What should we call people whose heritage is sort of Iberian-ish and who hail from South of the border? Gallup has the answer:
For now, anyway, most of the respondents really don't care what they're called. But the ones with opinions mostly prefer Hispanic, while the popularity of the uber-woke Latinx continues to be nonexistent.
But don't give up, my woke friends. Fifty years ago, Black folks mostly preferred negro, and the ones who didn't were split between colored and Black. So you might yet win the day. It will just take a while.
How does a native speaker of Spanish pronounce Latinx? The word sounds just awful to my ear.
Not sure, but a Portuguese speaker likely could.
As would a speaker of one of the Mayan languages, who would pronounce it something like "la-teensh."
Catalan would also work with the word.
I was listening to a podcast recently where the guest was a Mexican-American comic (whose name I cannot remember), and he was talking about how silly it was to add the X to the end, since it doesn't translate well at all in Spanish.
I currently live in Mexico and spend much of my time in a pretty young and liberal social circle of Mexicans and foreigners, and there has been an noticeable increase in people using an X (in writing) to replace the o/a in certain nouns (e.g., "amigxs"). When speaking, that sounds sort of like "amigues" (or "amigase" in English pronunciation).
Native fluent romance language speakers -excepting those acculterated to Anglo barbarisms - recoil in horror.
If one wants Anglo-non-gender options such as Latine exist.
I'd drop the bit about people who "hail from South of the border." A lot of Hispanic people in the US, especially in New Mexico and Texas but also in California, aren't descended from forebears who crossed the border headed north; instead, the border crossed them when Texas broke away from Mexico and later when the US conquered most of the Southwest. These folks aren't immigrants or even the children of immigrants. And a popular name for them in parts of Texas is "Tejano."
That is a very good point that the racist trolls always fail to admit.
Give me a break whiner. Like "they" don't know that. 75% of Mexicans came over here after 1900.
Spades, it appears either your arithmetic skills or your logic skills may be lacking.
Your statement implies that 25% didn't. That 25% is probably a pretty big number, y'know.
Also never called out anyone by name, Spadesofgrey self identified hahahaha.
Right here, though I wasn't born in texas but much farther north. Point is, my family has been American longer than most of yours.
I use Hispanic but don't really care what is used. Except Latinx. If you use Latinx you are saying Spanish language is bad and you are bad for speaking it. That doesn't seem very progressive, does it?
Good points Thorwald and Special Newb.
I am Hispanic, roots in Spain (Central Plateau and Province of Castellón) and , and not from 'south of the border.' Spanish is a gendered language: LatinX is grammatically incorrect and smells of elite, liberal disconnect.
Elite Anglo-Left cultural imperialism really.
It's a anglo-centric barbarism dressed up in faddish clothes but remains Anglo-cultural centric
Yeah. "Latinx" is clearly not Spanish, but it's not English to most English speakers, either.
Santa Fe was first settled by the Spaniards in 1609. There is a story that when a local sought to establish a chapter of Mayflower Descendants, the local paper ran it under the lead: "Immigrant Society to meet".
Still remember the incredulity around the bar on Cheers when it came up that Santa Fe was founded a century before Boston.
How many/what fraction is “a lot?”
Vox had an explainer on this years ago.
If I recall correctly, Hispanic is if people spoke Spanish in your heritage, so most of Latin America, but not, for example, Brazil.
And Latin as recently as about the 1960s used to refer to people who spoke one of the romance languages - you'd see cartoon jokes about a "Latin Lover" and the guy could be French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.
Language evolves.
In fact, wasn't Latin America a coinage of the restored French Empire when they were trying to reassert themselves in the Western Hemisphere, going so far as to elevate the younger brother of the heir to Austria-Hungary as Mexican head of state?
Yes, yes it was. Also the episode commemorated on Cinco de Mayo.
Although the term was pushed by the French under Napolean III, to try to say they are Latin too, I think it was first coined in Chile.
See I've always thought that's dumb. Hispanic should be "relating to the Roman Province of Hispania" so the ENTIRE peninsula and its offshoots/colonies etc.
By the same token. Latino is generally used to refer to those from south and central America, including Brazil. But not those from France, Italy and Romania.
So.a direct decedent of the actual ancient Latin tribe, now an italian, would not be a latino if they come to America.
I also think it is somewhat silly to include those coming directly from modern day Spain in the same term to refer to those from the former Spanish colonies
While browsing Wikipedia, I found yet more terms: "Hispano" and "Neomexicano."
"The Hispanos of New Mexico, also known as Neomexicanos (Spanish: Neomexicano), or "Nuevomexicanos" are an ethnic group primarily residing in the U.S. state of New Mexico, as well as the southern portion of Colorado. They are typically variously of Iberian, Criollo Spaniard, Mestizo, and Genízaro heritage, and are descended from Spanish-speaking settlers of the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, which makes up the present day U.S. states of New Mexico (Nuevo México), southern Colorado, and parts of Arizona, Texas, and Utah. The descendants of these New Mexican settlers make up an ethnic community of more than 340,000 in New Mexico, with others throughout the historical Spanish territorial claim of Nuevo México."
"... In New Mexico, the predominant term for this ethnic group has always been hispano, analogous to californio and tejano. In New Mexico, the Spanish-speaking population (of colonial descent) was always proportionally greater than those of California and Texas. The term is commonly used to differentiate those who settled the area early, around 1598 to 1848, from later Mexican migrants. It can also refer to anyone of "Spanish or Indo-Hispanic descent native to the American Southwest." Since the spread of the terms Hispanic and Latino since 1970 to encompass all peoples in the United States (and often beyond) of Spanish-speaking background, the terms Nuevomexicanos, Novomexicanos, and Neomexicanos are sometimes used in English to refer to this group, but this is less common in New Mexico."
Don't leave out the Bascuaneses of Northern Nevada, Southern Oregon, & Idaho. They don't have names from Hispania, but they have yet to embrace their Old Country cousins's militant separatism. So, they still consider themselves as much heirs to Cortes & Serra as not.
During a road trip across Northern Nevada (Salt Lake City to Lake Tahoe) I stopped and had a meal at a Basque restaurant in Elko. I recall it was pretty good.
The Basque separatism movement seems to have largely quieted down. ETA announced a cessation of armed activity following a peace conference held in 2011. A more progressive central government allowing greater autonomy (including the use of the Basque language in the schools) appears to have been effective in the Basque region, if not so much in Catalan.
When did Spain remove lead from gasoline in the better question.
Spicks???
No, Cholo.
Ok. I call Mexicans mexicans. We can laugh it up with some of de Soto's ancestors.
And they call you pendejo.
How is this clown not banned yet? Now he’s throwing around racial slurs. Wtf.
I am of Hispanic lineage: however, I am not from ‘south of the border’ but rather my grandfather moved to the US from Madrid. Further, the term Latinx within my circle of friends, I have a graduate degree from a so-called elite university, is used as signaling of wokeness. It is my observation, within the broader/non university educated Hispanic community, Latinx is never used and frankly creates award looks (I have seen it at a political event).
Wouldn’t this just make you Spanish, not Hispanic
Why refer to them in this collective way at all?
Is there any place that refers to Americans, British, Canadians and Australians as 'anglonics', 'anglo-x', or 'anglilios', or 'angloglotics'?
There is a lot of difference between the Dominican Republic and Argentina.
Hispanic captures it, as with the exception of the Ibarras & such, the landmass south of the Rio Bravo delta Norte (except Brazil) has people with roots in Hispania.
'Anglopolozo' captures it as well.
The term you're looking for is "Anglophones" and it is in common use.
Not in reference to individuals.
In the southwest, " anglo" is the common term used to refer to whites except for Hispanic whites. And, yes, used to refer to individuals. I have heard it used by a Hispanic in reference to a recent Russian Jewish immigrant who does not speak English. Some Irish Americans are not very happy being referred to as Anglo.
Here's something I once heard in New Mexico:
The old-timer Anglos hate the newcomers.
The Spaniards (descendants of the colonial settlers) hate the Anglos.
The Mexicans hate the Spaniards.
The Native Americans hate the Mexicans.
On Spanish language radio and tv channels do they refer to 'anglos' in the same generic sense you can hear 'hispanic' used in mainstream US media?
Individual as a langauge speaker but it doesn't have an ethnic tag.
Sure it is. It is commonly used in Canada to refer to a person from Quebec of English-speaking descent, everybody outside of Quebec being presumed to be anglophone. It is used to refer to an English-speaker in a context of the (endless) debates in Canada over language An anglophone, a francophone (and in Quebec) an allophone (other).
Are they referred to that way in police calls?
We do refer to people of Irish, Scottish and Welsh heritage as "Celtic" and to a good number of East Europeans as "Slavs". And yes, there are notable differences in the particular national cultures that make up those ethnolinguistic groups.
The media doesn't popularly refer to them in those terms as a collective interest group, I think is the distinction.
Historically I think it was about gathering all Spanish speaking residents in the US into a united political group to advocate for their civil rights and then non-Hispanic pols using the term as an easy shorthand to avoid treating the various subgroups as having various interests and different experiences.
Nobody uses the term Anglox or what but we do for sure lump folks together as WASPs.
I always thought WASPs was restricted to upper class mainline Protestants.
Hah - the Angloglotics is a nice equivalent barbarism.
You should have included the part where they asked people which one they'd pick if they had to choose:
Hispanic 57%
Latino 37%
Latinx 5%
No opinion 2%
Latinx is an extremely stupid word creation. The term we settled on for Blacks, African American is well chosen by comparison; it lines up nicely with "Italian American", "Irish American", "Asian American" etc.
I guess "x" stands for the ending "o" or "a" that indicates a person's gender. Anglos are not used to gendered languages (or rather they believe--falsely--that theirs is not gendered) and so some people who are too feminist for their own good have come up with the gender neutral but unpronounceable "x".
Anglx sounds like the hot shot debut at Coachella 2023.
Why is someone whose ancestors are from Italy “Italian American” but a person whose ancestors are from Japan “Asian American”?
They aren't. Korean-American, Chinese American, you see these words commonly. Asian is just the broad brush term.
When I was in Hawaii in the '80s, the term Japanese-American was common but many people preferred the term American of Japanese Ancestry.
That is just way too long to say or write. Hard to think that such a term would ever get common usage because of that fact.
Today, although it seems that "African American" is generally considered now the more correct term, I find that "black " is still more commonly used in every day speech. And I think that is largely just because it is shorter. African American is a little bit of a tongue twister to say fast.
I am not sure if others see the same, but I have noticed that you hear African American in common speech more from whites worrying about any sort of offense and blacks usually just say black.
I use black because it makes sense. My best friend is of Haitian descent. Another friend was born in Africa. Most of my friends are likely descendants of slaves. These lineages are not all the same but they are all Black.
I watched the PBS special Asian Americans, and it went into the history of the term. It was student activists in the 1960s who gave rise to the Asian American movement - students whose ancestors came from Asia all banded together to protest for civil rights including supporting the civil rights movements of the 1960s and demanded that the University of California system set up Asian American studies programs so that they could learn the history and struggles of their peoples.
So it was a means to ally together for political power. I think the term endures today because although it's a very fast growing group in America, the younger generations of the newer immigrants are following in the footsteps of the 1960s demonstrators to gain recognition as an important group deserving of study and a group that wants their political interests listened to before they will vote for a candidate.
Today "Asian American" means people who have biological and cultural roots originating in Asia. I think from a census point of view this fits too. From there, people can assign additional political meaning as they like.
Colloquially, no one calls out "___-American"; this is primarily used to be politically correct in polite company with mixed races.
"Asian-American" is mostly used in the context to artificially group Asians together because, well, a very long time ago Greeks had defined a group of people in Turkey as Asians, and then a little later Europeans (16th C or maybe earlier) decided that they needed to further disambiguate God's children from other races (and owing to their lack of knowledge of the true size and geography of the world) chose to separate the races along certain geographic assumptions that, to this day, we still call "continents".
And wouldn't you know it, the Eurocentric Olympics have five rings symbolizing this false separation of continents along the lines of color: Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. And for a brief 2-year period, the colors are aligned to, you guessed it, racist geopolitical biases: Blue for Europe, Black for Africa, Yellow for Asia, Green for Oceania, and Red for the Americas.
I mean, can you imagine the horror of trying to rectify the classification of continents by grouping Europe, Africa, and Asia together into a "continent" we might call, "Afro-Eurasia"? Ask most anyone and they'll tell you that Asia-Africa-Europe is a distinctly "cultural" distinction and therefore, the continents should align to cultural identity.
Anyway, among friends, we call ourselves just Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, etc.
I think you might be extrapolating too far in assigning racist motives in the 16th century for the continents. They were fairly established conceptually well before that. And the separation of Africa as a seperate continent is sort of obvious geographically given the small peninsula connecting it with Asia.
The real issue is in dividing Eurasia, whether it should be and how. Although it is really one big continent geographically, given its size and that almost all the known world's population lived there at the time, it is not at all surprising that it was conceptually divided.
But how it is clearly that is eurocentric and specifically Greek centric.
How would Eurasia have been divided if world culture had been dominated by china? Maybe into one east Asian " continent with borders of the Himalayas and the central Asian steppe, with all else ( Europe, south Asia and middle east) in one other big continent?
If you were cutting Eurasia in two, that might make more sense culturally as historically india probably had more connections to the middle eastern / Europe sphere than to east Asia.
