There is no such thing as “White Hispanic” – except in the census definitions
*A couple of things. First, the idea of whether Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is Hispanic, Latino, or “Hispanic enough” is bound to come up in commentary, opinion or general reporting. That said, this piece uses Cruz as a starting point for a technical discussion about Census options. But it goes a little further. It acknowledges the indigenous contribution to the Latino whole. We’ve recently been having that conversation more in earnest – outside of academic and activist circles. Latinos can’t officially self-identify as indigenous unless they have a tribal affiliation. This is a good coversation that’ll hopefully lead to change. And the second of the couple of things is the fact that the author uses a pseudonym, she writes as Jane the Actuary. Click on her name to find out more about her. VL
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?)
Click HERE to read the full story.
[Photo by Being Latino]
