My first reaction to the story that Hispanics have "edged past" African-Americans as the largest minority in the United States was to wonder just how anyone could tell. What, after all, is a Hispanic-American? Cubans, Colombians, and Chileans, for example, don't have all that much in common. What do we do with the nice gentleman around the corner with the Italian name who nonetheless emigrated from Argentina and whose mother-tongue is Spanish? Is a racial category at all meaningful if it can be used to describe men dark as the soft, enfolding night and men fair as the implacable sun?
The Western Hemisphere is a mongrel nation, a bubbling cauldron of migration (voluntary and forced) and miscegenation (some voluntary and some forced), from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle. The Spanish speaking "half" of the hemisphere is diverse beyond my capacity to find even an approximate metaphor. All the ethnic shorthands begin to break down and seem more and more like nonsense when subjected to scrutiny, but "Hispanic" is practically hysteric in its complete disregard for historical experience or geographic continuity.
All that flew through my mind as I read the headline. And of course that is not enough.
That Hispanic-Americans now outnumber African-Americans is a testament to another continuity, that of self-defined cultural awareness. The US Census allows people a certain self-determination, to select the ethnic category into which they would place themselves.
Naturally, the Census provides a set of ready categories to assist us in our definitions, a ready-made bed we can choose to lie in, categories so that we might find ourselves and tell our brief stories and allow ourselves to be counted. There is something very flattering about being asked who we are and, that other essential question, where we come from. We all have histories that stretch back beyond human memory, every illustrious one of us, histories that culminate here and now in you and I. We almost feel compelled to use those categories that will be understood by our neighbors and by our representatives, otherwise, if we try to use alien categories or no categories at all, the story of who we are might well be lost.
Posted by MartialI was thinking the same darn thing. Richard Rodriguez, in Brown, attributes the "Hispanic" classification to the invention by the Nixon administration to find an easy bureaucratic way of implementing affirmative action.
And, as you suggest, "hispanic" is not the only flawed category. At least so says this "white" guy.
Posted by: Kevin Moore on January 24, 2003 07:33 PMI disagree with you. Cubans, Colombians and Chileans have a lot in common. We Hispanics have more in common than we do in difference. You need to get your facts staright. You are probably jealous that we have surpassed blacks. And yes, we are a proud RACE. All races, including black come in all shades and colors. Blacks themselves come from Africa-America, the black west Indies and Africa itself; don't have on Hispanics, and Italian surnames you question, let me remind you that the Spanish language has Latin, European and African roots. You will find Portuguese, Italian, Indian and African words in Spanish. You are ignorant....
From a beautiful, young, Colombian and Venezuelan mami (and we have a lot in common)!
Posted by: the Colombian-Venezuelan mami on July 19, 2004 02:03 AM