Why do Hispanics/Mexican Americans/Latinos have to be classified as Caucasian/white on government forms we fill out when other races/ethnicities have their own categories?
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It’s complicated , but it is changing….Latino will be a “ethnicity” choice in govt forms moving forward (I think enacted in 2025)
Many people from Mexico and Latin American consider themselves Caucasian due to their history of colonialism; for example 50% of Mexicans have European ancestors
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2021/11/04/measuring-the-racial-identity-of-latinos/
Maybe poor or subhuman category fits better for you?
They do not. Some are white, some are not, and forms leave that as an option. Some are descended from white Europeans (often darker-but-still-considered-white Spaniards), some are descended from African people, some are descended from indigenous people.
It would be like if American was a racial category. Americans come in all races.
So yeah… it is stupid on one hand, on the other hand Latin people are treated racially distinct in American society so it can be a useful category for understanding racialized inequalities and other effects.
The “white/black/other” racial system isn’t the same as ethnicity. Latin American countries also had a racial caste system privileging Europeans (and later, people of European descent) above indigenous populations and imported African slave populations. Today, those racial categories are still strong, but they are also all Latin American, which is a *different* bucket that the US government puts a ton of different ethnic groups into.
Hispanic/latino is not a race. You can be white/black/mixed/asian and Hispanic. For the census I put Hispanic as ethnicity and white as race.
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