Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or not

[Joel S. Berson]

As expected, some Hispanics do not consider other
Hispanics "Hispanic" (letting alone whether a
Portuguese Sephardic Jew would even be considered
human).  From the NYTimes, May 27, New England
Edition, A16/6 [on-line version]:

Was a Hispanic Justice on the Court in the ’30s?
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON — While most people may believe Sonia
Sotomayor is poised to become the first Hispanic
justice on the Supreme Court, there has been a
rich under-the-radar debate for years as to
whether the court had already had a Hispanic justice.

Several people have suggested that Justice
Benjamin Cardozo might properly hold the title of
the court’s first Hispanic justice. Prof. Andrew
Kaufman of the Harvard Law School, who is the
author of a 1998 biography of Cardozo, said the
debate was esoteric, complicated and, perhaps above all, amusing.

“Was Cardozo Hispanic?” Professor Kaufman asked,
noting that the assertion has been prevalent on
Web sites and in articles for years. “Well, I
think he regarded himself as a Sephardic Jew
whose ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula.”

He said the term “Hispanic” was not commonly used
during Cardozo’s lifetime and would probably have
been unfamiliar to him in 1932 when President
Herbert Hoover named him to the court, where he
served for six years until his death.

Professor Kaufman said that although there is no
documentation, Cardozo’s family, which came to
America in the 18th century, always believed that
its forebears had come from Portugal, not Spain.
And that raises an even more recondite question:
are Portuguese people Hispanic?

Most Hispanic organizations and the United States
Census Bureau do not regard Portuguese as Hispanic.

But Tony Coelho, a Portuguese-American
congressman from California, was a member of the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus when he was in the
House, and Representative Dennis Cardoza,
Democrat of California, whose ancestors came from
the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago, is still a member.

The executive director of the National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials, Arturo Vargas, said the contemporary
political definition of Hispanic in the United
States would definitely not include Cardozo. The
practical definition he uses, Mr. Vargas said,
includes people who are “descended from countries
in the Americas” with a Spanish-language
heritage. It does not even include those from Spain itself, he said.

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