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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
“We are the potential tone setters of the world, and we can do anything we want to do.” — Betty Franklin-Hammonds August 4, 1995 |
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BY THE WAY EDITORIAL PAGE |
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The chameleon nature of race
It's been one of those social phenomena that everyone has seen coming for years, like a hurricane forming off the west coast of Africa. Since the early 1990s, pundits and number crunchers have been predicting that Latinos would become the largest minority group in the United States. People predicted it would happen anywhere from 2010-2040. However, it now appears that it already happened. Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that Latinos had overtaken African Americans as the largest minority group by approximately 400,000 people. Race and ethnicity are largely political or social terms used to categorize people for sometimes good and sometimes evil intentions. There are times where they have little bearing to the reality we experience every day. The other day, I was working at Centro Hispano in my role as fiscal consultant. The Centro Hispano staff was having a going away party for a staff member who was moving to Seattle. We were eating lasagna and other delicacies cooked by a woman who was in attendance. When I first saw her, I would have sworn she was African American. Her skin tone was very dark. Yet, when she spoke, she spoke quickly in Spanish. She was a Latina of African descent. I'm sure that many people in our community treat her as if she were African American. But culturally and linguistically, she is a Latina. Her identity is Hispanic. The people with whom she identifies and interacts with are Hispanic. I bring this up to say that there are members of the Latino community who are also a part of the African Diaspora. Indeed there are Asian Latinos, European Latinos, African Latinos, American Indian Latinos, and so on. The concept of Latino is a cultural one that unites people of many different racial backgrounds through a common linguistic heritage. I'm sure there are people who think Mexican when they think of Latinos. Or perhaps they think Puerto Rican. However, Latinos encompass a broad span of people. There are blue-eyed, blond-haired Latinos from Argentina. There are the very dark complexioned Garifinas who live on islands off the coast of South America. There are the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Brazil. A Japanese Latino was elected president of Peru. The concept of Latino — or Hispanic — has little applicability outside the United States. In fact, people from South America don't know they are Latino — or Hispanic — until they come to the U.S. and are told they are. Outside of the U.S. people look upon themselves as Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and so on. Sometimes, it seems each region or country has its own Spanish dialect. The Latino community is very large and very diverse. I bring all this up not to diminish the growth of the Latino community within the U.S. It's just that these labels of who is the largest can create political and social frictions. It can obscure the fact that the African American and Latino communities have much in common. African blood flows through most Latin American countries. Slavery was not limited to North America and the U.S. The common bonds can be found in music, language, food, and traditions. These common bonds should unite the Latino and African American communities to work on problems they also have in common: poverty, racism, urban decay, and so on. It is important to work together to create a larger pie rather than become divisive and fight over the few crumbs that are available. Talk of which community is larger can be quite illusionary. Maybe there aren't as many African Americans at the present time because a new category, biracial, was added. Perhaps, in the future, the categories will be shifted again and another "largest minority group" will be created. Definitions can always be changed to suit someone's whims or interests. Think about it!
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