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Well, for one the idea of "Hispanic" as a race is a misnomer.  There is no such thing.

If you ask an anthropoligist, there are only 3 races.  (In no particular order) Caucasian, Mongaloid, and Negroid are the only 3 races in the world.  Hispanic is an Ethnicity.
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Interesting.  One of my friends said that this form of classification is outdated.  And then of course you have the people who say there's only one race, the human race.  And then you can have the technical people, who say we are not to be grouped as "races" because we are a single species.  

I think this is a system that forces people to focus on what's different between them, and that seems counter-productive.

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For this reason, I only consider myself one race, "American".  I am an American first, last, and always.  I treasure the other parts of my background (American Indian, French, German, Irish, and Norse among others), but they have much less to do with who I am then where I was raised.

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Well said good sir :)

As for DizzleJ's question, I think society has less to do with race and more to do with how people are raised and their philosophies on life.

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I would bet that by the year 2050 there will be so much interracial mingling that everyone will look like Vin Deisel but without so many muscles...
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Hee hee hee ;D

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Darn why can't we have the muscles  :)
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Cuz I'd look pretty funny with biceps that big ;D

Quoting:
Well, for one the idea of "Hispanic" as a race is a misnomer.  There is no such thing.

If you ask an anthropoligist, there are only 3 races.  (In no particular order) Caucasian, Mongaloid, and Negroid are the only 3 races in the world.  Hispanic is an Ethnicity.

In fact, most Hispanics consider themselves "White".  I do not speak of this from ignorance, my ex-Wife is from Argentina.  Her ancestors are all from Spain and France.  When you look at my Heinz-57 background (including American Indian), she is significantly whiter then I am!

But if you talk to some people, this makes my son Hispanic.  It is this intermingling that causes this effect.  My ex and I both consider ourselves "white", but to some people, she is not white.

And my son, who has a "white" name, and looks "white" is technically "Hispanic" to these people.

For this reason, I only consider myself one race, "American".  I am an American first, last, and always.  I treasure the other parts of my background (American Indian, French, German, Irish, and Norse among others), but they have much less to do with who I am then where I was raised.

To me, this is what makes us so unique.  Our form of Nationalism is to the country we live in, not where we came from.  I have talked to people from all over the world, and some of them totally puzzle me.

I remember one conversation with a lady from Russia.  SHe made it clear she was not from Georgia, or Lithuania, or any other region of her country.  To me, that is like saying "I am from Kansas" or "I am from Alberta".

Also in the US, we tend to marry who we wish, without care as to where their ancestors are from.  We cross racial, national, and religious lines in our choices of life partners.  And I think this is one of our strenths.  Seperating yourself from others only makes you weaker.  It is in this melding that we cast off the restrictions of our past, and merge the best from all over.

So yes, I do believe that that statistic may be true.  But look at what it really means.  My son speaks very little Spanish.  I think I actually know more of the language then he does.  And he in no way considers himself "Hispanic", even though he is aware of his mom's heritage.

It is a sad day in my opinion when this becomes an issue.  Americans are Americans, where our ancestors came from does not matter one bit to me.  As I learned in the Marine Corps, we are all "Green".  In this case, I feel that we are all "Red, White, and Blue".

If anybody doubts this, look at the photos of New York after 11 September 2001.  I looked at them, and after the towers fell, everybody that I saw was the same colour, Grey.  On that day, nothing else mattered at all.  And the colour you were under the ash made no difference at all.

I only hope that someday, everybody will think that way.
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Your ex-wife is White.  I think some of the people that believe she is not "White" are confusing "White" to only mean Anglo peoples.  The term "Caucasian" doesn't even mean just light skinned people.  People from India are by definition Caucasian.

DizzleJ, I don't know if that will happen by 2050.  But anything is possible.  Back in the 80's and 90's they kept saying "Hispanics" would be the largest by minority in the USA by the year 2000, surpassing Blacks.  Sure enough by 2000 folks of Latino descent were the largest minority in America.

