There’s been a lot of research lately on this under the auspices of the Human Genome Diversity Project. The results so far indicate that often, there are more genetic difference among people of a certain “race” than between persons of different “races.”
That means a white person sometimes might have more in common genetically with an Asian or African person than with his white nextdoor neighbor.
With regard to the original topic, “Hispanic” is a social designation, not a biological one. (Perhaps the same could be said of all human racial designations?) Different people mean different things when they use the term “Hispanic.” My understanding is that when it comes to U.S. government forms, people who consider themselves “Hispanic” may check that box. Unless I’m mistaken, a person whose family originates from Spain would have the freedom to choose which box to check.
At least insofar as many Puerto Ricans like myself are concerned, and this is also the case with other “latinos”, we tend to feel were not “Hispanics”, we’re Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, Tejanos, etc. It’s not one big Hispania out there, there’s two dozen nations . . . “Hispanic” is essentially an artifact of US PC-speak. The preferred term in the community is Latino, or even better [original nationality]-American.
However, in the sense the CENSUS uses the word, it refers to the “Hispanic American” as someone dwelling in the US, who is descended from Spanish/Portuguese-speaking dwellers of the Americas and stands out as distinct from the dominant “Anglo” group because of his/her heritage.
Of course it’s all arbitrary. I could bet the US Political reasoning behind excluding those from Spain & Portugal from the definition is a vision that since they are “European”, there is no need to account for them as an actually or potentially disadvantaged minority. If this were the reasoning, then a lot of people from Argentina and Chile would have also to be excluded.
Just the point, originally. I would be a Spaniard-American. Or more correctly Catalan or Balear-American, depending how much precision you want. I prefer the latter, but virtually no one would understand it. But my original post was based on an instance of workplace “documentation”. I don’t much worry about myself professionally other than on merit, and in taking pride in my heritage - but:
I was challenged on that, and told that “Hispanic” referred to New World latinos, not old, and that I was a Caucasian. The actual comment, as I recall, was something like “hey, George, you’re not some lettuce-picker; maybe kinda dark, but you’re Caucasian just like me”.
“Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
The main reason being that South/Central America or if you prefer, Latin America, has pretty much the same lineage as North America. In other words, they too were originally many different groups of Native Americans that were invaded and subsequently dominated by Europeans. It just so happens that Spain ended up with more influence in the south and England ended up with more influence in the north. Of course, there were other players such as Portugal and France, etc. but for all intents and purposes these were the two major colonial powers in the Americas. Hence, most of North America speaks english and most of South/Central America speaks spanish. This is where the relatively clear lines begin to hopelessly blur.
In the U.S. we arbitrarily call pretty much anyone from South/Central America ‘hispanic’, ‘latin’, or ‘spanish’ regardless of their true lineage. They could be of mostly Native American descent or mostly European descent and they still get lumped into the same categories.
We do not take our own medicine though, because when was the last time you heard someone describe a Native North American (in other not so accurate words an ‘American Indian’) as a Caucasian or Anglo or whatever other term used to describe the Native Americans’ colonial rulers. This is exactly what happens with the terms ‘Spanish’, ‘Latin’, and ‘Hispanic.’
The sad fact is that the vast majority of the migrant workers in the U.S. which are predominantly referred to as Hispanics/Spanish/Latin ARE actually overwhelmingly Native Americans who happen to be from South/Central America. So when people incorrectly say that these people are Hispanic and people of European origin are not, they aren’t only very wrong but they are in effect denying the Native Americans of their true heritage.
NOTE: The capitalization, or the lack thereof, of certain words in the previous post was not intended and was only the result of constant references to regions, countries, continents, ethnicities, and languages. Please don’t ascribe to much significance to my poor grammar.