I'm Cherokee, Danish, and Scottish , with a teeny weenstie bit of German splashed into the Cherokee part. I just recently learned that a relative was Choctaw, but she was shunned by her tribe when she married my great uncle, and she died at 17 after delivering her first baby. So not much is known about her. While I could claim Native American on paper, because the government has me labeled as a certain qualifying percentage, I do not nor will I ever.
My hubby is from coonass Cajun land, but his dad's family carries a last name of Spanish origin (what would be labeled as Hispanic). His mom has lots of German and Idunnowhatelse behind her.
Honestly, I'd like to see all the race and ethnicity questions disappear from forms. It's annoying, and it serves to keep us (a general "us") in a divided frame of mind. All I do these days is answer whether I'm Hispanic/Latino or Not Hispanic/Latino or whether I'm African American or Not African American.
I have a hard time believing that race/ethnicity doesn't come into play in job and school aspects, seeing as how there are several questions regarding such information.
Learn people by their names and job/school qualifications. Who cares if they're black, white, brown, purple, polka-dotted or Hispanic, Latino, Native American or Higglytown Hero.
I'm so happy my parents referred people to me by their names and not by their race or ethnicity. I saw my friends as Ashley, Tosha, Lindsey, Ylla, Arti, Cornelius, Ryan, Scott, etc. it never occurred to me that "Oh! Mr. Percy Sledge is black!" (they lived behind us when I was young) or "Wow! Ylla is Spanish!" or "That's Arti. She's from India.". We were friends, and it never really occurred to me that I was supposed to think of them differently because we were different colors or because they and their parents spoke different languages.
While I somewhat understand the need for teaching that we're all different, yet the same, I think it's gone so far as to actually becoming a problem in itself.
I don't tell my boys that their cousin is darker because he's biracial and that's wonderfully ok. I tell them their cousin's name is Dillan.
My boys don't "see" skin color. They'll approach anyone and everyone and ask them their names before jabbering their ears off.