The rise of white nationalist Hispanics

[Retrograde]

46. Definitions of race and even ethnicity vary over time

In the 1940s, people of Mexican descent were legally classed as "white" in California (see the case Sanchez v. Sharp, 1948, which struck down California's anti-miscegenation law). When I was growing up back in the 50s the "lumpers" were predominant, so only three "races" of humans were talked about - Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid (everyone who didn't fall conveniently into one of these categories was considered to be a mixture). Nowadays the "splitters" are in the ascendancy and people are putting themselves into a lot more categories.

As for the range of people covered by "Hispanic" - the Spanish colonizers started this back in the 1500s. By the 1700s they were producing Casta paintings to illustrate the 32 different combinations of Spaniard/Native American/Black they recognized.