I suspect the only really noticeable changes would be in the entertainment industry.  The way the American goverment and basic American society is run is highly unlikely to change.  But I suspect there will be more dark skinned people in the movies, TV shows and magazines.  Not just Vin Diesel dark, but there would be more really dark skinned folks(more Blacks, darker Mexicans, Native Americans and East Indians) finally being able to penetrate Hollywood.  Vin Diesel would probably be seen as a lighter skinned person by then.  Changes in the entertainment industry is the only area of America I see being different if this scenario were to happen.  I'm pretty sure everything else would be, for the most part---the same.  

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Your ex-wife is White.  I think some of the people that believe she is not "White" are confusing "White" to only mean Anglo peoples.  The term "Caucasian" doesn't even mean just light skinned people.  People from India are by definition Caucasian.
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She thinks of herself as white.  I always thought of her as my wife.  But to people that think race matters, she is Hispanic.

Other people that are Hispanic are Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Estefan, and Martin Sheen.  If you look at a map, you will see that Argentina is in South America.

I think it is more a case of racial mingeling here in the US.  As I said before, we largely do not care here who we marry, or what their background is.  It is who THEY are that matters.

For example, look at Tiger Woods.  He is both Black and Asian.  I think what we are seeing is what we have always had here, mixing of peoples.  I am sure that people were just as concerned 100 years ago with the influx of Irish in to this country.  But looking back now, we largely do not care.  I feel that in 100 years, they will look back on us and see the same thing.

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Interesting.  One of my friends said that this form of classification is outdated.  And then of course you have the people who say there's only one race, the human race.  And then you can have the technical people, who say we are not to be grouped as "races" because we are a single species.  
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I look at this as a non-issue myself.  But to me, "race" is a subject of genetics.  The three main classifications are still used by many people, eventhough it is not "politically correct" anymore.  That is the system I was taught in an Anthropology class in the 1980's.  That same class today uses a confusing system with hundreds of "races".

When I speak of race, I speak of generalizations that can easily seperate people as to where their ancestors come from.  For Blacks, it is the skin coloration, the hair, and the scycle cell.  For Mongaloids, it is the emphatic eye folds, the skin coloration, and the general lack of facial hair (there are other things such as higher body density, but I will stick to the more obvious ones).

With this system, pre-Columbian American Indians are Mongaloid.  This is very obvious in the North-Western Indians, but became more diluted the further south they migrated.  Modern day "Mexicans" are a blending of both the Indian racial stock with the Spanish conquerors that invaded there.

Ethnicity is more about what region of the Earth your ancestors come from.  Egyptians are African by location, but they are not Negroid.  They are Caucasian, of Middle Eastern descent.  And people from Saudi Arabia are "Asian", but they are not Mongaloid.  They also are Caucasian.

In today's society, Political Correctness is making a mess of many things, race is one of them.  Myself, I am not PC, and hope I never am.  But I do have great consideration for the feelings of others.  But I will not say something is not true to make somebody else happy.

I am a member of the best race in existance, the Human Race.  I have both Caucasian and Mongaloid in my background.  And if you listen to some of the rumors, there is Negroid there as well.  It may show up in my DNA, but that does not define who *I* am.  Only I can do that.

Although I find it interesting that part of my Indian background is from Florida, which was a Spanish colony.  But I am not considered "Hispanic".  But somebody descended from an Indian at the same lattitude in Mexico is considered "Hispanic".  It just shows how little race really matters.

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I'd look pretty funny with biceps that big ;D
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OK then, you can look like Pamela Anderson instead


... wait, that's a *bad* thing, right?!

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She thinks of herself as white.  I always thought of her as my wife.  End Quote

I had to smile at this statement Mr 80s as it encapsulates the overall way people should view each other. When you see somebody, thinking about what race they are doesn't matter.

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^Ideally it would be great if it were that way.  But unfortunately we do not live in a color blind world.  People are very aware of each others skin color and race/ethnicity/religion.
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A shame really.

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I would bet that by the year 2050 there will be so much interracial mingling that everyone will look like Vin Deisel but without so many muscles...
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I agree with that. I think by 2050 the lines betwen what race a person is or ethnicity a person is will be pretty much blurred. Interracial marriages or marrying outside a particular ethnicity has become more and more common in the last 10 years and I think will become become more and more common in the next 10-20 years.

