It looks like the news services are inaccurate in their zeal to find minorities in the new Bush administration. Linda Chavez not only does not have Hispanic ancestry, but she also doesn't speak Spanish other than a few phrases she has memorized. One article that seems more accurate appeared in The New York Times, which says, "Despite her surname, her critics have asserted, she is neither bilingual nor bicultural." Of course, answering the question of whether Chavez is a "real" Hispanic requires knowing what "Hispanic" means. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to agree on a precise definition.

Linda Chavez's father's ancestors settled in Northern New Mexico in the early 1600s and did not consider themselves to be Mexican-American. In fact, they lived under the Mexican flag only briefly, from 1821 to 1848. Chavez told Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, "Most of the residents there don't identify very much with what we think of as Mexican culture because they were so far separated and so isolated from the central government in Mexico City that they developed their own indigenous culture."

Chavez is married to a Jewish American named Chris Gersten. Although her son Pablo's last name is Jewish, his Spanish first name alone was enough to get him thrown involuntarily into a bilingual education program when he entered a Washington D.C. school at age seven. It must have been strange to young Pablo Gersten, as he never heard Spanish at home.

Incidentally, Chavez is a fierce opponent of bilingual education.