← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Bardamu
Thread ID: 9675 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2003-09-10
2003-09-10 02:15 | User Profile
[url=http://www.vdare.com/francis/latinos_or_hispanics.htm]http://www.vdare.com/francis/latinos_or_hispanics.htm[/url]
*The real reason they prefer Latino to Hispanic is the former sounds better. Latin is used just as often. Now tell me how Latin signifies Indian? *
Hispanics (Sorry, Latinos) Discover Racial Identity. What About Whites? By Sam Francis
The big question among American Hispanics these days is not which party they should vote for next year or which candidate to support in California next month but rather what they should call themselvesââ¬âHispanics or Latinos?
Last week the Washington Post devoted a long front page story to this burning issue, and the reasons why the latter term is starting to prevail among the country's most rapidly growing ethnic minority group are of considerable interest. [Latinos or Hispanics? A Debate About Identity, By Darryl Fears Washington Post, August 25, 2003]
The story kicks off with a cute little anecdote about a Hispanic writer in San Antonio named Sandra Cisneros who sports a tattoo on her left biceps that says "Pura Latina"ââ¬âPure Latino.
Being called a Hispanic, the somewhat formidably bicepped Miss Cisneros says, makes her skin crawl.
"Hispanic" she says "is like a slave name."
She's not the only Hispanic (excuse me, Latino) to think so. The story insists that her feelings and preferences are "deepening a somewhat hidden but contentious debate over how the group should identify itselfââ¬âas Hispanics or Latinos. The debate is increasingly popping up wherever Spanish speakers gather," but there's something more here than just a name.
Miss Cisneros' self-description as a "pure" Latino suggests what that something is, and if you still don't get it, the Post story itself finally telegraphs it:
"Although the terms Latino and Hispanic have been used interchangeably for decades, experts who have studied their meanings say the words trace the original bloodlines of Spanish speakers to different populations in opposite parts of the world.
"Hispanics derive from the mostly white Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal, while Latinos are descended from the brown indigenous Indians of the Americas south of the United States and in the Caribbean, conquered by Spain centuries ago."
What the something is, quite simply, is raceââ¬âwhich is what we're talking about when we talk about "bloodlines," "descended from," "mostly white," and "brown."
The Post tries to evade this implication by regurgitating all the stuff about how "Latino-Hispanic" is really "an ethnic category in which people can be of any race," but there is no such term as "Latino-Hispanic" that anyone uses.
Miss Cisneros doesn't say she's Pure Latino-Hispanic, and neither does anyone else who insists on the Latino label. Virtually all the people interviewed distinguish the labels along what are essentially racial linesââ¬âHispanic is cultural, mainly linguistic, and perhaps suggests actual descent from the natives of Spain; Latino is Latin American and mainly Indianââ¬âracial.
The Post also quotes another Latino (excuse me, Hispanic), Duard Bradshaw, the Panamanian president of the Hispanic National Bar Association.
"I'll tell you why I like the word Hispanic. If we use the word Latino, it excludes the Iberian peninsula and the Spaniards. The Iberian peninsula is where we came from. We all have that little thread that's from Spain."
Well, but the point is that not all "Hispanics" do.
A Mexican American writer, Luis Rodriguez, almost rejected a writing award from an organization with "Hispanic" in its title "because I'm not Hispanic," he told the Post. "Hispanic doesn't work for me because it's about people from Spain. I'm Mexican, and we were conquered by people from Spain, so it's kind of an insult." The story also notes that "Mexican American activists in California and Puerto Rican activists in New York " prefer "a term that included the brown indigenous Indians who they believe are the source of their bloodline," which is to say, their race.
What's significant about this is that even though only some 13 percent ofââ¬âwellââ¬âHispanics say they prefer to be known as Latinos, the new term points toward an emerging racialââ¬ânot simply, an ethnic, national, or culturalââ¬âidentity.
This, you know, wasn't supposed to happen.
In the wonderful world of the Open Borders Lobby and their close cousins, the promoters of a "color-blind society," race was supposed to disappear as the meaningless, false, obsolete and irrelevant "social construct" it's supposed to be.
That's still the pretense that's mounted whenever anyone even sniffs the possibility of white racial identity.
But it's not the reality, which is that for every racial and ethnic group other than white European-Americans, race is real and racial identity (not to mention racial solidarity) is OKââ¬âindeed, mandatory.
If Hispanics want to call themselves Latinos and think of themselves as a race, that's fine with me.
I'm the last to say they shouldn't.
But don't tell me it's OK for Latinos to be a race and identify with it but not OK for whites.
