The recent release of census figures divided by race, with the eye-catching datum that 100 million Americans now are racial "minorities", has revealed a host of assumptions on the part of liberal journalists. Of course the by-now widely-used conflation of speaking Spanish with a race continues, and indeed provides most of the heft pushing the "minority" category upwards. Given the number of Spaniards, Mexicans, Argentines, and other Spanish-speakers I have known who have high cheekbones, fair skin and light hair, I always find this habit of the racial bean-counters amusing. It is transparently a device to inflate the numbers and claim victim status. Since I have known a few Spanish-speaking Peruvians of Japanese descent, I always wonder if those of this group resident in the United States are called by the bean-counters "Hispanic" or "Asian/Pacific Islanders" - itself an even more ridiculous category, combining as it does Melanesians, Japanese,...(Read Full Post)