About This Case Study

If the Pew Census Timeline case study looks at racial categories from above — how the state builds them — this exercise looks at them from below: how the people sorted under a category experience it, what they do with it, and whether they accept the sort. The exercise pairs Mora's institutional history of Hispanic in Making Hispanics with the NPR Code Switch episode "Who You Calling 'Hispanic'?", in which people who are or are not Hispanic talk about what the label does to them and for them.

The exercise then asks you to apply Wendy Roth's six-dimensional framework of race to a specific person's encounter with the category. The aim is to show, concretely, how a single ethnoracial label can mean different things along different dimensions — and what the divergence reveals about the limits of treating race as a single thing.

Before You Begin

Pre-listening is required:

• NPR Code Switch, "Who You Calling 'Hispanic'?" (about 35 minutes)
• G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics — at least the introduction
• Wendy Roth, "The Multiple Dimensions of Race" — the sections defining the six dimensions

While listening to the podcast, keep these prompts in mind:

• Who claims Hispanic as their own? On what terms?
• Who refuses or qualifies the label? Why?
• Who has the label applied to them without their input?

If you take notes as you listen, mark a moment that surprises you and a moment that resonates with your own experience or with someone you know.

The Exercise

Phase 1: Roth's Six Dimensions, In Your Own Words (3 minutes)

Before starting the analytical work, briefly write out the six dimensions in your own language:

1. Racial identity — how a person understands themselves racially
2. Self-classification — how a person identifies on forms, surveys, and official documents
3. Observed race — how others see and classify the person
4. Reflected race — how a person believes others see them
5. Phenotype — visible physical features such as skin tone, hair, facial features
6. Racial ancestry — genealogical descent

Roth's argument is that these dimensions can diverge — a person's identity, self-classification, and observed race may not align — and that public and scholarly use of the word race often collapses them into one, obscuring the gap.

Phase 2: Mapping a Single Encounter (10–12 minutes)

Choose one figure to map onto Roth's six dimensions. Three options:

• Option A — A person from the podcast. Select someone whose encounter with the category Hispanic is described or interviewed in the NPR episode.
• Option B — A public figure. Select a publicly discussed person whose racial and ethnic identity has been subject to disagreement — for example, an actor, athlete, or politician whose claim to a category has been contested, or who has shifted how they self-identify over time.
• Option C — Yourself or someone you know well. Choose with care; you only need to share what you choose to share. If you take this option, you may keep your notes private.

For your chosen figure, work through each dimension and write a brief note on what it looks like for this person:

• Racial identity: how does this person understand themselves racially?
• Self-classification: how does this person identify on forms, surveys, and official documents?
• Observed race: how do others see and classify this person?
• Reflected race: how does this person believe others see them?
• Phenotype: what visible physical features are relevant?
• Racial ancestry: what is this person's genealogical descent?

You will not have full information on every dimension. That is part of the exercise — note where information is missing, ambiguous, or contested. The blanks are evidence too.

For groups: each member fills out their own list individually in this phase. Do not share yet.

Phase 3: Where the Dimensions Diverge (7–10 minutes)

Examine your notes. Where do the dimensions pull apart from one another?

Specifically:

• Where does racial identity differ from self-classification? (For instance, a person may identify as Afro-Latina but check Hispanic on a form because the form does not let her say both.)
• Where does observed race differ from racial identity? (For instance, a person may identify as white but be observed by others as a person of color, or vice versa.)
• Where does racial ancestry differ from how the person is classified by the state? (For instance, a person of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry may be sorted as Hispanic on the census, which is officially an ethnicity rather than a race.)

Choose one divergence to develop in writing or discussion. What is at stake in this divergence — politically, materially, emotionally? What does the divergence reveal that a single label cannot say?

For groups: members present their divergence in turn (one minute each), then discuss what patterns emerge. Are there dimensions where divergence is especially common? Are there dimensions where the group's figures tend to align?

Phase 4: Returning to Mora (5 minutes)

Mora argues that Hispanic was made — by activists, federal officials, and broadcasters working in partial alignment in the 1970s and 1980s. This case study brings that institutional account into contact with the lived experience of being sorted by the category.

Hold the two together and complete this thought:

The category Hispanic did its political work in the 1970s and 1980s because __________. The category continues to do work today because __________. Where the two diverge most sharply is __________.

The value of the sentence is in what you choose to include — and in what you find yourself unable to fit.

A Note on Modes

Solo mode. Work through the four phases in order. The mapping you produce in Phase 2 is the central artifact; keep it for reference when answering Question 1 (on Mora and the NPR podcast) and Question 3 (on Roth) in the unit's Questions for Reflection.

Group mode (3–6 people). Designate a timekeeper. Each member maps their own figure individually in Phase 2; the group discusses divergences together in Phase 3 and the synthesis sentence in Phase 4. If group time is short, Phase 4 can be assigned as individual writing after the session.

After the Case Study

• Return to Questions 1 and 3 in the unit's Questions for Reflection. The mapping you produced in Phase 2 supplies most of the material for both.
• To extend the exercise, Hye Jee Kim and Aliya Saperstein's article "'You're Supposed to Say White': Epistemic Ambiguity and Ethnoracial Classification" develops Roth's framework further, focusing specifically on how respondents resolve the divergences this case study has surfaced.