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> Quite a lot of discrimination has happened against Hispanics, which are largely white. That's true in a fairly meaningless formal sense (which really reflects the history of the evolution of the excuses for why groups were discriminated against as "outsiders" more than substantive differences in the nature of the groups), but not really in substance. The official (e.g., Census) categories pose "race" and "ethnicity" as orthogonal categories, as a legacy of the outdated idea that the former are real biological groupings and the latter cultural (when, in fact, both are cultural constructs, which is even recognized in the way "race" affiliations are actually now defined -- by self-identification, not biology, except in the case of Native American/Alaskan Native, where, for political reasons, somewhat different standards are used.) OTOH, the ethnicity scale that is posed as orthogonal to the race scale has only two values "Hispanic" and "not Hispanic", and the way results are usually categorized from anything using the notionally two-axis race/category system is usually one combined axis by race for non-Hispanics, and then with Hispanics as its own category on that axis. In any discussions in any context not controlled by formal (usually, Census bureau) definitions, "Hispanic" is just treated as another category no different from "Black" or "Asian" distinct from White in a flat, one-dimensional space of categories, not an orthogonal distinction. |