It is a nouveau term cultivated from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Prior to that Mexican Americans demanded to be listed as Caucasian on government applications, etc. When affirmative action started to kick in and “protected classes” began to formulate, their leadership abandoned the claim as Caucasian and demanded distinction as a protected class also. Thus, the broad term “minority” started to include Mexican Americans and others who no longer saw the advantage in being separated from Blacks. Eventually, the term Hispanic began to be included among minority ethnicities...
During the Jim Crow days of the South and various northern venues like Indiana, Ohio, downstate Illinois, etc. separate facilities were for “whites” and “colored” aka Blacks or Negroes. People such as Mexican Americans and other Latino ethnicities walked through the “whites” door. They were not reduced to the inferior facilities we Blacks had. General Colin Powell describes it brilliantly in his first autobiography “Soldier” when he goes into a restaurant in Columbus, GA and orders a take out. The waitress says, “Say you are a Puerto Rican and I can serve you. If you don’t; I can’t serve Blacks.” He left.