You are correct that for two years, the Olympics did assign the colors that way. But it seems little evidence that such was intended at the establishment of the Olympics. The 5 rings were chosen to represent the 5 continents ( with both Americas as one). The colors were chosen as those five colors plus the white background could be used to duplicate any national flag ( I guess at the time- do not some have orange now?).
You must be kidding.
Did you not understand that I was saying it is simply a stretch to claim that the division between europe and Asia has much to do with exploration age racism? That is not of course claiming that such racism did not exist, but it is not the cause of something that had been fairly established since ancient times.
You cut off what I said in context to make it seem that I was questioning whether there was racist motives for things in the 16th century. When I was simply questioning whether that had anything to do with the specific issue of continent division.
Do you have any citation or evidence making you think that?
But, now that you bring it up, ascribing racism as we understand it today to the 16th century might be somewhat premature. The sort of concepts of European racial superiority were only just beginning to evolve at that time.
Geez, you mean I have to learn another label to find the grocery aisle where the tortillas and refried beans are? I always thought “Hispanic” was clueless, but “Latinx” is just illiterate. Do woke people speak Spanish without gendered pronouns and adjectives? That would not be Spanish, which is a beautiful language just as it is.
The "woke movement" was a joke in 1970.
The woke movement in 1970 was Jesus Christ Superstar.
I call them by their names. Juan, Blanca, and Angel. I never refer to the group collectively. Perhaps I could call them based on where they live. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, USA etc. I'm not fond of calling people names by their racial or ethnic group.
"Hispanic" is more of a linguistic term, since that's about the only thing (currently or by ancestry) the people included in it have in common.
Iamr4man,
Japanese American is a term used often enough. I do agree that Asian or Asian American is just silly because the cultures and racial groups throughout Asia are way too different to be relevant as a seperate group. Lumping people from Turkey, Iran, India, China, Indonesia and Japan together makes zero sense.
Referring to East Asians and lumping together Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and probably Vietnamese and Thais together as at least they have some similar cultural and ethnic roots.
I sometimes think of Filipinos as sort of Hispanic in many ways as have some similarities culturally.
The new food network created by the Spanish is interesting. Chili's made their way from Mexico to Hungary for paprika and, via the Philippines, to flavor what we know as Szechuan cuisine.
The fact that Gallup spent the time and money to even conduct this poll shows that a bunch of Zoomers on Twitter have far too much influence.
Personally, I find pretty much all of the terms we have for Hispanics and African Americans ( including those) to be poor. But I tend to defer to whatever name that group prefers as long as it is reasonable ( if a group wants to be called the "superior ones", sorry not happening).
I do not like African American especially as it is first too long and second is just a so incomplete description of the people. Italian American at least is a fair description of the community, which can be described as melding Italian culture with the general American culture.
But the community in the usa consisting of the descendants of former slaves is so much more than can be described as just being African culture infused with the general American culture. It is a whole new unique culture that deserves it's own term distinct from just being African or American.
And a recent immigrant from Nigeria really does not belong grouped with them.
Some are pushing for Latine (la-tin-eh). I find the arguments compelling--it's pronounceable, can be incorporated into gendered Spanish words, and has better aesthetics. Vox did a nice cartoon explainer and there are other articles on the web.
Why add the extra letter? "Latin" works just fine, without any need for neologisms.
"Latin" already has usages, from the ancient Roman language, to the various culrures speaking a Romance language today, which do not really fit.
Forget introducing the whole gender thing into every nook and cranny of our language. Yes, things like chairperson or chair, police officer, fire fighter, etc., are good and natural language innovations to minimize gender expectations, but for at least a century, nobody has imagined that "mankind" included only men or in any way implied supremacy of males vs females. Like "man," depending on context, "Latino" can refer to a man or men, or it can include both genders. It's just fine for either purpose. More than half of new doctors are women. I believe that's true of the legal profession, too. Expectations are changing fast in historical terms. Geez, learn to pick your battles.
I teach in Los Angeles and this question comes up every year because I have assignments on identity and its meaning for each student.
Speaking generally and anecdotally, over the years, my students overwhelming prefer Mexican or Salvadoran. Like around 90%. Some of them insist upon it and reject the collective Hispanic & Latino. Many of them aren't all that familiar with the Hispanic v Latino arguments, but don't consider it something that involves them because they regard both terms as labels that white people use to refer to them, rather than words they would use to refer to themselves.
Only a few students in recent years use Latinx. If words gets around that adults generally or white adults specifically are annoyed by it, it will become a lot more popular.
Growing up in LA the word that I saw/heard used was "Chicano/a." Generally, I go with what people call themselves, or use Mexican American or whatever their heritage hails from. (I'm Slovak American on my father's side fwiw.)
