Most of the time in the US race means skin color. Which is somewhat ironic for a society so attached to Martin Luther King’s Jr. values.
Several South American countries have more European ancestry than does the US.
Hispanic/Latino (and not-Hispanic/Latino) are the only ethnicities in that context, and it exists specifically to enable categorization that reflects the social construction of Whiteness at the time it was created while not obviously breaking the (bogus, in any case) biological rationale for the construction of “racial” categories, which is why most categorizations of data using that ethnicity treat Hispanic/Latino as another bucket alongside the racial buckets, from which everything of either White or every race (usage differs) is transferred if Hispanic/Latino ethnicity is also indicated, leaving the effected race buckets with only the non-Hispanic/Latino elements.
> Don't they call you "white hispanic"?
Usually they ask me to check a box, and as a Brazilian I don't ever really check "hispanic" as I don't feel that is a term that applies to me.
I’m committed to anti racism but the US approach is charlatanism all the way down. The esteemed Dr King and Mr X would be rolling in their graves.
No, it doesn’t. In fact, most of the time in the US, “skin color” is code for race/ethnicity. Light-skinned Black people, White non-Hispanics, mostly-White Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians can have very similar or even identical literal skin colors; but the Black person is still Black, the Whites are still White (except maybe the Hispanic ones), and the rest are neither White nor Black.