"Martin was black and Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic."

That's a telling way to put it, in a CBS/AP article about the judge's ruling that the jury can consider the lesser included charge of manslaughter. Reader "Jane" emails to say:

This must be in the AP stylebook somewhere, because that sentence, or some variation therof, is found in every single article about the case:  Martin "is" black but Zimmerman only "identifies" as Hispanic.  Can you recall any other situation in which AP has played with racial identification vs. race as a fact in the news story?

This is a great topic about which to maintain vigilance.

I'm going to put that alongside a related topic that I've been noticing of late: The Disappearing Hispanic. Remember that NYT article we were talking about the other day — "Zimmerman Case Has Race as a Backdrop, but You Won’t Hear It in Court"? I didn't bring this up at the time, but I noticed  The Disappearing Hispanic phenomenon in this sentence: