[11][12][13] Based on the definitions created by the Office of Management and Budget and the US Census Bureau, the concepts of race and ethnicity are mutually independent.

[15] In 1970, a 5 percent sample of the census was asked if their "origin or descent" was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or Other Spanish.

[19] Some Euro-Latinos/White Latinos in the United States of America today are descended from original Spanish colonists who settled the so-called "internal provinces" and Louisiana of New Spain.

As the United States expanded westward, it annexed lands with a long-established population of Spanish-speaking settlers, who were sometimes overwhelmingly or exclusively of white Spanish ancestry (cf.

Prior to incorporation into the United States of America (and briefly, into Independent Texas), Hispanos that were fully Spanish, (criollos) had enjoyed a privileged status in the society of New Spain and later in post-colonial Mexico.

Concepts of multiracial identity have existed in Latin America since the colonial era, originating in a Spanish caste system.

During the 20th century, the concept of mestizaje, or 'blending', was adopted as a national identity by a number of Latin American countries in order to reduce racial conflict.

[21] A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that one-third of US Latinos identify as "mestizo", "mulatto", or another multiracial identity.

The differences in racial perceptions that exist in both countries are considered: the concept of race in Mexico is subtle not only including physical clues such as skin color but also cultural dispositions, morality, economic, and intellectual status.

[35] On the other hand, while only 2.9% of the population of the United States identifies as mixed race[36] there is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number, but historical and cultural reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans, often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture they were raised in.

Her maternal grandmother, Frances Martha Clough (née Dominguez), was born in El Centro, California, and was of Mexican descent.

[63] However, racial classification in the United States usually requires tribal enrollment to identify one's race as Native or Indigenous.

This paints a false picture of the workforce in a state that has had a history of racial profiling, such as Arizona SB 1070, and which continues to harbor widespread, racial-based anti-immigrant sentiment.