It’s a mental shortcut, and people in general just love using those.
BTW, is it usually correct though? If at least 50% of the Spanish speakers actually are Mexican, it could justify the existence of this shortcut.
Mental shortcut to me is the easiest thing to look at.
It’s super easy to just default to something. It requires no thought, introspection, etc. Just a simple, quick answer that may or may not be right but you wouldn’t care.
So much of modern life is people defaulting to a lazy, easy option.
Not just modern life, but ancient too. The human mind is just full of these shortcuts, and on average, they have served the species well.
KRAW@linux.community 6 days ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Americans (which is citing data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B03001?q=B03001)
In the US, yeah, you are more likely to speak to a Mexican than any other hispanic Spanish speaker.