and the "Hispanic" folks I spent the evening with would agree with me.
They'd just say that they're Americans.
Proof read your mostly solid work, and have an extra long look at personal ethnocentric leanings.
screwed up would not be to strong a grade for the one above.
Cross,
What? After all my posts here you are seriously suggesting I'm saying the people on my street ain't Americans?
Every day at work I gotta deal with the "ethnicity" boxes of "White" and "White Not-Hispanic", these in a separate pair of boxes above the usual "race" boxes of "White" "Black" "Asian/Pacific Islander" "American Indian" and "Other". Some places have "Hispanic" marked under "Race", most do not.
Most every Hispanic family around here swears up and down they had a Spanish grandfather/great grandfather, and are proud of it. In fact schools around here gotta go back and check WHAT their kids checked on the boxes for purposes of accurate reporting. Yet drop many of these exact same people on an Indian reservation and you'd be hard-pressed to tell 'em apart from the locals.
Ya, so for all practical and legal purposes, Hispanics fall into an ethnic and racial gray area, and most of that comes from them.
The Republic of Texas as founded was all about race, as a determinant of eligibility for citizenship among other things, and if it was eventually decided, after considerable debate, that Hispanics could vote and be citizens, it was decreed that when they served, it was to be in segregated units.
In 1836 former Spanish and Mexican diplomat Lorenzo De Zavala was chosen as Interim Vice President of the Republic of Texas at the '36 Convention by the rest of that crew. He had married a definitely White society woman, the well-to-do Emily West of New York City. (NOT to be confused with the OTHER Emily West/Morgan probably in Santa Anna's tent at San Jacinto). Whatever fine line it was, De Zavala was on the "White" side of it, and seems to have fit in seamlessly amid the Planter class, at least right up until his untimely demise.
Juan Seguin bled for Texas, and he was the same guy who thought to come back months later and reverentially gather what was left of the charred bones of the Alamo defenders to give them a Christian burial. However, whatever the line was he apparently fell on the wrong side of it and had a rough time, starting when we evacuated his family to Nacodoches where they were identified as "Mexicans" by the locals and treated accordingly. So much so that after independence he was eventually driven out of San Antonio.
Birdwatcher
