Can you become (or quit being) Hispanic (or another ancestry)?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I found the following

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-193039.html

that includes discussion about defining what it means to be “Hispanic”, but it doesn’t delve deep into choice.

Can a person choose whether or not they are Hispanic? If so, what is involved? E.g. if I dig into my ancestry and find that I have a great-great-great grandmother that a great-great-great grandfather brought back from Mexico as a war bride during the US-Mexican war, do I automatically get pigeonholed as Hispanic, or do I rationally get a choice? If I were to be classified non-Hispanic, then at what point in the ancestral chain (how many generations speaking English natively, or how small a fraction of ancestry) does “Hispanicity” terminate (e.g. “John’s father is Hispanic, but John is not because his father has the minimum recognized Hispanic blood quantum and his mother is Irish and Italian.”)?

This can include, but does not need to be limited to, legal classification of a person as Hispanic or non-Hispanic. I found the following definition from the US government “a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race”. Two what extent can a person with mixed ancestry choose which origin is their primary one? Would the government or a cultural association need to evaluate the person to determine my level of cultural attachment and make a formal adjudication of Hispanicity?

I seem to recall knowing someone (who identified as Hispanic and whose primary origin was directly from Spain to the US in the 20th century) was told by a governmental official of some type in the US that they were NOT Hispanic and if they check “Hispanic” on a government form again they could be charged with making a false statement, because the Government requires ancestry from Latin America to be considered Hispanic (or something similar).

Also, this question can be extended to identification as white, black, Asian, or really any racial or ethnic classification where identification as being inside or outside of the classification can have some effect, whether legal, cultural, social, or otherwise.

2

Well, you can’t choose your ancestors, but you can choose how much you identify by/with them and their culture. You can also, to a point, affect how much others around you do.

After all, most Americans don’t identify themselves as “German”, much less “German-American” unless the subject of ancestry comes up for some other reason - yet it’s the most common ancestry there.

The specific example you mention first, Hispanic, isn’t even about ancestry so it doesn’t quite work. You can be 100% Japanese or Chinese or German or Watusi and be Hispanic - it’s cultural, and it’s completely about self-identification.