| Having done a little fiddling with these categories when editing city articles for Wikipedia, I think you need to add "Alaska native" to "Native American", since you're following the Census's own (rather stilted) language. And some of these categories came about through cross-pressures from Congress, the White House, various ethnic organizations, historical continuity and the needs of professional demography. There's no single "best way" of dealing with Hispanic/Latino, because many Hispanics consider themselves part of a separate race, while others strongly identify themselves as both Hispanic by heritage and white, black, Asian and/or Native American by race. This is somewhat analogous to, though different from, the never-ending question of what defines a Jew: religion, race, nationality, language, ancestry, heritage, culture, self-identification or identification by others. |
