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Comment by teknopaul | Hacker News Reader

re:Black, Latino/Hispanic, White. Only in the US is speaking Spanish considered a race. I had to ask if I was Hispanic. I speak Spanish, live in Spain but I was told told its just the official racist term for Mexicans. N. B. there is no reason for them to even ask if you are or are not. And no, I could not chose to be Hispanic: its a term assigned to you. Some Spanish nationals are Hispanic some are not. Some Mexicans are not Hispanic. It does not matter where you were born or the colour of your skin. Its _official_ racism, they decide if you are or are not Hispanic and if they decide you are and you thought you were not, or vice versa, you can be banned from entry into the US forever for "lying" on the visa form.

That is institutional racism taken to the doublethink level.

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> Only in the US is speaking Spanish considered a race.

No, its not.

Hispanic is not a race, but an ethnic category independent of race.

And it doesn’t mean “speaking Spanish”, it means: “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.” [0]

> but I was told told its just the official racist term for Mexicans.

Told by whom? Obviously this is deeply false. It also contradicts your later claim that:

> Some Mexicans are not Hispanic.

So, I'm not clear what your story is, is it that it is just an "official racist" code for "Mexican" or is it …something else?

> Its _official_ racism, they decide if you are or are not Hispanic and if they decide you are and you thought you were not, or vice versa, you can be banned from entry into the US forever for “lying” on the visa form.

Neither the immigrant nor non-immigrant visa application form asks for ethnicity in general or Hispanic origin in particular. [1][2]

[0] See, e.g., the Census page on it, even though the policy is government-wide where race/ethnic data is collected, under OMB directive: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin/abo...

[1] nonimmigrant: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF-other/DS-160-...

[2] immigrant: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/DS-260-Exemplar.p...

Are you sure? Are the standards for who qualifies according to the law documented somewhere?

I always thought that you’re legally able to self-identify however you deem accurate on those government forms in the U.S?

Latino/Hispanic is not considered a race by the US government, it's an ethnic group. Latino covers all people of Latin descent including native Spaniards and Portuguese.

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