Hispanic Fanatic

I’ve written before about our peculiar drive to separate the various races, ethnicities, and tribes that constitute the human kaleidoscope. I’m not talking about the cultural or social differences that make life interesting (indeed, that’s the whole point of this blog). I’m referring to the common perception that there is something fundamentally different, even wrong, with people who don’t share our skin color or eye shape or nose width or whatever.

Many people insist upon accenting these differences, as if they were truly meaningful. This is despite the fact that scientists say that any two humans have at least 99% of their DNA in common. That’s basic biology.

So I was intrigued to read about the “Faces of America” series on PBS. The creators of this show “used historical archives and cutting-edge genetic research to trace the ancestry of a dozen famous Americans.”

They found out, of course, that Americans are the ultimate immigrants, and that even random people of vastly different races have common ancestors. To drive home the point, the show profiles Americans of different ethnicities.

The Hispanic representative is actress Eva Longoria Parker. The show reveals that she is a distant cousin to cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Their relationship does more than link the Latino and Asian cultures. It also does more than provide a funky six-degrees-of-celebrity anecdote.

The fact that Longoria Parker and Ma are cousins provides our missing link between high art and pop culture. Yes, their common ancestor passed down the talent to perform beautiful, complex musical passages of incredible intricacy. But he/she also bequeathed the ability to look hot while lounging courtside at LA Lakers games. We’re talking about a truly fascinating individual.

In any case, perhaps the best summation of the “Faces of America” project is from Henry Louis Gates (of the infamous Beer Summit, which I wrote about previously). Gates says, that when it comes to Americans, “We are all mulattos.”

It’s a good observation. And it is perhaps appropriate that he used a Spanish word to make his point.

I know what you’re thinking. Exactly what is the U.S. government’s definition of a person who is “Hispanic”? Come on, we’ve all wondered about it. Well, look no farther for edification.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget first defined a Hispanic to be “a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.”

The U.S. Census Bureau included the term on its 1960 form, but this, the government’s initial attempt at a definition, wasn’t published until 1978.  Apparently, nobody was Hispanic before then.

Now, it’s far too easy to take shots at a nameless bureaucracy that pathetically attempts to corral the messy realities of the world. But I’m going to do it anyway.

The first thing we notice in this definition is the phrase “regardless of race.” This is problematic, because I thought we were talking about race. How can it be irrelevant when it’s the whole point?

Well, if you’ve ever worked for the U.S. Census Bureau (I did, as a teenager for one horrific summer, but that’s another post), you know that Hispanics are not considered a race. We are an ethnicity.

What does that mean? I really don’t know, because the only answer I’ve ever heard is “It’s political.” Perhaps a sociologist, cultural anthropologist, or government worker out there can clue us in (please post if you know the official answer, seriously).

Clearly, any attempt at defining a large group of people who come from vastly different cultures is doomed to be incomplete, sketchy, vague, and possibly insulting. But we need to cut the government some slack here. They have to define Hispanics. Otherwise, we would have no way to measure how badly we’re doing on the economic scale, and we would have no idea who’s being acknowledged during Hispanic Heritage Month (it’s in September, by the way).

Ultimately, perhaps you’re just Hispanic if you say you are. It’s not like there are any ceremonies to induct you into the lodge or anything (although that would be cool if there were).

As I mentioned in one of my first posts, many people would not consider me (I’m half-Anglo) to be Hispanic. So I should feel validated because I fit the government’s definition. After all, my family is originally from Central America.

But slipping easily into a government-built box means nothing, of course. Independent of some red-tape organism, all of us develop our own definitions and self-images and myths and creation stories – everything we need to say, “This is me.” 

Right away, I’m likely to piss somebody off. This is because I’m wading into the whole “Hispanic” vs. “Latino” lexicon fistfight. You may not know this, particularly if you are of the Anglo persuasion, but there is an ongoing debate over which term accurately identifies people whose ancestors come from somewhere south of modern-day Texas. 

This area encompasses over twenty countries spread around Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Add to this fact that many of these countries have multiple cultures with diverse customs and even different languages, and it quickly becomes clear that coming up with one word to identify all these people is like calling everything you put in your mouth “food.”

But in America, at least, we have narrowed the choices down to “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Each comes loaded with political baggage. Say “Latino” to a brown-skinned person, and you might receive a snappish “I don’t speak Latin!” in response. Refer to someone as “Hispanic” and you could hear that the word refers to Spain, the country that “raped my ancestors” or “subjugated the Aztecs” or some other historical atrocity that constitutes a fresh wound to people who have taken too many poli-sci classes.

Special note: the word “Spanish” applies only to a native of Spain or to the language. We tend to hate it when we’re called “Spanish.”

To add to the confusion, many people want their home country to be a reference point. This is particularly big with the Dominicans, the Cubans, and the Puerto Ricans. And self-described Chicanos are likely to seethe with hot-blooded rage (now there’s a stereotype!) if they are called anything other than their preferred term.

But I simply do not have the patience or computer memory to start every post with “speaking of Ecuadorians and Bolivians and Guatemalans and Quechua speakers and Garifuna immigrants…”

So I’ve decided to use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” to encompass the whole damn ethnic pie. And I will use the words interchangeably. I do this because I think both words are perfectly legit, and there’s no need for a lucha over them. I also do this for the sake of linguistic variety in these posts. Along those lines, I will probably also sprinkle in the terms “brown scourge,” “swarthy dudes,” “hot little tamales,” and “God’s gift to the Western hemisphere,” depending on context.

Therefore, don’t look too deeply into my word choice. The politics of this blog will be clear enough without getting into the hidden subtext of terms I picked just because I was tired and began cutting and pasting at random.

Now that we have that settled, I should mention that regardless of the word I chose, there’s likely to be some debate over what person/group/socioeconomic entity I’m referring to. After all, who constitutes a Latino is often up for grabs.  For example, a half-Anglo blogger in the Midwest (ahem) is probably not whom pollsters are referring to when they laud the monolithic “Hispanic community.”

But that’s another post.