Should “Hispanic” be a race?

Or, more precisely, should the US Census Bureau’s racial categories include as a “race” the characteristic of having ancestors predominantly indigenous Central or South American?  Or take the existing definition of “American Indian”, which reads, “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment,” remove the requirement for “tribal affiliation or community attachment,” and rename it “Indigenous American”?  (Numbers of “true American Indians” could still be determined by looking at tribal rolls.)

Because right now, there is no census definition that properly covers individuals of Mexican or Latin American origin.  (I wrote about this a while back.)  Sure, they can choose “white” if their ancestry is primarily “any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa” — that is, if their ancestors were primarily Spanish colonists rather than indigenous people.  And a small number, say from places like Cuba or the Dominican Republic, can call themselves “black” if their ancestors were primarily slaves brought to the Americas from Africa.

But the large majority of those who immigrate to the U.S. are primarily of indignenous ancestry, given that the class divide in Mexico and Central America has meant that it is the wealthy who are primarily of Spanish background and light-skinned (“people of pallor”), and the poor who are primarily indigenous and dark-skinned (“people of color”).

Compare this man

to the typical “Hispanic” mowing your neighbor’s lawn, for instance.

It is this lack of an appropriate Census category that leads a significant portion of the “Hispanic” population to classify themselves as “some other race,” entirely rejecting the Census categories.

What’s more, the Census Bureau itself acknowledges that

The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.

And in the “social definition” of race, the distinctive “race” of someone with ancestry from Latin America is defined by having the darker skin and distinctive appearance of indigenous ancestry.

Of course, after we do this, we can discuss the question of whether it makes sense for the census bureau to have likewise grouped all cultures of Spanish origin into the single “ethnicity” of “Hispanic.”

Why am I thinking about this?  My mind wandered, I guess, with all the reports about Trump’s comments on the Mexican ancestry of the Trump University case judge, even though it’s not strictly related.

Images:  #1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUS_Army_51842_U.S._Army_South_celebrates_Hispanic_Heritage_Month.jpg; By Army Sgt. Nina Ramon 345th Public Affairs Detachment (United States Army) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; #2:   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APresidente_Enrique_Pe%C3%B1a_Nieto._Fotograf%C3%ADa_oficial.jpg; By PresidenciaMX 2012-2018 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons