why do they claim nationality to a country they are not from

[skateboardstephen]

has any one noticed that when you ask a hispanic what they`re ethic background is they all ways say a nationality even if they were born in the united states.
and this is especially true for the ones who look close to black. i have friends who are mixed black and white but never say this they say i`m puerto rican even though only one of they`re parents is from that island and the other is second generation, they know nothing about the history of puerto rico nor do they speak spanish.i speak better spanish than 90% of puerto ricans i have met. they have a serious problem with the word black. my friends father is from puerto rico but he is blacker than i am.

the funny part is is that most of hispanic culture has african origens but they never talk about it or acknowledge it. like mofongo the puerto rican dish is actually african.they rip off jamaican dance hall music and call it reggaeton dress like black americans but when asked about that african side of them they deny it very funny how people are towards black people.

even black and mixed brazilians do this too but not as bad.they bitch about racist in brazil but when they get here they act really funny towards blacks but they copy black american culture.

[ladislav]

Because the US ethnic system is f***ed up, unscientific, politically and historically inaccurate and insane. It is pure madness.

All US citizens have one nationality- American. That is a legal truth. Born in the US or not. Hispanic is not a nationality. Puerto Rican is not a nationality - they are Americans, and black is not a nationality. But the f***ed up system is in place and it will take a century to budge and a concerted effort on someone's part. No one seems to care.

It is better just to remove oneself from it.

[Think Different]

I think many Americans try to pass themselves off as being some other nationality or "hyphenated-American" due to a serious lack of culture and history in the US. Humans by nature want to belong to a group, a tribe, a culture, and what America offers is just a pie-in-the-sky intellectual and constitutional set of principles. The US tries to wrap an artificial and non-historically rooted "culture" around what amounts to an amalgam of ideas and unless you are hard-sold on those ideals, you will naturally start to seek something deeper. This is only natural.

What the old ethically-bound nation-states of the world offer that the US can't is a long common history of a common people, a race, bound by religion, by culture, by food, by habits, by shared values. The US succeeded with this for a while, but now that the government has betrayed us and the rich have stolen the shirts off the back of the average American, people are desperately seeking a deeper meaning. That's why you have so many people obsessed with their Irish/Italian/Polish/Hispanic/etc. motherland/homeland. It's a cozy "home" feeling the US culture of Walmarts and cookie-cutter TGIF restaurants cannot provide.

[AmericanInMexico]

If you are of unmixed European descent, you are white.

If you are of unmixed Sub-Saharan African descent, you are black.

If you are a mix of white and American Indian as most Mexicans are, you are a mestizo/a.

It does not matter if you come from a "Hispanic country". I am an American of 100% European ancestry. The previous president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, was a Mexican of 100% European ancestry (his mother was even an immigrant to Mexico from Spain).

We are both of the same race. In other words, Vicente Fox has more in common with me racially as a white American than he does with his mestizo countrymen.

People from Spanish-speaking backgrounds need to stop hiding behind the "Hispanic" label and start using their real race. All the Puerto Ricans who skateboardstephen described who deny their black ancestry are idiots. I hate hearing comments like "Albert Pujols isn't black, he's Hispanic" when it's clearly obvious he's a Dominican of African ancestry.

And last but not least, Jews are not white. They are Semites, just like their Arab cousins. On the other hand, the PIGS (Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards) are all very white.