Hispanics

Government Definition

Hispanic is a panethnic minority group identifier and category; the term is derived primarily from Spain, whereas the group includes the intermixing of African, Indigenous, Asian, and other European peoples. In general, a person of Latin American descent whose country of origin was a former colony of Spain is identified as Hispanic by the U.S. government. The federal government traditionally uses the term as an ethnic category rather than a racial category for statistical purposes because members of this group may come from any racial background. Sociologist Alejandro Portes noted that the term reflects a denationalized identification with racial/ethnic minorities in the

United States and self-conscious differences in relation to the White Anglo population.

The term Hispanic has been employed by the U.S. government at least since the 1920s. Sociologist Clara Rodriguez found that between 1940 and 1970, the classification of Hispanic has fluctuated in the U.S. Census because of racial classifications and, more important, because of cultural criteria such as language (1940), surname (1950 and 1960), and origin (1970). During the 1970s, the U.S. Census institutionalized it as a category for all populations from any Spanish-speaking country of the Caribbean, Central or South America, or Spain, and a common category became standardized and widespread on a national basis.

The 1980s appeared to be the defining decade for U.S. Census and its use of the term Hispanic. For the 1980 census, people were finally able to identify themselves either as of Spanish-speaking origin or descent or as one of the specific Latin American nationalities. With these new categorical options, the number of people who categorized themselves as Hispanic increased by more than 50%. During the 1990s, the term came to represent the highlighted commonalities of a panethnic consciousness. The arbitrary nature of the label, however, started to become problematic for census use. In particular, many persons of Latin American or Spanish origin continued to select “some other race” to best describe themselves. Nationality was the defining category for many people of Latin American or Spanish descent, where more people chose to identify specifically as El Salvadoran or Dominican, for example, rather than merely as Hispanic.

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