A Cuban Immigrant on Why Assimilation Isn't Optional

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Mike Gonzalez says the "Hispanic" box on your census form was invented by bureaucrats in 1977. In this interview, the Cuban-born Heritage fellow walks through how activists turned the promise of a colorblind society on its head, a Census Bureau that fought the new category for years before giving up, a Ford Foundation study where Mexican Americans were offended to be asked if they felt like victims, an activist he says described her hardest job as convincing happy immigrants that America hates them — and why he believes the long march through the institutions now has to be run in reverse. Coming from an immigrant himself, his argument isn't against immigration; it's that America stopped…