We now return you to our reguray…reglur…regulalry… the next thread.
Yeesh! Do people who care what people call them realize what a pain it is for those of us who’d prefer not to offend? Trust me, I’m getting to the point where if anybody takes offense because I use a term that was okay last year but isn’t this year I’m going to tell them to fuck off. It’s enough to start the nicest guy to start muttering about Political Correctness.
It’s the words “lazy” and “damn” that make that statement insulting, not “Mexican.”
“Hispanic” and “latino” are terms in use in the United States, not in Latin America. Some Latin Americans are familiar with the terms (just as they’re familiar with other American colloquialisms), but I cannot imagine a Latin American using the terms to describe themselves. You don’t become latino or hispanic until you immigrate to the United States.
It’s because it emphasizes Spanish heritage as opposed to indigenous heritage. On the East Coast, where most hispanics are Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Dominican, (and have very little if any Native American ancestry) the term is still widely accepted.
A Chicano is an American of political descent who identifies with a certain political and social movement. So I never call someone Chicano unless I know they identify as such. My point about Chicanos was that it’s inaccurate for them to refer to themselves as Mexican. The idea that “Chicano” is considered derogatory by radical Mexican-Americans is definitely news to me. Are they renaming all the Chicano Studies departments? It’s been decades since anglos have used that term as an insult.
Tell that to those workers from El Salvidor I used in the example. Again, the WAY the term ‘mexican’ is used (by some whites) is defintely insulting. I’m not sure how to convey that to you…it just is.
Funny…I always thought of myself as ‘hispanic’ when I lived in Mexico (though admittedly I thought of myself more as simply Mexican if I thought about it at all). Or doesn’t that count? Last I checked, it was in ‘latin america’ also, no? It certainly seemed in wide use in Senora where I was born…and that was BEFORE I immigrated to the US.
Well, there you have me. I live in New Mexico, so am not as familiar with how things are in the East, nor with other hispanic cultures in America.
In my old neighborhood (when I lived in South Tucson), having a hispanic call you ‘chicano’ was a matter of course. Having a white person do so could be and often was considered an insult. Are they renaming them all the Chicano Studies departments? No idea. I’m not even saying they should to be honest, as the term doesn’t bother ME much. But I know that all the old ‘colored studies’ departments have been renamed…several times, no? People get touchy when they think they are being insulted or degraded.
I’m just telling you, from my own experiences, that depending on the situation, ‘chicano’ can be definitely construed as an insult (depending on who’s saying what and why), least where I’m from. Same with using the term ‘mexican’ loosely. Now, if that doesn’t jive with your own experiences, we’ll just leave it at that.
-XT
dropzone makes a good point about chasing ever-changing “correct” words. Since people rarely publicize* (or agree on) the words they have decided to consider preferred or taboo, it is pretty easy to trip over “mistakes” wholly inadvertantly. (Consider the Oriental vs Asian disputes. There are people who are vehemently against the use of the word Oriental (although their “rug” claim is so much bushwa), yet every one of the first and second generation Chinese, Koreans, Singaporeans(?), and Japanese people I know use oriental rather than Asian. I have no problem using Asian, but it seems absurd to see someone else chastised for using the same that that members of that group use.)
Points have been made in this thread regarding latino, chicano, and hispanic and it would appear that even those who would be labled by the terms do not have the same understanding regarding their offensiveness.
At that point, while I will never deliberately use a word that I know is offensive, I refuse to apologize for using an innocent word that some tiny group has chosen to let offend them.
- Ironically, one occasion when a group did announce a preference was the declaration by a conference headed by Jesse Jackson that they preferred African-American. Yet, while the news media accepted his declaration, the majority of blacks continue to prefer the word black (by about 60% to 25% with the remainder divided among Afro-American and several others).
Ah, I missed this earlier.
I agree with you whole heartedly to be honest. I mentioned it because I know of folks out there who are offended by such terms, and I even have to admit that I’ve been offended occationally by the derogatory use of the word ‘mexican’…which is why I brought it up. It was HOW it was said, not what was said. And I guess that goes for all such terms.
At my last family re-union in Mexico I casually mentioned ‘hispanic’ and got blasted by several of my cousins, who stoutly told me that ‘we’ are to use ‘latino’ now (for god knows what reason…they didn’t seem to know). Frankly I DID tell them to fuck off, and it nearly came to blows (I’ve appearently ‘sold out’, blah blah blah). I know a lot of folks that walk around bristling for a fight with a huge chip on their shoulders…many of them in my own family.
-XT
Wow. So Hispanic is bad because y’all are not from Spain, but Latino is OK because it comes from Latin America, which is called that because the people speak…a latin language from, well, Spain. Hmmm. Both terms seem to have basically the same ‘problem’.
I use 'em interchangeably, but I’m just a dumb cracker. 
Actually, I suppose I use Hispanic when referring to the whole group, and Latino for a person.
Sorry about people using “Mexican” as some sort of slur thing. We have increasing numbers of Mexicans in NYC but traditionally our Latino population is Puerto Rican and more recently Dominicans. And they tell jokes about each other.
