As a somewhat outspoken critic of ethnic frauds, but also as someone who "passes" for Latino sometimes, the Hilaria case is fascinating, but also really messed up.

It's almost like Hillary went to Spain one time, got called Hilaria by someone, and she has just been running with that for a decade. Why? Some thoughts:

Whiteness is malleable because it is not an ethnic marker, but a relationship with power. She has the power to pass because she can position herself as not white, but she can only do so precisely because of her whiteness.

In interviews she would identify as "having lived" in Spain, or having parents "living in" Spain, which allowed other people to make assumptions on her behalf, instead of her stating outright that she is "Spanish," which was a lie (of omission).

But that too, is the result of the power of whiteness to strengthen her claims to Spanishness. Her whiteness allows her to transit freely between ethnic positionalities. Non-white people rarely have that power, and it has historically been extremely dangerous to try it.

Now, about her taking on the linguistic aspects, the accent, of her supposed background. As a person who speaks English and Spanish, I actually have some sympathy (sometimes I forget a word in one language or the other). But she turned that into a performance of ethnicity.

And that performance depends on assumptions about, again, the power of whiteness to turn an accent into something cute, or sexy, rather than an object of scorn (which is what happens to BIPOC immigrants with accents).

And finally, Spanishness. She harnesses the ethnic instability of "being Spanish" in the US. Is that white, is that not white? Spain has occupied different ethnic markers in the US over time, something that allowed her to play "ethnic" while staying "white". End of rant.