Latinos and Whites

You get a category mistake when facts of one kind are presented as if they belong with another kind. For example, consider the following Associated Press opening sentence, which appeared in my newspaper this morning. "State demographers estimate that whites and Latinos are now an equal share of California's population, with Latinos poised to become a plurality by early next year." In one case demographers list people by the color of their skin; in the other, by their cultural background. Yet if we look around, many whites are Latinos. They are now about to outnumber themselves.
 
Of course, there are even more astonishing categories that state demographers might use to startle us in the future: women outnumber whites already, and people under 50 outnumber women.