A statistext is a demography category that is artificially contrived in pursuit of a political or ideological goal, particularly when categories are created that respondents would not otherwise apply to themselves.[ This 1993 publication is based on a conference held in 1992.] The term was created by Audrey Kobayashi, a Canadian geographer, in 1992.
Examples of use
An example of statistexts is the categorization in
Canada of “non-Europeans” as "
Visible minority", including those from
Western Asia,
South Asia, and
Latin America.
Another example of a statistext is the category "Canadian" as an ethnic choice on Canadian census forms.
The geographer
Harald Bauder has speculated that as an ethnic identity, respondents might choose this to voice patriotism, or to rebel against ethnic classification, or to voice an anti-separatist opinion, and furthermore, that the term has very different connotations in English versus French.
These terms do not match the nomenclature such individuals would ordinarily apply to themselves, although sometimes statistexts gain acceptance among the people to whom the term is applied.
In the United States, examples would be Hispanic and Latino Americans, Pacific Islander American and Asian American. The word "Indian", allegedly created by Christopher Columbus for the Indigenous people of the Americas may be considered as another example of a statistext.
See also
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Discrimination in Europe
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Employment equity (Canada)
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Ethnonym
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Hispanic-Latino naming dispute
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Orientalism
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Racial policy of Nazi Germany
