What Race Are Hispanics?

Key words:  Are Hispanics White?  Racial Stratification, Racial Castes of Latin America

What Race Are Hispanics?

By Thomas Carter
July 15, 2011

Regarding the recent census in the United States, there was much debate about the racial classification of 'Hispanics'. Is 'Hispanic' a race?  Are Hispanics white?

Although the traditional meaning of 'Hispanic' related to those from Spain and  white Hispanics do exist in Latin America (esp. in Argentina), many of the Hispanics in the New World have little, or no, Spanish ancestry, especially those immigrating to the United States.

Since the unspoken purpose of the American census was to find out how many non-Westerners (i.e. non-whites) were living in the US, perhaps a better classification (as others have pointed out) would be:

MAMBs: mestizos, Amerindians, mulattos & blacks from Latin America.

Other than Argentina (and possibly Chile) much of Latin America and the Caribbean seems to be populated by MAMBs.

Most Latin American countries seem to have large percentages of non-Europeans.  For instance, Brazil is  almost 50% black / mulatto;  Columbia is 58% mestizo and 14% mulatto; and Guatemala is more than 90% Amerindian and mestizo.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, Mexico is:
60% mestizo
30% Amerindian
Less than 10% European (mostly Spaniard)

And what is the ancestry of mestizos? Examining genetic ancestral markers, Rubén Lisker has found lower-income mestizos in Mexico City to be:

59% Amerindian
34% European [mostly Spaniard]
and 6% black

As Richard Lynn points out in "Pigmentocracy: Racial Hierarchies in the Caribbean and Latin America," most Latin American countries seem to have an extremely small upper-class of Europeans, and below it very large masses of Amerindians, mestizos, mulattos and blacks.

And most of the people immigrating to the United States from Latin America are from the lower, non-European classes, especially from Mexico.

Furthermore, if you figure the average European or Diaspora European IQ to be around 102 - 103, it becomes apparent that MAMBs fall below.

Average black IQ: 75
Average mestizo IQ: 82

Average IQs of some Latin American countries:

Equador: 80
Guatemala: 79
Mexico: 87
Puerto Rico: 84

Because of this lower IQ immigration from Mexico, Latin America and elsewhere, Byron M. Roth, in The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature, estimates that

[The] average American IQ will decline from 98 to 95 by mid-century. This may seem a small drop, but it will have dire effects for elites, because the percentage of Americans with an IQ of at least 120 will fall from 7.1 to 4.8. [Summary by Lynn.]

It seems, in conclusion, that most New World Hispanics arriving in the United States vary by race (are MAMBs) but clearly are non-Western (i.e. are non-white, i.e. are non-Diaspora European) and probably fall below Westerners in intellectual ability.

[Data taken from Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations, "Pigmentocracy: Racial Hierarchies in the Caribbean and Latin America," & "Whimper and a Bang"; Rushton's Race, Evolution & Behavior; Lisker's "Racial admixture in a Mestizo population from Mexico City."]