Romney is Hispanic. If he wants to be.

My two-year-old daughter and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney have something in common: They both are Americans whose fathers where born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

NBC’s Rock Center aired yesterday a story on Romney’s family ancestry in Mexico. I happen to know the town featured in the story; its high school had a great basketball team that I played against a few times.

Romney’s father and grandfather are Mexicans based on where they were born. It sounds funny, but about 125 years ago his relatives were immigrants to Mexico.

This takes us to today’s perhaps ludicrous question (you might think the answer is obvious):

Does this mean that Mitt Romney is Hispanic or Latino?

Per a 1976 Act of Congress, there are two approaches to define Hispanic or Latino:

• An ethnic group that traces its roots to 20 Spanish-speaking nations from Latin America and Spain itself (but not Portugal or Portuguese-speaking Brazil).

• A simpler approach. Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren't.

If we would go for the first approach, Romney would be Latino, for the same reason as my daughter: his father is from a Spanish-speaking country. But if we go for the second approach, the answer would be a firm no. The U.S. Census uses this approach and I am almost certain that Romney didn’t check the box “Hispanic” in the 2010 census questionnaire.

However, there are many white people who do, like “white Mexican“comedian Louis C.K.

But this leads us to a further comment on diversity and identity within Hispanics. Hispanic or Latino is considered an ethnicity, not a race. A person can be Hispanic and black, white, Asian, Indian, or a mix of any races. In the 2010 census more than 53 percent of Hispanics selected white as their race. There is an interesting CNN story on how Hispanics contributed to 74 percent of the growth of the white population in the last decade.

It’s true that there are some common patterns that define a Hispanic or Latino, such cultural differences, language, preferences, and most importantly, identity. But it’s true as well that there is a great diversity within Hispanics that you need to aware of if you want to effectively communicate with them. Such diversity includes language, of course, but that’s not the only factor. With more Hispanics online, more bilingual Latinos, and different levels of acculturation and integration, reaching out to this group that represents 20 percent of Colorado’s population requires a comprehensive strategy that can capture all factors.

And speaking of roots to Chihuahua, did you know that the majority of Mexican Americans living in Colorado trace their roots, like me, to this Mexican state?