicity and race; they checked "some other race" rather than a standard category of white or black. Their answers included Mexican (8.7 million); Hispanic (5.1 million); Latin American (2 million); Puerto Rican (865,000); Spanish (531,000); Salvadoran (332,000); and Dominican/Dominican Republic (295,000).

-Among multiracial Americans, commonly used terms were mixed (156,000); biracial (77,000); brown (62,000); multiracial (38,000); mulatto (34,000); Eurasian (11,000); Amerasian (9,000); multiethnic (4,700); and interracial (2,700).

The 21.7 million people who wrote in race responses is a baseline number. Not included are people who wrote in answers such as "American," "human being," or "person," which were excluded from the tally as race-neutral terms. A separate census tally of those terms has not yet been done. A 2010 sample survey by the Census Bureau estimated that roughly 20 million people in the U.S. indicated "American" when asked to identify part of their ancestry.

Roderick Harrison, a Howard University sociologist and former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau, predicted a wider range of responses and blurring of racial categories over the next 50 years as interracial marriage becomes increasingly common. Still, he said racial categories will continue to be relevant so long as racial gaps persist in educational attainment, income, jobs and housing.

"These histories of exclusion, discrimination, and racism are central to the identities of several minority populations," he said.

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Online:

http://www.census.gov

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MLK Breakfast 2023

Photos from The Skanner Foundation's 37th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast.