Is the Pope Hispanic?
Mar 19, 2013, 2:01 PM | Updated: 2:03 pm
Since the new pope was born in Argentina, should he count as Hispanic, and does that make him a member of a different race from the former pope, who was German? In America, Pope Francis would indeed count as racially distinct from Pope Benedict, since the government — ridiculously — counts people of Hispanic heritage as “non white.”
This mislabeling occurs despite the fact that a majority of Hispanics — 53 percent — identified themselves as white in the recent census. This matters, because the claim that America is supposedly becoming a “minority majority nation” depends on labeling Hispanics a distinct racial group — an absurdity given obvious differences between Cubans, Mexicans, and people from Argentina, like Pope Francis. Those who come from Spanish-speaking cultures shouldn’t be considered a separate race, any more than those who come from Italian or Polish or French speaking societies.