Therefore I find it pretty odd that in the USA the idea of a uniform European "ethnicity" - largely defined by skin color! - is still very common and even officially practiced. I remember how I had to fill a form when entering the USA which asked for my "ethnicity". I was flabbergasted and just ticked "unknown" or something like that because I didn't want to identify myself as "Caucasian".
Every form I can remember seeing in the US that asks whether you are Hispanic says that it includes people of any race.
So how do you like this election season?
Yes, that is the "correct" thing that goes on the form, written by people who have bothered to look into this question. It isn't how people talk in casual speech.
I personally do not. Nor do those forms you are talking about. But it something I hear a lot out in the world.
There are a number of these things, though. I personally get a little irritated with the way many people here use terms like "Hispanic" to contrast with "white people". To me, "Hispanic" is a wide spectrum of ethnicities but really more of a linguistic, cultural and national/political specifier, with lots of overlap with "white". People who are trying to be correct about this will pull out complicated phrases like "non-hispanic whites" which may be correct but are also clumsy, reflecting the absurdity of the way we categorize this country's social boundaries in the first place. "White" itself has had a fluid definition in the US over time, previously having excluded southern or eastern Europe, Jews, or even the Irish.
I know that in my own recent ancestry I have at least 4 European ethnicities, some of which would have been ridiculed by other Americans in the past. But this nuance washes away and I am a "white guy" which lumps me together with cultures I don't particularly identify with. There is no sense in denying, for example, that I am less discriminated against by appearance than other groups. But I do not think either that there is one homogeneous "white people" living in the United States.