More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White

New York Times ^ | May 21, 2014 | Nate Cohn

[Olog-hai]

Hispanics are often described as driving up the nonwhite share of the population. But a new study of census forms finds that more Hispanics are identifying as white.

An estimated net 1.2 million Americans of the 35 million Americans identified in 2000 as of “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin,” as the census form puts it, changed their race from “some other race” to “white” between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, according to research presented at an annual meeting of the Population Association of America and reported by Pew Research.

The researchers, who have not yet published their findings, compared individual census forms from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. They found that millions of Americans answered the census questions about race and ethnicity differently in 2000 and 2010. The largest shifts were among Americans of Hispanic origin, who are the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group by total numbers. …

[Roman_War_Criminal]

If you’re of Spanish decent, then yes that’s an “ethnic group” if you play that game.

You’re totally correct in saying that just because an entire group speaks the same language and shares the same culture, doesn’t mean they share the same ethnicity.

There are a lot of people descended from Spaniards living in Latin America. In the mid 1800’s, Mexico was over 70% “white”—we call them “creole”, meaning Spanish ancestry born in Mexico. But there are a lot of German, Italian, French, even Slavic ancestry of white people in Latin America.

Hell....Anthony Quinn was half-Irish, yet Mexican!

[Texan5]

Common sense would seem to call an ethnic group those with most of their ancestors originally in a country where a certain language was spoken-in this case, Spain and the Spanish language-and they dispersed and interbred from there.

Most people think of Hispanic as being those of Spanish ancestry in the New World-the Spanish part is what makes it an ethnic group. If you want, you can split them into sub-groups by location-but why? The Spanish we speak here is a different dialect from what is spoken in Mexico City-but so is the dialect spoken in Michoacán or Brazil-but it is still Spanish-the language originally by that ethnic group in Spain.

All three races are involved-I am to all appearances Caucasian, like most Hispanics in the Americas-but in the Caribbean and some parts of central and south America, some Hispanics are Black, and in the Philipines, they are Asian-the Spaniards spread their genes far and wide outside of Europe.

[lormand]

Here in the Austin area, about 90% of the “will work for food” street corner urchins are white. How is that ‘white privilege’ working out for them? Listening to the nutballs pushing this crap, one would think that they would be CEOs instead of beggars.

[Olog-hai]

It's only common sense if one uses the liberal definition of "ethnicity". The Greek word εθνος (ethnos) refers to descent.

[Gumdrop]

My nephew married a woman from Peru. She calls herself a “Latina’. However, I am certain she would ID herself as white on a census - since she is every bit as white as other Americans who are descended from Europeans.

[Texan5]

“Mestizo”

Thank you for pointing that out-I defy anyone to find a racially pure person, Caucasian, Black or Asian when more and more evidence shoes that humans were exploring by boat pretty much to and from everywhere-America, Australia, etc several 10’s of 1000’s of years ago-if those three races were ever “pure” they certainly haven’t been in at least 15,000 years or so...

If I were designing those stupid, racist forms, I’d have exactly two boxes to check-”human” and “other”...

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Plenty of White Hispanics—they came from Spain after all—in Europe. Many are intermarring with other races—all this means is that our race obcessed modern society needs to grow up before this race focus leads to riots and violence. The knock out game —black hate of whites etc... all foolishness. Soon Americans will be forced to work together or there will be no America.

[Texan5]

There is no common sense in government-if there were it would be 1/10 the size that it is. My family came from Spain to the new world-I’m Caucasian in appearance, and by descent, mostly Hispanic/Spanish, but who knows what else after 400-500 years in the new world-only the last 250 are well documented-and not perfectly, at that. Anything earlier is just bits of paper and oral history-I’m guessing the history of any old family is similar, no matter race or descent-so why allow government or anyone else to use it to divide people?

My dad and husband were career military, I grew up color blind and I remain so.

Those forms are just used to fill racial quotas, and are in themselves racist and divisive-like I said below-make it two boxes-”Human” and “Other”...

[Texan5]

Not “shoes”-”shows”-’scuse me...

[Kenny Bunk]

"Hispanic," as my Spanish S-i-L, complete with surname a la española discovered, is a weird government term.

He was selected for a supervisory post at his work, at which he is quite good. The promotion was rescinded because when a group from his HR department saw that he indeed is a "white man," they felt it would hurt their EEOC numbers! Can't have no white man here!

For EEOC purposes I have come to find out that "Hispanic" usually means some one whose skin tone at least approximates the color of a brown paper shopping bag. But wait, there are more EEOC guidelines, among them:

A Puerto Rican, or a Mexican is always an Hispanic, whether white, black, or an Amerindian. A Cuban might, or might not be an Hispanic, unless suitably complected. A Spaniard? An Argentine? A Chilean? An Uruguayan? Probably NOT Hispanic. Bolivian, Peruvian? Hispanic.

IOW, joo look like a gringo, we is gonna treat joo like a gringo!

[EDINVA]

Or *maybe* after 10 years, those who changed the designation have become more assimilated.

[octex]

So what is a race? Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid?
******************************************
Yes! Learned that decades ago in my Anthropology courses. ...I circle all those other terms on the census form and say they are not races, but are colors or ethnicities.

[rhoda_penmark]

Anthropologically, pretty much those are the big three. Anything else is just an ethnicity.

[MrB]

” identify myself as a black woman”

And dare them to prove otherwise, and claim discrimination and racism if they try.

[MrB]

Origin of Species discusses that, as well as the relative “advanced status” of each.

[Aurorales]

On my fathers side: Scottish and German
On my mothers side: Spanish and Mexican

I have never known what to put. Mostly I put down white because that is what I have always identified with.

What the heck are you supposed to put down if you are a mix?

This problem is why we shouldn’t be asking this question.

I am an American. That should be good enough.

[cll]

"Many Hispanics claim to be descendants of the Canary Islanders. I’m not sure why."

If I may answer this question, my grandfather came from Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Canary Islands is a region (sort of like a U.S. state) of Spain. Before the advent of the airplane, the Canary Islands was a way station for shipping between the Americas and mainland Spain. Many Spanish people transited through the Canary Islands on their migration to the New World. Some waited there for years for their passage, and many thousands of children were born there while their parents waited to cross. That's how my grandfather was born. His parents were from Jaén in Andalucía and they were waiting for their passage to Puerto Rico in Tenerife.

In the late 1800s, Spain granted citizenship and land in the Americas to many non-Spanish Europeans in exchange for their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church. This, added to a famine that was brewing in the Canary Islands, fueled a mass migration of Europeans and Canary Islanders to the Americas, especially to Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela and the United States.

Most Puerto Ricans today are direct descendants of these late 1800s European emigrants.

Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.

[Dalberg-Acton]

Muslim seems to be a “race” according to CAIR.

[octex]

-if those three races were ever “pure” they certainly haven’t been in at least 15,000 years or so...
***************************
The three main races were essentially defined by the big differences in their skeletal structures and physical characteristics. Skulls and facial features, for example.

btw, Texan5, that was a good posting.

[PJ-Comix]

Actually if you are Hispanic you are white. Hispanics are from the Iberian Peninsula which is part of Europe. Latins? If the ORIGINAL Latins (Romans) are white then all real Latins are white (Italians, French, Romanians, Spaniards, etc.). BTW, I never figured out why South Americans are considered Latin but not Italians.