"We are not minorities"

Not so long ago, Hispanics, particularly Mexicans and Cubans, resisted the label of "minority". In a black-and-white America, Hispanics tended toward white, or at least tended to keep their distance from black. I remember my young Mexican mother saying to her children, in Spanish, "We are not minorities,"... 

One day, in the 1960s, the success of the Negro Civil Rights movement encouraged Hispanics to insist on the coveted black analogy, and thus claim the spoils of affirmative action.

Rodriguez, Richard. Brown: the Last Discovery of America. Penguin Books, 2003.