David Souter Retiring, Obama gets to make first SCOTUS pick

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Per that same Wiki article, it appears that all that is known for sure is that his grandparents were Sephardim -- which would suggest that the families came from either Iberia (Spain or Portugal) or northern Africa -- and that the name Cardozo is a common Portugese surname.

Per the dictionary:

Hispanic = Of or relating to Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America; of or relating to a Spanish-speaking people or culture.

Brazil would be Latin American but not Hispanic.

From OMB Directive 15, it's much less clear.

Definition of Hispanic

The current usage of the term "Hispanic" in the health literature is driven by Directive 15 of the Office of Management and Budget (1). This directive was issued in 1978 to increase the availability of data on persons of Hispanic origin and to encourage uniform collection and reporting of data on different racial and ethnic groups by federal agencies. The racial and ethnic categories suggested by OMB Directive 15 are:

• American Indian or Alaskan Native
  
  A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America, and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.
• Asian or Pacific Islander
  
  A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, or the Pacific Islands. This area includes, for example, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Isl ands, and Samoa.
• Black
  
  A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.
• Hispanic
  
  A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish Culture.
• White
  
  A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East.

Note that the two bolded statements conflict with one another. This sort of goes to my point (if I didn't make the point earlier, I meant to) that "Hispanic" is a completely artificial racial classification.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

From OMB Directive 15, it's much less clear.

Note that the two bolded statements conflict with one another. This sort of goes to my point (if I didn't make the point earlier, I meant to) that "Hispanic" is a completely artificial racial classification.

Yeah, I was going with the basic dictionary definition. Some of what I looked at noted that government definitions/classifications might be more . . . convoluted.

Just to muddy it up more, the basic dictionary definition of latino/a means anyone from Latin America (which would include Brazil), while government/census-type definitions equate latino/a with Hispanic.

And just to add the icing, some definitions would include Haiti and Quebec in Latin America -- the "Latin" referring to use of a Romance language.