About Hispanic and Latino

Hispanic/Latino is not a race.

The US has changed the original meanings of the words Hispanic and Latino. Hispanic originally means to reference people from Spain.

Currently it means in the US, people who have origins from Spanish speaking countries in Latin America and Spain regardless of race.

The word Latino originally means groups of people whose language was developed from Latin this includes Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish and etc...

Latino also means originally groups of people whose culture was developed or deeply innovated from the Romans who spoke Latin.

In the US Latino now means any person who has origins in any country in Latin America that speaks a language that originated from Latin this reference Spanish speaking countries in the Americas and this can also reference to non-Spanish speaking countries in the Americas like Brazil whose language is Portuguese.

In the past the US found it very difficult over time to group these different people of different racial backgrounds to the correct racial group in their racial or identity data system due to the complexity of many people's racial mixtures or identity in Latin America so that's why they altered the meaning of Hispanic and Latino so it can be used for their racial or identity data system to easily target these people for data purposes.