White means European ancestry. That's fairly self explanatory. Just as black or African American clearly only refers to sub-Saharan African. It's the Hispanic category that messes everything up because, if your grandparents moved to Argentina from Italy and Germany then you were born there and moved to the US, you'd be called Hispanic, despite being just as white as if your grandparents had moved directly to the US.
I think we need to abolish the Hispanic question and add Mestizo/Mulatto and Native Meso/South American categories. The current census definition of white should be split into Middle East/North African and European (white) because that's how everyone defines it anyway. Asian should be split into South/Central Asian and East/Southeast Asian. Calling Pakistanis and Koreans the same race is dumb (from both a biological and a cultural standpoint), imo.
My ideal list of options:
European
Sub-Saharan African
Middle East/North African
South/Central Asian
East Asian
Native American (US + Canada)*
Native Meso/South American*
Mestizo/Mulatto
Pacific Islander
Australian Aboriginal
Other
*Kept these separate due to historical context. A Mayan moving here tomorrow shouldn't be able to get benefits that go to groups like the Cherokee that were expelled from their land by the US gov.
There's actually enough genetic similarity between all Aboriginal Americans to have that be one group of people. They also have similar historical challenges and are subject to similar patterns of discrimination.
I think that people like Cubans are white. Most of them have all of their ancestry from the north of Spain. I actually dated someone who was like whom you stated. She claimed that she was an "inside out n" because she kind of brown but described herself as white to the Census man.
Poll
