There is no such thing as “White Hispanic” – except in the census definitions

So Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for President, and now we’re back to the question of “what” Cruz is, in the racial/ethnic beancounting parlance.  Just as with George Zimmerman, the media are adopting the term “white Hispanic” and conservative bloggers are criticizing it.  (See this link from instapundit.com, though his source is a twitter comment without link.)

Now, yes, it’s true that according to the U.S. government, Ted Cruz is Hispanic, defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”  And at the same time, most Hispanics are defined as “white” due to the fact that, in order for their indigenous ancestry to define them as “Native American,” according to the government, they’d need to have “tribal affiliation or community attachment” (see my prior post on the subject) — a demand made of no other “racial” category.  (And a brief search turned up no guidance on what “community attachment” means — my best guess is that an individual in, say, Guatemala, who lives in a village of largely indigenous people, who speaks an indigenous language, and so on, would qualify, but it would seem that, upon immigrating to the U.S., they would “lose” that race and become, what, race-less?)

Instinctively we know that this is nonsense.  Instinctively Americans have redefined this in common usage, so that in practice, regardless of government definitions, “Hispanic” means “having predominantly indigenous South or Central American ancestry,” as identified by darker skin and “Hispanic”-looking facial features.  It was foolishness on the part of the census definers to decide that “Hispanic” means everyone who lives, or had previously lived, in a Spanish-speaking country (but not, apparently, per the definition above, Brazil, though I think they are meant to be included in “Latino”).   Of course someone from Spain isn’t Hispanic.  And someone from Argentina, whose ancestors migrated there from Germany?  Also not Hispanic.  We know better, intuitively, than to believe the census beancounters who say otherwise.

If we are going to have racial beancounting, then we ought to show a modicum of respect to those individuals with indigenous ancestry and give them a “real” race, rather than labeling them as white.  Because as it is, the “white Hispanic” label not only applies to George Zimmerman and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but just as much to nearly every other “Hispanic,” no matter how dark their skin, unless their ancestry is primarily African.

Yes, I know, the definitions of “race” are politicized.  But can they at least make some sense?