Whoops! Texas state troopers during traffic stops have listed large numbers of Hispanics – including those with swarthy skin and Spanish surnames who speak only Spanish – as being white. The disingenuous record-keeping is described in an online article, “ Texas troopers ticketing Hispanic drivers as white ," which was published on Saturday by feisty Austin news channel KXAN.

KXAN reporters Brian Collister and Joe Ellis said they had “uncovered the discrepancies while reviewing more than 16 million DPS traffic citation records dating back to 2010.”

And to drive home that point, their in-depth article included a collage of 25 mug shots of people who obviously weren't white – yet who state police had identified as white. “Are these people white?” the article asked. Among several outrageous examples of Hispanics being categorized as white was the case of Pastor Gonzalez Sosa, who was pulled over earlier this year. “In the dashcam video obtained by KXAN through an open records request, Sosa speaks Spanish to the trooper and tells him he is from Mexico,” KXAN noted. “But the Hispanic trooper, who also speaks Spanish, documented Sosa's race as white on the citation.”

KXAN said it had “discovered the Department of Public Safety data shows more than 1.9 million drivers with traditionally Hispanic names listed as white over the past five years. For the same time period, approximately 1.6 million were reported as Hispanic.”

The five most common last names of drivers stopped and recorded as white were Smith, followed by Garcia, Martinez, Hernandez, Gonzalez and Rodriguez.

State troopers are required to list race and ethnicity under a law written to help prevent racial profiling, KXAN explained. The statue states that officers must report “the person's race or ethnicity, as stated by the person or, if the person does not state the person's race or ethnicity, as determined by the officer to the best of the officer's ability.”

So what's going on? KXAN never nailed down that question. But given the national preoccupation with racial profiling, you have to wonder if state troopers who engaged in the false record keeping are doing so out of a sense of self-preservation. Specifically, they may be falsifying their records to avoid the appearance of being racial profilers -- of pulling over greater numbers of Hispanics and other minorities than whites.

Hispanics are 39% of Texas' population while “white Anglos” comprise 43%. According to left-leaning politicians and ethnic lobbies, crime rates that fail to reflect these demographics (and that instead show blacks and Hispanics committing crimes at greater rates than whites) must reflect profiling by racist cops.

Disingenuous record keeping by the Texas Department of Public Safety is probably just the tip of the iceberg – and no doubt reaches into cities and towns across Texas, and to states all over America. Consider, for example, that several months ago in Austin, my car was stolen by three Hispanic males, all 20 years old. Austin police arrested the men 24 hours later – and submitted a report identifying them as white.

If the false record keeping in Texas is part of a national trend, it of course means that national crime statistics are deeply flawed – and that soaring crime rates attributed to Hispanics and blacks are even worse than what current statistics reveal.