Well, first of all the census form, which SuperAbe was so nice to link to, has one catch-all option called “Some Other Race”, where you can enter whatever you want, if what you want to call yourself isn’t listed.
Second, if you consider yourself Amerindian, there’s a space to indicate your specific tribe, if you want.
Third, if you’re Asian, there are a whole bunch of more specific checkboxes to choose from, everything from Chinese to Samoan. And of course, if you’re “other Asian”, there’s a space to fill in whatever you want.
And you can check multiple boxes if that fits.
So it’s really more flexible that people who haven’t looked at the question seem to think.
Because, with White people becoming a minority in a few decades, we will need to eventually annex other ethnic groups. Sort of the way we did with Jews, Italians and Irish!
If what we are saying is that Hispanic/Latino is a ethnicity and not a race because you can have a background that includes white European, Mayan, African, or Asian, I fail to see how Latinos are visually identifiable.
I think that Hispanic ethnicity is of interest for two reasons. First, it’s 18% of the US population, which is a substantial number. Second, I would say it’s by far the largest ethnic group that has a culture that is still outside the mainstream culture. A large portion of that 18% is bilingual, for instance.
They may not be visually identifiable, but they can be identified as “other, non-white” (or not the type of white my granny is) audiably. So they can still be somewhat easily discriminated unless they remain silent (and less face it, that is hard for us ).
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