[Sca-cooks] odd

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>Really weird, my cousins are tall, blond and have blue eyes, they have all
>Italian passports, should they be classified as Latino since they speak
>Italian and Spanish?
>
>Ana

No. The term Latino has *nothing* to do with being a speaker of 
languages of Roman Latin origin such as Italian and Spanish; 
otherwise the French and Romanians would qualify, too, as well as 
speakers of Romansh).

Rather, your cousins qualify as Caucasian, although if they are 
originally from Mexico, Central or South America, they could choose 
the label Latino. If they are from Italy or Spain, they do not 
qualify.

Part of the issue of tracking ethnicity in the US is to see if there 
is obvious racism in housing, health issues, education, etc. (it is, 
of course, far more complicated than that).

-- 
Someone sometimes called Urtatim
who actually is not Caucasian, if the word were taken literally, but 
selects that designation on census forms as the most reasonable option