"Ethnicity", in my opinion, is a terribly vague category that we, in our excessive American preoccupation with classifying people, use mostly to our disadvantage. A recent New York Times article, "For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color", underscores well just how vague it is. In it, Puerto-Rican born Mireya Navarro, a former adjunct professor at Columbia University, and currently an environmental writer for the Times, articulates the confusion within the "Latino" community regarding self-definition. Her report, for me, leads to a host of important questions. "What exactly is ethnicity?" and "When does self-definition become self-stereotyping, and thus self-imposed limitation?" are but two of them.

The title of the article, in a sense, says it all and offers a key in the quest for "Latino" self-definition: racial identity is more culture than color. By self-admission, then, Latino is not a race (the Census bureau stands in agreement, having added to its 2010 form, "Hispanic origins are not races."). Race, strictly speaking, is not cultural. Race is precisely predicated upon physical features, amongst which is color. Race, of course, is loosely predicated upon physical features, and really has little taxonomic significance. Human physical features vary tremendously, and color, well, there is but a spectrum, and we are all "of color". In the end, race is largely a social construct that does little to further our understanding of the human person. As the black activist Ward Connerly says, "We can hope one day to see each other as individuals rather than categories.... Race, whatever it is, is the least interesting thing about you."

Complicating matters, in an attempt (forcibly) to give greater coherence and cohesion to racial groupings, far too much is presumed to emanate or result from race, namely, specific patterns of thinking and behavior. Such presumption saddens the likes of a Benjamin Banneker, the African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author, farmer, and civil rights activist, deceased in 1806, who famously stated, "The color of the skin is in no way connected to the strength of mind or intellectual powers." This he stated in the promotion of common humanity, and thus equal rights, for those who had come to this country from Africa. The truth of his statement still resounds and is important for us today; for, in the light of it, we can and must state that people of similar skin color do not necessarily think similarly. In other words, there is not a "white" way of thinking; there is not a "black" way of thinking. And let us add, although not a race, there is not a "Latino" way of thinking.

So what is Latino? Recognizing race to be an inadequate category, it might appear to be more accurate to speak of it as an "ethnicity". But ethnicity means little. Again, it is a terribly vague category, seemingly used to give an air of profound, indefinable connection between loosely connected persons. We ought to speak of culture, which is more concrete. If we do so, however, the grouping "Latino" begins to unravel. Latinos come from many cultures, whose cultural commonality is that which remains from the Spanish colonization. As far as I can see, the only tie between Latinos is the Spanish language – which, of course, complicates matters when it comes to counting this so-called population, for one need not speak Spanish to be counted.

With all due respect, one cannot help but think that promoting "Latino" as a unified ethnicity is a largely political endeavor. Ms. Navarro says as much: "Race matters. How Latinos identify themselves – and how the census counts them – affects the political clout of Latinos and other minority groups." So, let me get this right: for Ms. Navarro, "Latino" stands racially distinct from "white", in a minority position, even though the distinction is linguistic (and many Latinos are white). The positioning is (sadly) that of opposition to the "majority", a majority presumed systematically to lord it over the rest of the population. Now, some members of the "Latino" community are of a racial minority (black African or American Indian), and may experience racial discrimination. But this not a "Latino" issue. It is a racial issue and, for the sake of clarity, ought to be articulated as such.

Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy and chairman of the Census Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population, has stated that this is not just a tussle over identity, but is a political battle, too: "It comes down to what yields the largest numbers for which group". What is the political battle? It can only be linguistic. If there is no "Latino" race and no "Latino" culture per se, the political battle can only be for the promotion of the Spanish language in the United States, such that it have equal footing with English, and no longer be a minority language. Some might not find this to be in the best interest of the nation, for they do not find bilingualism to be in the best interest of any nation. That there be many languages spoken in a country is a "richesse". But, as "Latino" senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, stated in 2009, officially "We have to have a common language that unites the people."