And back to the difference between race and ethnicity:
The collective wisdom of the Internet tells me that race is biological and doesn't change (Rachel Dolazell notwithstanding), but ethnicity is about cultural identification, and may change. If that's the case, then it doesn't seem to make much sense for the .gov to be asking about our ethnicity, since that may change. And, in any case, this would seem to suggest that "white" is not a descriptor of an ethnicity.
So if ethnicity means
Ethnicity is about tradition, learned behavior and customs. It is about learning where you come from, and celebrating the traditions and ideas that are part of that region.
Read more: Difference Between Ethnicity and Race | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/science/nature/difference-between-ethnicity-and-race/#ixzz4VBy7QRZq
What do people who came to the U.S. from France or Italy put down for ethnicity? Shouldn't Italian-Americans put down "Italian"? Shouldn't German-Americans put down "Germanic"? Ben, you're Americanized, but what ethncity does your father consider himself to be? If you were filling out a .gov form for him (such as the census), what would you enter as his ethnicity?
The more I look into it, the less I see any reason for the .gov to be asking about something that may change from one year to the next. And it would seem that the proper ethnic classifications for Americans should probably not be "white" or "Hispanic," but either "Caucasian-American," "African-American," or "Latin-American." And then, of course, we would need "Chinese-American," "Japanese-American," "Korean-American," etc.