I’m not sure where or how this new category of hyphenated caucasians originated;  I would guess, probably some frustrated lefty journalist type who was thrilled about the opportunity to write a race baiting narrative, only to discover George Zimmerman was not actually “white”.    So in some effort to keep the racially devisive slant within the narrative they created an entire new ethnicity, a White Hispanic.
While the first reaction to the new ethnic sub-category is one of oddity.  Strangely enough  it now appears the rest of the legacy media have caught on.   Witness the excerpt of this Reuters article just published:

A USA Today/Gallup poll published on Saturday showed that Americans are deeply divided across color lines in their opinions about Martin’s killing.
Seventy-three percent of blacks in the survey said they believed Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, would have been arrested if the person he shot dead was white.
Only 33 percent of whites agreed with that view while the majority of whites polled, 52 percent, said race made no difference in the case.  (article)

The media doesn’t even try to hide their bias any more.  It really is just Obvious.