Race is as realââ¬âand importantââ¬âfor whites as it is for non-whites.
Denying that reality and its importance ought to make our skinsââ¬âwhite as they areââ¬âcrawl.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
[Sam Francis [email him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection of his columns, America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available from Americans For Immigration Control. Click here for Sam Francis' website.]
2003-09-10 03:17 | User Profile
Shouldn't that be latrinos?
2003-09-10 03:21 | User Profile
*Originally posted by yummybear@Sep 9 2003, 20:17 * ** Shouldn't that be latrinos? **
Enemies. Until the whites realize that, the toiletization of the US will continue.
2003-09-10 12:03 | User Profile
Hispanic: Derives from the European Iberian concept of Roman geographic "Hispania". While there might have been a racial meaning to it once upon a time and a true Spaniard could have called himself proudly "Hispano" this term as morphed into a kind of "decendant of hispanics" and could be used by south american whites directly decending from European Spaniards to those who have a certain degree of indian or black admixture but can still somehow be traced to their white past.
Latino: Is a purely linguistic term with no racial conotations in its origin. A frenchman or even a Romanian could well call himself Latino as a way to trace back their own language (and perhaps even culture) to the ancient Roman use of Latin in their geographical areas. Most of the Northern Mediterranean sea basin are so "Latinos" if they take pride in their common Roman heritage. Castillian, that is, Spanish is a language derived from Latin like French or Romanian. And thats about it. So, anybody who would trace his history through culture rather then race and belong to a "latin" cultural group would call himself Latino. Sure, this meaning has been lost and like using the term "Spanish" doesnot mean Spaniard like it should, Latino has now a more racial meaning for those faceless south american mongrells.
2003-09-10 13:39 | User Profile
**The story kicks off with a cute little anecdote about a Hispanic writer in San Antonio named Sandra Cisneros who sports a tattoo on her left biceps that says "Pura Latina"ââ¬âPure Latino.
Being called a Hispanic, the somewhat formidably bicepped Miss Cisneros says, makes her skin crawl.
"Hispanic" she says "is like a slave name."**
Sandra Cisneros is Jewish.
2003-09-10 13:46 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Sep 10 2003, 15:39 * ** > *The story kicks off with a cute little anecdote about a Hispanic writer in San Antonio named Sandra Cisneros who sports a tattoo on her left biceps that says "Pura Latina"ââ¬âPure Latino.
Being called a Hispanic, the somewhat formidably bicepped Miss Cisneros says, makes her skin crawl.
"Hispanic" she says "is like a slave name."**
Sandra Cisneros is Jewish. **
a "marrano" jewess?
2003-09-10 13:57 | User Profile
Precisely.
2003-09-10 21:14 | User Profile
*Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Sep 10 2003, 14:32 * ** Actually, it's great to hear that the brown mestizos have stopped using the term "Hispanic" to describe themselves. Their use of the word degrades real Hispanics: i.e. European Spaniards and their direct descendants in Latin America. They have nothing in common culturally or racially with the mestizo underclasses which populate their countries, and it is unfortunate to see these important racial differences obscured by existing terminology. Anybody who has visited Chile, Argentina, or seen the largely white ruling classes of most Central and South American nations will immediately recognize that an Argentine Spaniard has nothing in common with a Mayan Zappatista in Mexico.
However, the term "Latino" also obscures this racial reality because it continues to lump white Latin Americans with their Amerindian (and often part negro) counterparts. The term "mestizo" would be much more useful. **
Yes and not suprisingly those are among the most stable countries in all Latin America. BTW, isn't Costa Rica mostly white as well?
2003-09-10 22:03 | User Profile
*Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Sep 10 2003, 14:32 * ** Actually, it's great to hear that the brown mestizos have stopped using the term "Hispanic" to describe themselves. Their use of the word degrades real Hispanics: i.e. European Spaniards and their direct descendants in Latin America. They have nothing in common culturally or racially with the mestizo underclasses which populate their countries, and it is unfortunate to see these important racial differences obscured by existing terminology. Anybody who has visited Chile, Argentina, or seen the largely white ruling classes of most Central and South American nations will immediately recognize that an Argentine Spaniard has nothing in common with a Mayan Zappatista in Mexico.
However, the term "Latino" also obscures this racial reality because it continues to lump white Latin Americans with their Amerindian (and often part negro) counterparts. The term "mestizo" would be much more useful. **
They just want the word that sounds best before "activist", so they can get by without working for a living.
2003-09-11 09:57 | User Profile
You are still confusing the terms..please read my post above.