Answer:
In 1929, the League of the United Latin American Citizens, a Mexican-American organization, formed in Corpus Christi, TX. One of their main organizing efforts was to get "Mexican" off the 1930 census. They protested: we are white race, we are Americans. The Mexican government itself protested the category, because the entire Southwest used to be part of Mexico, and when it was taken over by the United States, they promised Mexico that the Mexican residents there would be treated as full citizens. Well, at the time, you had to be white to be a citizen. So that's where the whole issue came about of Mexicans, specifically, identifying as legally white but socially not-white. After 1930, there has never been another Latino group listed as a race on it. In 1970, the Hispanic origin question was first introduced on the Census long form, which is an extended questionnaire that goes out to about one in six households. And then, finally in 1980, the Hispanic identity question appears on all of the forms. It used to come after the race question. They later moved it before the race question because it was one of the most unanswered forms on the census. If you asked people their race, "I'm white or I'm black," and they would get this next question, "are you Hispanic?" They would say "I already answered this," and they would skip it. So that's why we have them the way they are and the way they're ordered. And importantly, Latinos can be of a variety of racial backgrounds. People can be Afro-Latino and be white and be Latino and there are a whole lot of Latinos who are brown. So there's the issue of not wanting to be racialized, and there's the racial diversity of Latinos themselves.
