It can be so very confusing. Being an employee of a state agency in the middle of an area that is largely Hispanic, we had to have training on this.
The dude who gave the training was from Puerto Rico. He insisted that Latino/a was preferred. However, my co-worker Tony, whose parents where immigrants from Mexico, and who did most of our document translations, and had a side business in our community doing translation/interpretation assured us that Hispanic is much perferred by the people in our area.
Best of all is to find out where the person comes from and refer to the nationality. My former boyfriend, Pablo, preferred to be called Ecuadorian to being called Hispanic. And my Spanish teacher, who was from Chile, much preferred to be recognized as white since her parents immigrated from Germany. And her husband preferred to be known as Cuban, as that’s where he was exiled from.
This question is defiantly answered based on the city you live in, in my experience living in Texas I have seen white people be offended by other non Spainish speak white people by the term “Hispanic” than any actual “Latino native.” That being said in Texas I hear both and I believe Latin/a is more so correct, although Latinos generally don’t care what term you use as long as it isn’t said out of disrespect.
In my area (NJ) ISTM that Latinos/Hispanics generally refer to themselves as “Spanish guys”. (Seem to be mostly Mexicans, but there are a lot of others as well, and I don’t know if or how this might vary by country of origin.)
And those Americans insist in thinking I’m American. That still doesn’t give me a navy blue passport.
Hispanics consider me White and Hispanic. The US census considers me White and Hispanic. Morons who refuse to look at the maroon passport aren’t someone whose opinion I give much of a hoot about, except when they also refuse to stamp it properly.
What makes you think they don’t? Race politics in Mexico are even more complicated than ours, with everyone broken down into tiny grounps based on how much Spanish, native and/or black blood they have.
Because there’s no clear guideline, these days I either try to refer to specific national origin (when possible) or say, “Latino…er…Hispanic…er…which one is preferable?” And whomever I’m with gives me their preferred term and we’re cool and I get points for having sense enough to ask.
If anyone calls me “Caucasian”, I’m going to say that I’ve never been to the Caucasus mountains.
On a side note, I rather like the recent trend to writing “Latino/Latina” or “Chicano/Chicana” as “Latin@” and “Chican@” and even Angelin@ for residents of Los Angeles.
