The Wall Street Journal comments on recent Census-derived numbers that show a continuing decline in poverty rates among Hispanics--from 21.8 percent in 2005 to 20.6 percent in 2006.
I love these numbers in part because they show, indeed, that social mobility is alive and well in America.
But with another Decennial Census coming up in 2010 I also would like to raise again the fact that the way we count the Hispanic population itself is not altogether reliable. The reason is simply that the Census Bureau--one of the most professional and well-motivated collection of government officials you are likely to find--is obliged to list people by self-identification. You are "Hispanic" if you say you are.
The trouble is, people the government considers Hispanic sometimes don't think of themselves that way, even if they have, say, a mother who emigrated from Mexico. Perhaps the father was a Norwegian-American. Maybe they never speak Spanish in the home. Maybe the person in question doesn't even speak Spanish (or Norwegian, for that matter). He decides accordingly not to list himself as Hispanic.
Or perhaps his family came from Argentina or Brazil and the members don't think of themselves as Hispanic--a term they associate with Mexico and Central America. For comparison, think what confusion would arise if you were to ask someone on a Census form if he was "European".
There is another and almost opposite reality; namely, that some people identify themselves as Hispanic even though they have only the most tenuous claims to Hispanic ethnicity (say, they came from Spain, which doesn't count, oddly enough, or their Spanish surname represents only a tiny fraction of their family background). They may regard the identification as advantageous for affirmative action purposes or simply think it is more fashionable these days than other ethnicities.
In any case, the truth you don't read about much is that America is still a "melting pot," and only a "salad" of ethnicities in certain respects (e.g., first generation immigrants). The reality isn't very P.C., I'm afraid. But maybe "diversity" even these days is less valued than unity. "E Pluribus Unum," I believe, is the hallowed term on our coinage.