I claim Hispanic all the time on job applications. Why? One day I was applying for a job, and on the drop down menu for selecting ethnicity, the different ethnicities were listed like so:
I copied the data into a file for future reference. I believe these numbers to be the visible result of a software error in that company's HRIS system. It was for an IT job in the Bay Area, and if you know that area, my hypothesis makes some sense: the numbers shown are likely the points applied by HRIS to each applicant based on their race, higher being better. Why do I mentioned "if you know that area"?? There are tons of people from India and Asia working in IT jobs, so they are "overrepresented," while the least represented are Hispanics. Interestingly, Mexican was separated from overall Hispanic. I believe this to be a California thing, where the system is designed to give opportunities to non-Mexican Hispanics since so many of the Hispanics in CA are Mexican by origin or descent.
Since I've begun applying as a Hispanic, my interview rate has probably tripled. It never comes up in interviews because HRIS is designed to simply cull the applicant pool, nothing more.
It's pathetic that this shit happens at all. A better system would be a blind application where names and ethnicities are not visible to HR screeners.
TL;DR: Affirmative action is racist against qualified applicants. Here's how you beat it in the IT sector.