On a “why Romney lost” thread on another board a poster made the claim that “Half of all Americans under the age of 10 are Hispanic.”
Is this true? Has interesting implications for elections from 2020 onwards.
False.
It’s true that over half of newborn babies (not children under 10) are non-white, but this counts all non-white races, not just hispanics.
Wait. We have kids under 10 voting? I don’t think we need voter ID laws. Just get the poll officials some glasses.
Which half?
I could see this being true for some states like California or Texas, both of which are 38% Hispanic in census records. But that does not translate to the whole country.
I dunno. Been to NYC lately? I live in what I assumed beforehand would be the palest of pale northern Connecticut… and Hispanics, mostly PR but no small number of Mex/CA/SA either, are quite common here.
As are Africans, some spillover from the large communities that settled in - wait for it - Maine! There’s a guy at the local Home Depot with a very musical West African accent, always gives me a kick to talk to him.
So don’t make too many assumptions about the Angloness of the non-southwest states…
I’m not saying that Midwest/Northeast states do not have Hispanic people, but they are not close to the numbers in southwest states. I lived in a mostly Latino area of Chicago and worked at a restaurant with mostly Mexican employees, but the rural areas do not have that level of saturation. Here’s some census data:
Illinois has 16.2% Hispanic population
New York State has 18%
Connecticut has 13.8%
Those are not even close to Southwestern states. Unless the Hispanic people are extraordinarily fertile, they wouldn’t account for half of all children under 10.
(I understand that the numbers may be low because immigrants are hesitant to report their information, but whatever)
How Hispanic do you have to be to be classified as Hispanic?
My four month old granddaughter is at least 25% Hispanic in that her maternal grandfather is Hispanic.
Of course, she’s also at least 12% Italian in that my wife is half Italian. And she’s at least 15% German in that my wife is half German and I’m at least 25% German. And she’s got a bit of Native American in her (Seneca and Choctaw) if my parents’ claims about the rest of my motley ancestry were true.
The rest is probably mostly English.
Man, I don’t relish the census taker’s job when she grows up.
Um… I may be whooshed here, but if kids are 10 now they will be 18 in 2020 and will start voting?
It’s not genetic but cultural and it’s completely self-identificative. IOW, if you say you’re Hispanic, then you’re Hispanic. If Obama suddenly declared himself Hispanic we’d be looking at him funny due to the unexpectedness of it, but I’ve met many a Hispanic whose Spanish wasn’t any better than his and we do come in all colors.
Now that you mention it, I had a friend in college who was from Southern California, had a quintessentially hispanic name, and appearance-wise was very obviously hispanic.
He couldn’t speak a word of Spanish. I probably know more Spanish than he does.
The Bestest Boyfriend’s parents were from Costa Rica, his lastname from SE Spain; he was made in Costa Rica, born in Miami, and the few times he used any Spanish he butchered it six ways to Hell. “It’s buenos días, not buenas díaz, unless you’re talking about Cameron…” Any racial classification other than “white Hispanic” would have been misleading, Spanish-speaking or not, yet he fell squarely into the “not”.
The left half.
But don’t quote me on that. I could be wrong.