Ethnic Identity

My wife's mother is from Colombia. That makes her 100% Hispanic for census purposes. Now I've never classified Maria as Hispanic but since she's 50% Colombian and 50% cracker I guess she could claim to be w/o any trouble. I recently had to fill out some papers for Desmond's kindergarten and while it was pretty easy to classify him as "white" I didn't know what to do w/ the separate box that asks if you are also Hispanic. If the cops pulled him over, they wouldn't think that so I figured I wouldn't check the box (Maria wasn't sure what to do either). To even things out maybe I'll classify Izabella as Hispanic but not Desmond. Does that make any sense?

I was listening to an interview w/ a lady who runs an adoption agency in Winston-Salem that helps people adopt kids from the country of Georgia. She explained that part of the popularity of adopting kids from foreign countries was that most adoptions in the US are open adoptions and many people aren't comfortable w/ that. I'm not sure how I feel about immigrant babies taking jobs from American born babies, but I'm really confused about how these foreign born kids will view their ethnic identity when they are adults. In reality they will be 1st generation Americans from Eastern European somewhere, but will they grow up thinking that they are of Irish descent b/c their dad is Tom O'Brien? Will they continue to identify w/ that ancestry in some way? I don't have any answers for my own kids so this situation is even more confusing. Maybe we should all just consider ourselves Americans and get over it.