For example a lot of Latinos are white, some of them are black some of them mixed. I think Latinos are more of a cultural group not a race. I’m from Uruguay to give you guys some context.
For example a lot of Latinos are white, some of them are black some of them mixed. I think Latinos are more of a cultural group not a race. I’m from Uruguay to give you guys some context.
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Yes, Latinos are an ethnicity, not a race. But it’s a massive ethnicity in the US, so it’s one that is tracked in a way that others aren’t.
It took white Americans a while to grasp the difference between race and ethnicity when they were making rules
Because the kind of racists that actually give a shit about whiteness dont want Latinos in their club.
When people say “Latino” they usually think “Mexican,” and Mexicans have a lot of American Indian ancestry on average.
It’s a bit of a fake term because most alleged Latinos don’t really identify that way, but with their country of origin (e.g., people with Cuban ancestry are more likely to say they are Cuban than Hispanic or Latino). The term “people of color” is mostly used in the race lobby though, people want to distinguished because they want to lobby for special grants or privileges for their group. That is a minority of all Americans, but a loud one in politics.
Whiteness doesn’t always mean pale enough. The concept of whiteness goes beyond skin color.
As unfortunate as it is, pale skin generally doesn’t mean you are considered white nor afforded the privledge that whiteness comes with culturally. (I mean unfortunate that anyone is discriminated against, not that they aren’t white)
My racist dad doesn’t think anyone but Europeans or european descendants are white and he likely never would.
Tbh I think it’s because the US has a long history of associating nationality with race/ethnicity and because Latinos share some culture/language they lump everyone together. Ofc there’s like some history behind why it’s labelled as a race in some forms in the US but the racism and discrimination for being an outsider preceded that. Like just think of how Italians and the Irish were treated as outsiders back in like the early 20th century when there was a lot of them coming to the US. The difference is they don’t bother to learn the difference between someone from Panama and Columbia. I guess it depends on the country but from I can tell most Latinos, from Central America atleast, are mixed race people.
Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen (ex Tom Brady) despite being blonde and blue-eyed is considered a colored Latina. USA strange country
Demographically we consider Latino’s an ethnicity, so when you are filling out government forms they will either have a seperate “Hispanic/non-Hispanic” question, or they break things into categories like Non-Hispanic White, Hispanic White, and Hispanic Other (i.e. mixed or black). White, as a cultural concept in the US, is a very muddled term. So when some people say White they really mean Northern-European descent, and mostly Protestant Christian. Our racists are also highly inclusive in who they hate. Jews, Catholics, Immigrants, Communists/Leftists, even if you have the palest skin, if there is a hint of being one of “the others” they’ll find a reason to treat you different. So white latinos are sometimes treated as white but with an asterisk.
Color has always been the designation people who considered themselves white (implied sense of superiority) have used for non white. Non white has been a fluid designation. At the turn of the 19th century Greeks, Italians and Slavic people, people who now fall into the category of White non Hispanic, were considered non white. People of Black African descent have always been categorized as ‘colored’ or non white and how they were classified as non white was whether they had any ancestors of Black African descent, even if they appeared white–so white they could pass as white unless discovered. So, for sorting purposes all Hispanic or Latino People are POC no matter how dark or light. It is a designation rooted in racism. If it has a positive purpose that would be to recognize a group of people who are systematically discriminated against in the USA and are entitled to support under DEI. Except there is no more DEI so forget about any amends we were trying to make. Now it’s entirely just a racist category again.
It’s always funny to me when some consider Guillermo del Toro to be a POC because he is Mexican when he is…decidedly not that.
Some people are too obsessed with putting people in boxes. I find it exhausting.
People are not races. We are Human. Race is a white supremacist term that we no longer use to describe ourselves. Evolve.
While many Latinos are racially white, considering the fact that based on ethnicity, many have been denied due process and basic human rights and sent to concentration camps in El Salvador for the crime of being Latino, in many ways there isn’t the privilege accorded to white non-Latinos in the US.
That said, colorism and discrimination towards darker skinned and Afro Latinos is definitely a reality, and on the whole, white Latinos are more likely to be treated better than their darker skinned counterparts.
US ideas on race are different than most other places. But you have to understand that for a very long time in the US, “race” really just meant white or black.
Here’s a link to the official US Census in 1960, and its breakdown on racial demographics.
“White” people were 88.6% of the US population. Black people were 10.5%. Everybody else was only 0.9% of the population.
And note that “Hispanic” or “Latino” don’t even get mentioned here. They aren’t lumped in with white. They were such a tiny part of the US population that they didn’t even get their own section. The flood of immigrants from Mexico and South America is so recent that it happened within my lifetime. And since most people who are visibly Hispanic people tend to be sort of medium-light brown colored, it gets treated as a race.
They are an unrepresented and discriminated against group of people. You can think they are what ever color you see, but that is not how laws, and the country sees them.
Because the media tells them they are. Actually No one cares or notices.
The USA is such a mixed place no one really pays attention.
But the media will try to put people in a box so they feel marginalized so they can manipulate them in some way.
“White” is a political term, there’s no consistent definition of what it means. They’re PoC in America because they’re a current social underclass. For a minute there latinos were being folded into Whiteness, before they became the target for the last couple election cycles.
I honestly didn’t know they were. People get to hung up on “color.” We need to stop.
There are actually two different census groups for Hispanic people: Hispanic (white), and Hispanic (nonwhite). So, the census bureau has recognized for a long time that many Hispanic people are also white.
That said, “White” as people use it in an everyday sense is culturally defined and has shifting boundaries. It’s an ethnocultural category, not a biological one—despite being nominally based on skin tone. E.g., when I was growing up in Alabama, lots of the locals would have seen a difference between Whites, Jews, and Italians. But to my wife growing up in Manhattan, Jews and Italians were both white.
For some reason the US government refuses to add “Mestizo” as a category, even though it’s the racial identity if a huge number of Latino immigrants.
The Casta system that dominated Latin America has a lot of nuance, where whiteness is a spectrum. In the US, we adopted the “one drop rule” where whiteness is an absolute concept, albeit one that can be counterintuitively expansive at times. So the whitest person from Uruguay is, de jure “not white”.
To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “Mere factual whiteness is no reason to not be incredibly racist.”
Catholicism. We’re still not thrilled about having to let Irish and Italians into the White People Club.