Actually, Latinos were classified as white under the census until 1980 I think. I’ll have to look it up. So his “passing” is a “normal” segregation mechanism in his native culture where European Spanish tried to stay separate from indigenous people, like the Mayans, trying not to “mix.” To this day you can thus find blond haired “Mexicans” in Mexico City (the Spanish were blond haired blue eyed folk until the Moors invaded and started “mixing” as well so that deliberate separation has be going on for over a thousand years. “White” people didn’t even invent that—if you consider “white” people to be British settlers. But actually it was invented before the British by the Spanish “whites” who kept separate for even longer, since Moorish rule, when black hair was “introduced” (that a polite term). It sounds like your husband is just following a more entrenched form of “passing” than American blacks. (And yes, I liked your idea that somehow passing is a good thing?)