people of color & Hispanic & so forth

Beverly Flanigan flanigan at OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Wed Feb 7 21:04:59 UTC 2001


And by this logic, other North Americans would be called Brits, or Britics,
or (horrors) Englics!  Come to think of it, we are sometimes called Anglos
(a term I despise, since I'm not Angle-descended!).

At 12:44 PM 2/7/01 -0800, you wrote:
>By popular demand:
>Hispanic is offensive because it identifies the people with their
>colonizers, the imperialist Spanish. By this logic Filipinos would also be
>Hispanic. Also then people from Spain get lumped in with Latinos, which
>makes no sense when viewing things through the lens of racism, privilege,
>&c. Hispanic is also inaccurate because it relies heavily upon the concept
>of "Spanish-speaking", & of course not all Latinos speak Spanish,
>especially in the US context. Although I personally think Latino presents
>its own problems (as someone else pointed out), I think it is accepted (&
>acceptable) because it comes out of the culture(s) it defines.
>
>Further comments:
>
> >>        In apparent contrast to Indigo's views, I notice that members of
>some groups (African-Americans and gays in particular) often find it
>offensive to discuss the name of their group.  I suppose it is the
>objectification that is offensive, the implicit message that "I am not
>thinking of you as Ellen, but just as one more gay/lesbian/homosexual."
>
>There will always be people who want to believe their demographic is not an
>issue. Then there are those of us who would call that "deep denial", racism
>& homophobia (&c.) being all too real -- & we may be offended by
>suggestions that they are not real. The trick, then, if you are trying to
>avoid offending, is to be able to suss out pretty quickly which people are
>which! :)
>
> >>Various members and various sub-groups of the various groups may have
>various ideas about membership requirements and about whether they want to
>be members. In all cases, I think, there is some correlation with "racial
>type" but it's imperfect to large or small degree.
>
>Race is purely a social construct, so there will never be accurate/perfect
>racial categories and names. e.g. Indians (not the Native American ones!)
>were considered white (or "Caucasian") for a while; now they are considered
>Asian.
>
>Ethnicity, on the other hand, being more "real", or should I say authentic
>(though still w/ sometimes fuzzy edges) is a lot easier to define. e.g. a
>Hakka is pretty much always a Hakka.
>Or so I learned in school, & haven't yet found reason to think otherwise. :)
>
>Also, regarding "PC": we (PC folks) were using PC as an inside joke, very
>tongue in cheek, before the media got ahold (a hold?!) of it & made it
>sound like we had no sense of humor about it, were rigidly obsessed w/ the
>names for things, &c. &c. But y'all probably knew that already.
>
>Speaking of "Caucasian" -- that word drives me insane! I wish (in vain,
>obviously) that people would stop using it.
>
>Correctly yours,
>Indigo


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm



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