Quote:
Originally Posted by AlphaFrog
If you want to go right to the root of these designations, Latino could describe someone Mexican, Brazilian, or even Italian and Portuguese, because it means someone who speaks a Latin-based language. I know someone will probably argue with that, but I don't see anything wrong with calling a spade a spade.
Meanwhile, I had no idea WTF to put for my husband on the census. There was a question about being "Hispanic", but then the next question was about race, and it said that Hispanic was an ethnicity not a race (you can't tell them that, though - iLa Raza!). I finally ended up settling on "Native American - Zapoteca". I looked it up later, and technically, that's not off-base, because he's a Mesoamericano - which are people indigenous to middle Mexico-Central America, and are therefore Native Americans (even if they're not Native (NORTH) Americans.
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My husband is Brazilian and boy does he get riled up if he's every referred to as Hispanic or even Latino! The Hispanic objection is because they speak Portuguese and not Spanish. The Latino objection I have not gotten a clear answer on, I think it's more of colloquial usage usually assumes Spanish speaking and not the Latin-based roots.
We've had several people take the liberty of checking the Hispanic box for him on mortgage applications and the like. 1- don't assume based on looks and 2- people aren't required to provide that information, so it should be up to him. He gets even more riled up about that one!
Since there isn't a "Brazilian" box, I just check "Other"
He would probably check Caucasian out of defiance but he isn't filling out the forms, so...
And back to your regularly scheduled programming... I'll be curious to see this one play out. I've always thought that (albeit a very small) part of the reason Puerto Rico, Guam, etc aren't states is because they don't want to deal with changing the flag. But that's the cynical part of me coming out.