Reply #10: On the "Faces of American" show on PBS, they counted Native American DNA as "Asian"

[pampango]

since humans immigrated here from Asia about 14,000 years ago. I don't know if this is accepted practice. Most modern Hispanics are some combination of Native American ("Asian"), Caucasian and other races because of the long colonial period in Central and South America.

It does make it difficult for the Census Department since they're being asked to count people that aren't predominantly of one race, but a strong ethnic group that is a mixture of other races. As a large and growing presence in the US, I understand why we need to count Hispanics as distinctly as possible and that counting them as partially Asian (even if it's true scientifically) wouldn't help achieve any of the purposes the census is designed for. :)

On an unrelated note, I always jokingly tell my wife who is from the Philippines that she should be considered Hispanic, too, since Spain colonized the Philippines just like the did most of Central and South America. Filipinos could be the only Asian Hispanics! Having not grown up here, she shows little interest in our penchant for categorizing people into ethnic groups and has no desire to help correct this gross historical inaccuracy. :)