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Data - South American or French?

Data is Data. He is neither South American, nor French. But if he were either, why not both? He could be from French Guiana! But he's from Omicron Theta.
 
No, it's not a reference to Nimoy having played Asian, Native American and Hispanic characters.
I suspect that it’s the hopefully-outmoded convention whereby, say, people refer to David Carradine’s character on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues as “looking Oriental”, which happened more than once, despite his very plainly being a white guy who talks funny.
 
The only Spanish I can recall Data speaking was "mariposa" (as in, a starship named Mariposa); the only Portuguese was "Martim Vaz" (as part of "New Martin Vaz").

I suspect that it’s the hopefully-outmoded convention whereby, say, people refer to David Carradine’s character on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues as “looking Oriental”, which happened more than once, despite his very plainly being a white guy who talks funny.

Carradine - in the original Kung Fu series - could pass as half Chinese (i.e., his character's ethnic makeup).
 
He could not
I would say that while he couldn’t quite, at least you could see they were kinda sorta trying, a little. Whereas in The Legend Continues, they didn’t bother to.

EDIT: I was pretty shocked by a later incidence of this pheomenon: Brian Dennehy played Kublai Khan in a Marco Polo TV movie in 2007 — not even with any makeup, as far as I could tell. You’d have thought the 90s were the last gasp.
 
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