General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSince WHEN have Hispanic people not been considered a race?
The census that I had to fill out stated that Hispanics are not considered a race. WTF??
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)"Hispanic" means "Spanish-speaking" and encompasses people of European, African, Native American, and mestizo ancestry.
Doreen
(11,686 posts)itcfish
(1,828 posts)like people in the United States except they speak Spanish. I never understood why they classify Hispanic as a race.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Doreen
(11,686 posts)ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)This is why I could never work for the census bureau.
JI7
(89,172 posts)Doreen
(11,686 posts)NutmegYankee
(16,177 posts)Which is part of Europe and the peoples there are considered European. The Spanish/Portuguese were more accepting of mixed races and were more tolerant to other races, and these other groups blended into their colonial society easily compared to USA history. We use Hispanic as a sub-ethnicity to distinguish people originating from the Spanish speaking world, as it often serves as a proxy for Latin American.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)that on a lot of survey sites I do, they ask your race first (color-based) then on the next page, they ask if you are Hispanic or not. I've seen people from Cuba, either very dark or very white, and they're all Hispanics.
CottonBear
(21,596 posts)Hispanic is a cuntural identity term based on language and ethnicity.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)among Hispanics. They generally do not self-identify along what we would consider racial lines, so the default is "white".
Personally, I think that's a healthier way to look at things. "Race" is merely a set of genes we have no control over. Much more important is culture and heritage.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Hispanics. However, many of them are of European descent that is not Hispanic, such as German, Italian, Russian, British, Poles, etc. However, when they are here they are still classified as Hispanic because they are from Spanish/Portuguese speaking nations, even though ethnically they might not have a drop of Hispanic blood in them.
It doesn't refer to a race, but I think to a linguistic group, just as Scandinavians are part of the same linguistic group, but might differ greatly culturally.
safeinOhio
(32,525 posts)Racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/
Igel
(35,191 posts)It's something you have to ascertain apart from visual examination. It makes a lot of ethnicity-related crime discussions difficult.
Once had Latino students in my class object when a girl called herself Latino. The vast majority of Latino students were Mexican, a large minority were Central American. She was from Argentina, blonde and blue-eyed, paler than this Irish-American.
They'd concluded that somehow "Latino" was the "race" that was the hybrid of indio and European, because that was their limited experience. Just as an Iranian I knew, they were surprised when I said they were "white" as far as the federal government is concerned, and the only people who'd have claimed they were non-white when I was a kid were inveterate racists--the kind who, a hundred years before, would have said that Italians and Irish weren't white.
Problem is, if they're "white" then a lot of political ideology has some problems. But there are already difficulties. One thing that being the dominant race/ethnicity grants you is the privilege of having everybody else defined by reference to your group. Note that I'm a non-Hispanic white for many purposes.