The Race?

Remember how shocked you were when they started calling George Zimmerman a white Hispanic? Where did that come from?

Whenever you filled out a government form Hispanic was always a race - white, black, Hispanic. I always thought that was strange because Hispanics come in every shade from black to white and everything in between. The separating factor of Hispanics seemed to me to be language and culture, not race. But, the government always said race, so race it was. Until Zimmerman anyway. What happened there?

So I happened to be watching the following video on YouTube. It seems that the government - the ATF, at least - has changed the way they break down races earlier this year. Now everybody picks a race, then indicates whether Hispanic or not separately. @5:35 in the video.


The Zimmerman/Trayvon incident happened on Feb. 26, 2012. The ATF form is dated April 2012. The gentleman in the video said they decided to change the format on Jan. 9, 2012 (@4:57). I don't know where that information comes from, though.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, it just seems weird that the people accusing Zimmerman of being a racist murderer were very tuned in to a change that was in the works but hadn't actually happened yet while most Americans were looking at each other saying, "Where did that come from?"