No, OMB, that is not a race.
As Bernstein points out in his book, America’s official system of racial classification is absurd, and should be pointless and play no role in government policy.
7 thoughts on ““Hispanic””
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No, OMB, that is not a race.
As Bernstein points out in his book, America’s official system of racial classification is absurd, and should be pointless and play no role in government policy.
Comments are closed.
I took two years of high school Spanish, not knowing that I risked becoming Hispanic instead of white. However, my Spanish teacher wanted us to use the proper Castilian accent, which would’ve still marked me as non-Hispanic, since our government doesn’t classify Spaniards as Hispanic, as they’re Europeans and it would cause huge problems with the EU if we did.
The whole concept the government uses is absurd. Why don’t they have a separate racial/ethnic category for Italians? How come Brazilians aren’t classified as Hispanic, since someone speaking Portuguese sounds like a deaf Mexican?
We could point out that the whole scheme traces directly back to the Spanish Armada and long-running war between England and Spain for European dominance, and later for dominance in the New World. It is a “good guy vs. evil Spanish papist” classification system, which is actually more accurate and more useful for our purposes. We don’t have a problem with German Mexicans or Polish Venezuelans. We don’t have a problem with Incas or Mayans. Our problem is those evil Catholic Papists from Spain.
La Raza requires mestizaje.
The living descendants of Moctezuma are Spanish grandees living in Spain.
The first time I had ever been asked what my race was occurred when I emigrated to the US in 1991 at the age of 39. The American obsession with race has always been a puzzle. When in Canada, my wife worked in a research group with two people from the Caribbean. People hearing them on the phone always figured that they were black. One was white, the other Chinese.
Back in 1966 or 67, a friend of mine went in to get his first driver’s license. Under Race, he writes C (for Caucasian). The DMV clerk looks him up and down, and says, “You’re Colored?” The best part: my friend was Italian….
At one job I had, a coworker and I, who were similar looking, were talking about our Black Irish (Firbolg) ancestry. One of our African American coworkers comes up and says, “I’m Black Irish too!” Figuring there’d be a punchline, I ask him his last name. He says, “McIlhenny!” I asked if he was part Jew, like me, and it turned out he was. Then it turned out all three of us knew the words to “Moses ri tooral i ay.” Yet another cousin of Briscoe!
My personal view is that there is one race, the Human Race, and everything beyond that is clans, tribes and bloodlines. I have, since the 1980s, consistently declined to identify my ‘race’ on forms and applications. I have had job applications rejected as a result.
My name identifies me as being of the Irish bloodline, with some good Viking blood mixed in there as well (Murphy roughly translates as ‘sea-warrior’, and Grandmom Dougherty née Tharaldsen could trace her bloodline back to Eric the Red). I identify as a U.S. citizen, and a Texan, even though, sadly, I wasn’t born here in Texas. I am of the nerd tribe, and the coolest clan of all – Gen X.
More than happy to identify on the forms as male, though.
Race is to humans as breed is to dogs. In the end, I think the proliferation of archaic human species will be recognized as “races” of Homo erectus, and we’ll be classified as Homo erectus sapiens (although I’d vote for Homo erectus stupidus [an actual Latin word!]). And homo is actually wrong. When used as a pronoun, it means he/him. We should revert to pithecanthropus, whose pronouns are what/me/worry?