Also, the whole Black/Negro thing - I vividly remember Lionel being told, on All in the Family, that while he preferred "black" (I think? or African American?) and chided his elders about not using it, they ( his Aunt/uncle? Father/mother?) fought hard to use Negro and felt it was a badge of honor for them. (At the time I wasn't entirely clear what they were talking about, but Lionel - and likely most of the audience - knew exactly what it was.) Again, I try to use what people want to be referred with, and it make quite an impression on my (white) impressionable mind.
I have read ( not positive it is true ) that in the days of slavery, the now unspeakable N word would have been considered more of a neutral descriptive or slang and not overly insulting ( outside of the insult of the fact that they were a slave). And if a white person reality wanted to use an insulting term, black was the real insult.
I saw somewhere the N-word initially carried the meaning of 'spirit' or 'ghost', which was used to mean 'foreigner', and in this sense was used in India to refer to Indians.
Hadn't heard that one but have heard other explanations of a possible origin of the n word where it presumably was not derived as a slang from Negro.
It just seems so obviously close to Negro as to make any other explanation hard to believe.
Chicano is specifically mexican descent
On a related issue, asking seriously, what is the most acceptable term today to refer to the ethnic group of those descended from the peoples originally inhabiting the area of west Africa below the Sahara?
The old technical term was Negro I think ( although that term was also used to describe what are now called African Americans) . But using that term seems too politically sensitive today.
"West African " seems somewhat confusing as today it would include the bulk of the inhabitants of east and south Africa too.
Is there another term in common use?
In my neck of the woods where there are a number of immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa mostly they are referred to by the country they came from or the children as say Nigerian American, Ghanaian American etc. though in official record keeping they would be put in the "African American" bucket.
Ironically I've read and heard on NPR about African Americans turning back to calling themselves Black, most folks noting that they do not have much in common with recent immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. Up in Canada they do use the term Black or Black Canadian collectively to group any person of the African Diaspora.
I wish terms that refer to skin color to describe a group would fade away. If you really have to have a term to describe an ethnic or racial group, it seems like focusing on skin color versus perhaps more relevant cultural and genetic differences would be a more positive way to do it.
I am somewhat surprised that it seems there is no common term invented for the community called African American that gives it the full respect it deserves as a truly unique and distinct culture and not just a simple overlay of American over west African roots.
Especially when the terms used are not even correct. Very few "blacks" here in the usa have anywhere close to black skin. And, unless you are albino, whites do not have white skin. And the old description of east asians as yellow never made much sense. I have a hard time really seeing much difference in skin color between " whites" and "yellows ".
West African vs east African seems pretty straightforward. I throw in southern African to distinguish from somebody from the country of South Africa. When was the term "Negro" used to distinguish between the inhabitants of East and West Africa?
What we can be sure of is if you use "Latinx," you will piss off 97% of your readers with your obnoxious sense of superiority, and they will not care what you have to say. If the opinion those 3% -- if even that -- are more important than the overwhelming majority of your audience, well . . . .
Hey, give me credit. I managed to write a whole paragraph on this subject without using the word "woke."
The only place where "Latinx" has any useage/traction is on college campuses where people want to be inclusive of those who identify as trans or non-binary, many of whom face a huge amount of discrimination and rejection in conservative/Catholic Hispanic culture. So it's saying "we see you and accept you." If that gets you all riled up for some reason, I really can't help you. There are certainly other, more consequential things to gripe/be worried about in the world.
Isn't that adding a whole element to it that's simply not pertinent to most conversations?
As when someone or other keeps adding more and more letters to LGBTQ++.
You people already took away the banh mi sandwich.
Where will it end?
Going back to Kevin's post and the last point, I think there is a big difference between the popularization of African American and the potential future popularization of the term latinx, which makes it very unlikely it will become a popular term.
African American was largely being pushed from within the black/ colored / negro community of the time as a substitute for those other terms. I think Jesse Jackson was influential in pushing the term. And, if I remember correctly, it's adoption was mostly based on two somewhat contradictory concepts and different factions had different purposes.
One motive was to try to identify as just another immigrant group like Italian Americans, and by using the same sort of terminology deemphasize race or skin color. More along the color blind type philosophy of MLK and not like current woke thinking.
The other aspect was emphasizing the african connection
Those aren't Iberians. They are Aztecs. Sure Spain conquered the region and everyone speaks Spanish, but that does not mean that Spain depopulated two continents and moved in Europeans to replace them.
Oh but they tried to whip them out via the diseases they brought with them from Europe. There's a lot less Aztecs today then there were in pre-columbian times.