Some Political Questions for you “Not of Hispanic Origin” ethnic types

According to one branch of the U.S. government, there are FIVE (5) “racial” groups:

• “American Indian” OR “Alaskan Native” (either one, doesn’t matter. Unclear whether Aztecs, Mayans, or Incans get to check this one.)
• “Black” OR “African-American” (“black” being the skin color, “African” being the location, meaning that Mozambicans like Teresa Heinz-Kerry might qualify to check this box.)
• “White”. You know who you are.
• “Asian”. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Siberia, China, Tibet, Laos, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bhutan, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, or Israel: it’s all one “racial” group.
• “Native Hawaiian” OR “Other Pacific Islander”. I guess…Guamanians? Samonas? Maybe Maori, too? (But not White New Zealanders, b/c they’re White. But can they check both?) Filipinos… Japanese, maybe? But aren’t they “Asian”? So hard to tell…

Anyway, those are the racial groups, according to Uncle. But there’s only ONE ethnic group:

Hispanic. Yep, people from Vladivostok to the Suez Canal are one “race”, but Hispanics are an ethnic group, so they can be of any race. #Diversity.

Anyway, Hispanics tend to be lumped together in modern American political dialogue because Americans (and our British colonial forbears) have always thought anything remotely “Spanish” was pretty much all the same, even when it isn’t necessarily so. (Question: When you watched the film version of Starship Troopers — and admit it, you did when you were a kid, just because of the shower scene — did the thought occur to you: “Hey, how come all of those people in Buenos Aires look like they’re Italian or something. They don’t look like Hispanics!” If so, you fell into that trap, too.)

A lot of people are spilling some ink about the Hispanic vote this year, again, thinking it’s one monolithic group. Here are four questions for you to ponder the next time you see a political pundit talking or writing about “the Hispanic vote”:

• Do you think that immigrants from Mexico have the same experience in this country as immigrants from El Salvador, Panama, or Guatemala?
• Are people from Brazil “Hispanic”? What about Portugal?
• Do you think that people from Latin America, generally, have a similar experience as immigrants to the USA as, say, immigrants from Cuba?
• Do you think that most of the people who immigrated from, say, Mexico (legally *or* illegally) and their children or grandchildren in this country actually like Mexico, and think of themselves as “Mexicans” regardless of their citizenship, and would like the United States to be more like Mexico?