Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

king_of_the_nothing t1_jaa3o8o wrote

I'm always curious about the definition used for Latino or Hispanic. Is it a language group of people who speak Spanish as their first language? Is it an immigration group based on a person's or an ancestor's country of origin? If the ancestor's country of origin, how far back? What level of inter-mixing removes the Latino label? Is it like Native Americans? Where it takes between 1/4 and 1/16 (depending on the tribe) bloodline to be a tribal member.

It is especially problematic combined with Asian-American, which clearly is based on area of origin regardless of race (people of Chinese, Iraqi, Indian and Russian descent are all Asian-American), and Black which is purely a race based term. African-American (which would include non-Black people of Arab and Berber descent) would be analogous to Asian and Native American.

It is a pretty chart, but without well defined categories, it doesn't really convey good information.

3

jannik323 t1_jaaajmu wrote

well the concept of "race" is silly and ive never seen anyone define it 100%. i think its fine for statistics and such,but shouldnt be used anywhere else. first time i heard about the idea was in history class , about hitler and his race theory.....i think that tells something already

6

king_of_the_nothing t1_jaavi5f wrote

I'm glad you see my point. Race is a social construct. That construct changes over time. What use is this data without defining what is being measured? In the decision of Alvarez v Lemon Grove (1931) the judge refers to people of Mexican descent as 'one race of White people'. White wasn't a race in 1931. Greek, Slav and German were all different races of White people.

We do need to talk about race because there are racists in the world, but we need to be sure we all have the same understanding of the words we use.

1