<p>Under the ethnicity groups for MIT’s student body, Mexican American is represented at 8%. Would Spanish American constitute other Hispanic groups, or would it be considered white?</p>
<p>According to the U.S. government’s definition (and college applications’) any race can be considered Hispanic if they have Spanish/Latin American heritage.</p>
<p>They ask and report ethnicity because the government (and school) want to keep track of whether any group is being discriminated against. For the most part no one thinks Spanish people are getting shafted, but a lot of people have concerns about equal treatment for Latin Americans. So I think MIT has Latin Americans in mind when they collect data on Hispanics and wants people descended directly from Spain to call themselves white.</p>
<p>But people can write whatever they want on the forms so its not necessarily accurate. Probably some Spanish people are Hispanics and others are white in that data.</p>
<p>That’s not quite how it works, stevewh. Ethnicity/race data is collected on a voluntary basis for statistical purposes. Not to track discrimination. You can’t make any useful assumptions of causation from that kind of data.</p>
<p>The Census Bureau defines “Hispanic or Latino” as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf</a></p>
<p>MIT uses the same definition on their application. Under the checkbox for Hispanic, it also selections for origins including Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Spain. If you’re a Caucasian with Spanish heritage, you would check Caucasian, Hispanic (Spain). It’s pretty clear on the application.</p>
<p>Again, Hispanic ethnicity does not depend on race for the purposes of most college forms and the U.S. census.</p>