I'm not actually attached to 'latino' at all, except as awareness that within the english language it's a political term to differentiate (as I mentioned to Majo) those who are from 'latin america' versus 'hispanic' being those who are from 'spain'. The entire reason for even raising the latino/hispanic issue is because, within the US, people of hispanic/latin/chicano are lumped in with white/caucasian in most official uses, which seemed to me to be quite peculiar, because ethnically, culturally, and visually there are some strong distinctions.
But then again, neither does the US -- on official levels, at least, in terms of tracking population -- have much fine-tuning for northern Middle Easterners, who are also counted as simply "white/caucasian".
I mean, honestly, the entire notion of labeling people based on a single axis -- skin color -- is just absolutely crazy. I knew that already, but when you try to classify and figure out how to make it clear what's a consistent meaning so everyone can pick the proper 'boxes', it really underlines that there's no consistency in what you're measuring in the first place, which makes then trying to categorize it just as inconsistent.
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Date: 15 May 2010 03:56 pm (UTC)But then again, neither does the US -- on official levels, at least, in terms of tracking population -- have much fine-tuning for northern Middle Easterners, who are also counted as simply "white/caucasian".
I mean, honestly, the entire notion of labeling people based on a single axis -- skin color -- is just absolutely crazy. I knew that already, but when you try to classify and figure out how to make it clear what's a consistent meaning so everyone can pick the proper 'boxes', it really underlines that there's no consistency in what you're measuring in the first place, which makes then trying to categorize it just as inconsistent.