I live in El Paso, Texas, which is around 80% Hispanic. Hispanic is by far the most common of term. ‘Latino’ is rarely used here, though its been popping up more in the media. “Chicano” is generally seen as a politically loaded term, though its not meant to be. If somone identifies as a “Chicano” people often make a whole set of political and social assumptions - that the person is a left-winger and an ‘activist’ and very conscious of ethnic issues. The people I know who prefer to be called Chicano object to “Hispanic” because of its association with Spain and the brutal colonization by Spain.
I think its pretty strange that perople reject “Hispanic” as Eurocentric and prefer “Latino” in its stead. In my mind “Latino” would not only include Spaniards and Portuguese, but Italians as well. I think people use these terms as overriding labels - I mean people often speak of “whites, blacks, Asians, AND Hispanics”, yet there are black Puerto Ricans, Mayan Mexicans, Chinese Cubans and many Hispanics of white European roots as well. But the term “Hispanic” hides the ethnic and racial diversity of Iberia and Latin America - which are truly ‘melting pot’ societies, and both “Hispanic” and “Latino” gives many people the idea that there is just one homogenous brown race from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.
This may offend people, but as a Mexican American, I don’t feel a very strong sense of commonality with Cuban-Americans or Puerto Ricans, other than language issues. Their cultures are just as ‘foreign’ to me as many non-Hispanic cultures. Sure there are common features, but not enough that I feel automatically ‘at home’. And frankly, most Puerto Rican or Cuban people have told me similar things. Our cooking, music, clothing, dialects, politics, and even spiritual beliefs are very different. But I guess to many non-Hispanic people, we all probably seem the same.
Also, “Mexican” is not a slur, but here on the border we usually reserve that term for actual Mexican nationals. Some people have the idea that all 20 million or so Mexican descended Americans see themselves as “Mexicans” first, and even wish to reincorporate “Aztlán” into Mexico. The fact is a lot of second generation and beyond Mexicans feel like “gringos” when they go to Mexico just as Anglo-Americans do. When I am in Cd. Juarez across the border, it is glaringly obvious who are the native Mexicans and who the Hispanics from the other side are. Maybe further north, this isn’t in such sharp focus, but here people see the differences.
Just my dos pesos worth…
So many people have been agreeing with me lately that I’m going to have to say something stupid just to stay in practice. 
… after all, we all know that the Jews don’t actually have to be there to run the place.
Take a look. We’ve were pushing Manifest Desitny here in the U.S. in the 1830s and 1840s when there were only about 30 Jews here in the U.S. We’ve been running the show ever since Jamestown. You know why the lost colony of Roanoke disappeared? Because they settled on the spot where we wanted to put our shul.
In short, we are in charge and have been since the beginning of time.
We’re the capitialists to the communists. To the communists, we’re capitilists. To the slaves, we’re slave owners (heck, we control the slave trade, remember?). To the slave owners, we’re radical abolitionists. To the libertarian, we’re the ones who are having the government encroach on your lives. To the big-government lovers, we’re the people who are trying to minimize government. We’re lazy and unmotivated, yet we also want to control the world. The radical right thinks of Jews as rabid abortinists and the radical left thinks of us as rabid fundamentalists.
The truth of the matter, ladies and gentlemen, is that we’re all that. Our plan for taking over the world is to simply confuse the heck out of everyone and when you’re all confused, march in and start forcing everyone to eat bagels, cream cheese and lox. Once we control your diet, then everything else will fall into place.
So let Aztlan think that they’ll be free of our control. Feh. We control the media, we control the government, we control the press, we control the banks, we control the schools. And, we control the bagel industry. The bagel trucks are lined up ready to go. They won’t know what him them. 
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Zev Steinhardt
Did I say too much?
Dammit, Zev!
Next time we need a minyan I’m not calling you!
You’re out of the club!
So the Illuminati have been hiding in plain sight 'neath my patrician WASP nose all this time? O! how could I have been such a fool?
*Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do.
Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do.
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do.
Who robs cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do. *
Someone needs to tell these Aztlani’s how globalization has made their movement irrelevant. 
From now on I think the only politically correct terms for people should be color coded. From now on I’d prefer for my people to be referred to as Pantone 457.
Erek
Totally true. You are not dumb.
I prefer hispanic but I dont mind.
And calling a non-Mexican a Mexican is like calling a Canadian an American. And you know how Canadians feel about being called American.*
*Even tho they’re technically American (from North America)
All “races” must henceforth solely be referred to by verified specific polymorphic alleles. Note that if a single allele is not sufficient to uniquely identify a “race” in a communication, the communicator must continue to list genes and alleles until sufficient specificity is reached. The communicator is forbidden from eating, sleeping, or using any sort of lavatory or toilet facilities until the identification is made completely.
-goes back to referring to people by generic racial/gender features such as “Hey you!”-
I assume that most people are identifiable by gender neutral pronouns still right?
Erek