Thinkies on race

[burntcopper]

Or rather, the perception of it. I work on a multitude of biological and medical journals. Different articles on everything under the sun coming through the system, all of which I skim for formatting errors. However, what's interesting? Occasionally we get articles that have to do with race (tied up in money or living conditions) with statistics attached. Or they're genetics-based. That kind of thing. We have journals on every aspect of medicine and biology under the sun here, coming in from every corner of the globe. From bioinformatics to geriatrics to cancer to environmental health and harm reduction (that one's about drugs, though we'll often get articles about AIDS in there) and equity in health. So we'll get statistics on black vs white vs asian, or inuit fishing village pregnancies vs Norwegian fishing village pregnancies to compare diet and living conditions or stress.

However, we get a lot of articles in from the US. Which is the only place I've seen that has the label 'hispanic' applied as a marker of race/genetic difference. Seriously. is there really that much genetic difference between the spanish speakers and those of italian descent? What does the whole hispanic label mean, anyway? Is what the US calls hispanic actually Latin American, which is a mix of black, european and native american? The whole concept that you can distinguish between 'white' (ie northern) european descent and spanish descent is completely ridiculous in Europe itself. We don't have the label of hispanic. You might get Meditteranean, which is more a geographical label, more applied to cookery and holidays, which involves spain, portugal, malta, morocco, italy, greece and cyprus, with turkey at a pinch. The idea that you could label any of them as a genetically distinct tribe from, say, the french or finns would get you laughed out of most places.

So can someone explain the distinction between white and hispanic?

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Hispanic in the US is usually used to refer to Latin American. From the census website: "Hispanic Origin. Persons of Hispanic origin were identified by a question that asked for self-identification of the person's origin or descent. Respondents were asked to select their origin (and the origin of other household members) from a "flash card" listing ethnic origins. Persons of Hispanic origin, in particular, were those who indicated that their origin was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or some other Hispanic origin. It should be noted that persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race."

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

.... So basically it's completely bloody useless as a biological marker.

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

So can someone explain the distinction between white and hispanic?

About US$10,000 per annum average salary?

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:g: Actually this is commonly used as an 'obvious' marker or shorthand for the 'access to decent healthcare' articles.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

As far as I understood it from my ... some liberal arts class on race, Hispanic refers to the racial group that was created from the mix of european, native american, and african that stewed in new world in south and central america (as well as mexico and the caribean after spanish and portuguese colonization). I think. Something like that.

[juleskicks.livejournal.com]

I... think it may in large part be geographical, like 'mediterranean'. To me, that's more what it means than a certain ethnicity. From 'Hispaniola', one of the Antilles islands -- which, to me, implies that 'hispanic' refers specifically to Caribbean lands. Not just the islands, but Panama, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica... the Central American countries.

Definitely a difference, to me, between 'Hispanic' and 'Spanish' -- the former referring to 'Central America' (not really a proper name, really it's the southern part of the North American continent and the bits connecting it to South America) and the Caribbean, and the latter referring to the country in Europe. Some people will get offended if you call them Hispanic, even, and at the perception that it's all the same ethnic group -- much better to just use the country, in my experience.

[sabremeister]

"Race" labels vary widely depending on where you are. F'rinstance, "Asian" to a Brit would usually mean someone from India/Pakistan, whereas to an American, it more commonly means someone from Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, etc. It's a very silly system, even in these so-called enlightened times. Even conventions that were common in the 1800s, like calling someone "Black" (and therefore being able to treat them worse than coyote-shit) when they had as few as one black parent in the last three generations, persist toady. Take Halle Berry - when she won her "Monsters Ball" oscar, it was the first time a black woman and a black man had won both the lead actor/actress oscars. And yet, in most photos of her, her skin-tone is light enough to be mistaken for maybe a Sicilian or Turk.

[mrmrsmith.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you a lil - where I come from 'black' is your average 'negroid' but if the majority of the black population in the US had to move to South Africa they would be considered 'coloured' - term used to denote mixed bred population whose ancestry includes negroid, malaysian and caucasian.

[mrslant]

Halle Berry's mother is a white English woman, as it happens.

[mrslant]

Yes, Hispanic = Latin American AFAIK. I don't think it would be at all laughable, however, to describe Turks or Greeks as a genetically distinct tribe from the French, and the Finns even more so.

[someinstant.livejournal.com]

(Dropped in via the comment you left on my LJ earlier. Thanks for that, btw.)

So. To start, I guess I should probably say that I'm a grad student in Latin American history, and I focus in particular on concepts of identity and the nation-state in Central America. I do a lot of reading on questions of race and ethnicity within the Latin American context (esp. wrt indigenous populations), but a lot of the discussions also bleed over into US-LatAm relations, so. Hopefully I'm not just blathering idly, here.

Firstly, the descriptor "hispanic" is widely misused in the United States today. Technically, the word refers to someone from Hispania, the Latin designation of the Iberian peninsula, or more specifically, Spain. However, the term "hispanic" in the US has, since 1972 (I think? somewhere around there) been used to refer to someone who speaks Spanish.

Given the relative proximity of the US to LatAm v. Spain, obviously most of these "hispanic" peoples are from Latin America, and not Spain. So what was once a discriptor of place (and ethnicity, if you like-- but not specifically race) has turned into a marker for linguistic differences. Most people I know who have family origins in LatAm prefer the designation "latino/a" to "hispanic," if given a choice.

But that doesn't really explain how/why the term "hispanic" gets linked to racial categories in the US. So. (And this is just me theorizing, so please feel free to argue.) I think what happens is that you have an immigrant population which (a) doesn't speak English, (b) doesn't look stereotypically "white," and (c) has cultural practices different from the WASP majority of the US. Obviously, these immigrants come from any number of places-- Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, etc-- with any number of backgrounds. But most of them speak Spanish (nevermind that there are vast regional differences), and most practice Catholicism (gross generalization, but useful), and most have dark-ish hair and tan skin (except for all those people who completely don't). So looking at the similarities and ignoring the differences, people said, Ah. Race.

But the question isn't so much What are the racial differences? or even Why confuse ethnicity with race? (because I think that's what's going on here), but rather: Why is it important to be able to identify these people as belonging to a monolithic race?