In a series of articles criticizing Texas government for switching its
statistical source for civil rights reporting in employment, the Texas
Civil Rights Review complained that the Bureau of Labor Statistics
provides poor numbers for civil rights purposes because of the way it
disperses Hispanic populations by race categories. For that
reason we complained that Texas government made a bad choice by taking
up BLS statistics instead of more relevant numbers generated by the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Well, we could have done a better job of citing the problem with BLS
statistics had we quoted the BLS itself. In a May 2002 report
on "The role of foreign-born workers in the U. S. economy", author
Abraham T. Mosisa explains why he will not adopt the usual BLS model in
his statistical analysis of Hispanic employment:
In this article, contrary to the customary BLS practice of counting
Hispanics (an ethnic group) as part of the race category to which they
belong, Hispanics are not included in the estimates for whites, blacks,
and Asians, but, instead, are shown separately. This was done
because currently Hispanics constitute a large proportion of the
foreign born, and they have distinctive characteristics, which will be
outlined further throughout this article. Hence, if they were included
in the estimates for the major race group, clear-cut comparisons of employment characteristics among the groups would be difficult to make.
Thank you Mr. Mosisa. In civil rights work, clear cut comparisons are crucial.–gm
Texas Civil Rights Review 