Question for the Americans

[james_davis_nicoll]

When Irish-Americans go off on rants about the evils of demographic change do you think they are in any way aware that a century ago people making that speech would have been complaining about the Irish?

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

"Hispanic" can best be understood in the New World as shorthand for "hispanohablante." (though it isn't, etymologically)

In the regions of the US where there are significant numbers of people whose antecedents are in fact Spanish rather than mestizo or Native (that is, the Southwest), they seem to occupy a fluid middle ground mediated by class. So, if they are rich, they are white: if they are poor: they are not.