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Genetically, race dosen't exist.  It is not a biological category but a social construct.  That's why the Brazilians have upwards of 40 names to classify people's race.  In Brazil you could be a cafe con leche (coffee with milk) or a cafe negro (black coffee).  There  are historical reasons for these varying social definitions of race, usually having to do with power and, of coures, exploitation of labor.

I think that you "gringos" better learn to salsa though, and to speak Spanish. Adios  ;D
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"feliz navidad"
"tu tambien un cherrie".
'mi corazon es un fuerte".

I love spanish a lot.I used to have a lot of Spanish friends in the past.They really taught me a lot.(Mi amigos) ;D


Howard

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Genetically, race dosen't exist.  It is not a biological category but a social construct.  
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Actually, if you are willing to be "Politically Incorrect" like I am, it does exist.

As I said before, Mongaloid, Negroid, and Caucasian each has genetic signs.  They have things that are almost never produced in the other groups without genetic mixing.

And I am *NOT* a bigot!  But the major 3 races through evolution adapted to fit in better with their surroundings.  Nedroids adapted to a darker skin color and the sycle cell adapted to give them an immunity to Malaria.  Caucasians became shorter and stockier to adapt to a colder harsher climate in Europe, in addition to loosing most of the natural pigment of their skin.

Mongaloids adapted the emphatic eye folds, which were an advantage on the Mongolian plains.  They also became more short in stature but without the bulk that marked Europeans.  This is due to a much less harsh climate, where they had a chance to grow "civilized" much earlier.

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That's why the Brazilians have upwards of 40 names to classify people's race.  In Brazil you could be a cafe con leche (coffee with milk) or a cafe negro (black coffee).  There  are historical reasons for these varying social definitions of race, usually having to do with power and, of coures, exploitation of labor.

I think that you "gringos" better learn to salsa though, and to speak Spanish. Adios  ;D
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Well, this confuses me.  I seem to remember Brazil does not speak Spanish, but Portugese.  And Brazil has more people then the rest of SA combined.  So maybe I should learn Portugese.

Of course, I lost your logic there when you switched from people to coffee.  Unless you were useing slang terms for people in Brazil.  You were not clear about that.

Then again, people often tend to do that to THEMSELVES.  Here in the US, you have "Redbones", a term I had to have explained to me.  That is a term I never heard from whites, but commonly heard from blacks.  So where is the class exploitation here?  Or are they exploiting themselves?

When I moved to Alabama, I was the old white guy that was the DJ at an all-black club.  And trust me, after a day or so, nobody cared that I was white.  I have also worked for major Aerospace companies in Los Angeles, and nobody cared that my partner was black.

I think some people will always care about race.  To me, it is a non-issue.  Some people will think somebody is inferior because of their race.  THen again, some people will feel exploited because of their race, even when it is not true.

As far as Brazil, that is Brazil.  If they exploit there because of race, I can do nothing about that.  THat is their loss.

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Of course, I lost your logic there when you switched from people to coffee.  Unless you were useing slang terms for people in Brazil.  You were not clear about that.


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I think what he means by the term of "coffee" is people who have a brown color to their skin.

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Actually, if you are willing to be "Politically Incorrect" like I am, it does exist.

As I said before, Mongaloid, Negroid, and Caucasian each has genetic signs.  They have things that are almost never produced in the other groups without genetic mixing.

And I am *NOT* a bigot!  But the major 3 races through evolution adapted to fit in better with their surroundings.  Nedroids adapted to a darker skin color and the sycle cell adapted to give them an immunity to Malaria.  Caucasians became shorter and stockier to adapt to a colder harsher climate in Europe, in addition to loosing most of the natural pigment of their skin.

Mongaloids adapted the emphatic eye folds, which were an advantage on the Mongolian plains.  They also became more short in stature but without the bulk that marked Europeans.  This is due to a much less harsh climate, where they had a chance to grow "civilized" much earlier.
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Not all Caucasians are of light skin. Some Caucasians, like East Indians, developed a dark skin to protect themselves from the high UV radiation.  India is very close to the equator.  Many East Indians are even darker then "Black people"