Why are Spanish and other included (Native Americans, Caucasian, white, population)

[Starlady01]

Why are Spanish and other races included on the White population on a census report?

Even with them Whites are the minority.

[Snort]

Spaniards are generally white.

[AmberroseMI]

Because on the census report, Caucasian = white. Even though the majority of Caucasians wouldn't be considered 'white'.

[bjh]

Spaniards are European and white. Hispanics are Native Americans from areas once controlled by Spain. The use of a language does not make someone the same race as those who originated the language. For another example, many Americans are not English, but speak the language.

The most recent census was stupidly designed, thus ignored these realities.

[Lucario]

Originally Posted by Starlady01

Why are Spanish and other races included on the White population on a census report?

Even with them Whites are the minority.

Spanish, as in people from Spain, are white.

[Lucario]

Originally Posted by bjh

Spaniards are European and white. Hispanics are Native Americans from areas once controlled by Spain. The use of a language does not make someone the same race as those who originated the language. For another example, many Americans are not English, but speak the language.

The most recent census was stupidly designed, thus ignored these realities.

Hispanics are people of any race from areas once controlled by Spain.

That includes Native American, African and Asian.

[bjh]

^
Words sometimes have more than one sense. In one sense, you're right, a Hispanic can be said to be a Spanish speaker of any race. As most people understand the word in the southwest US, a Hispanic is a person of Native American descent from an area of the Americas once controlled by Spain.

[linicx]

Funny. I think of Spaniards and Hispanic as two entirely different groups.

[Lucario]

Originally Posted by bjh

^
Words sometimes have more than one sense. In one sense, you're right, a Hispanic can be said to be a Spanish speaker of any race. As most people understand the word in the southwest US, a Hispanic is a person of Native American descent from an area of the Americas once controlled by Spain.

The Southwest US is, from a global perspective, a very small place.

[le roi]

As an American, I think of "Hispanic" as a very broad term to describe someone from Mexico, Central, or South America who is a modern-day racial mixture of:

a. Africans
b. Europeans from the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, Portugal, who as I understand it, are genetically linked to North Africa)
c. Native Americans (Aztecs, Mayans, etc.)

I suppose some people will argue that Brazilians are not "Hispanic" because they speak Portuguese. I see colonial Portuguese - Spanish - Italians as one ethnic group, in the same way that I see Welsh, Scottish, English, Irish, German, French (northern), and Dutch of that time period, as one ethnic group. The differences from a genetic perspective are not obvious to me.

Here in coastal North Carolina, a person who has never left would probably assume that the majority of hispanics were 5 feet tall, heavily Native American (they typically look Peruvian) and non-English speaking, for example. The first hispanics I ever met that looked truly "Spanish" were wealthy people from Mexico City, traveling in Europe.