Venezuela’s population data reveal a large black and mixed majority

Evidence

Insofar as numbers can be determined at all in the absence both of formal definitions and of reliable census-taking, mestizos make up 19 percent of Venezuela’s population, mulattos – the mix of black and white – 38 percent, blacks 9 percent, whites 30 percent, and indigenous just 1 percent. At the time of slavery’s abolition in March 1854, African-descended people numbered approximately 400,000, roughly 40 percent of the population, 25,000 of whom at the time were slaves. Today, relatedly, race largely maps onto socio-economic class. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1173

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that mestizo was self-identified far more broadly than the census numbers suggest connects directly to the preceding paragraph’s ideology analysis.