“Identifies as Hispanic”

So the other day I was peeved enough about the consistency of newspaper reporting on the ethnic/racial characteristics of the victim and alleged perpetrator in the Zimmerman trial to gripe to Ann Althouse in an e-mail, thusly:

“Martin was black and Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic”

“This must be in the AP stylebook somewhere, because that sentence, or some variation therof, is found in every single article about the case:  Martin “is” black but Zimmerman only “identifies” as Hispanic.  Can you recall any other situation in which AP has played with racial identification vs. race as a fact in the news story?”

In the meantime, I’ve come to a different conclusion.  Hispanic, in the world of journalists, politicians, community organizers, etc., actually doesn’t mean “a person with family origins in a Spanish-speaking country” but means “a person who themselves or whose family immigrated from Mexico, or, maybe, through Mexico, from Central America.”  Hence, the official government definition admitting to immigration from other Latin American countries is a bit inconvenient.  Can we at least give up on calling an Argentinian with German ancestry a “Hispanic”? 

In any case, that explains why journalists are so reluctant to say that Zimmerman “IS” a Hispanic — his mother was from Peru, after all.