Hispanics or Latinos prefer to be identified as "Mexican" or "Cuban" or in other words identified according to their ancestry's country of birth rather than being called "Hispanic" or "Latino".
51 percent of some 1,220 Hispanics interviewed by the Pew Hispanic Center via celphone or landline from Nov. 9 to Dec. 7, 2011, responded that they'd prefer to be identified according to their ancestor's country of birth, 25 percent identified themselves as either Hispanic or Latino while 20 percent identified themselves as American.
The term "Hispanic" was first introduced in 1970 by the government who attempted to categorize Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, and other countries from Central/South America into one group.
The problem however is that many Hispanics concentrated in the southwestern part of the U.S. speak Spanish but do not feel "an affinity for the term", said the L.A Times in a report.
With the growing number of Hispanics, 50 million in the U.S. to date, the complexity of identifying Hispanics becomes greater.
Recently, attention was drawn back to developing a better system to identify Hispanics with the shooting of Tryon Martin by George Zimmerman who has a white father and a Hispanic mother.
According to the Washington Post, Zimmerman's father "has defended his son against allegations of racial profiling by describing him as a "Spanish-speaking minority."