"People of color" was; Re: Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or not

[Herb Stahlke]

Not to mention Hispanics who are of Native American descent.

Herb

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Barbara Need <bhneed at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "People of color" was; Re: Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or
>              not
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>
> On the news last night (ABC or its local affiliate) they ran a clip in
> which Sotomayor used the term "people of color", and, as far as I
> could tell, she was including herself in that category. Now,
> recognizing that many Hispanics are of mixed African and European
> ancestry (not to mention Native American), I was a little taken aback.
> Is it usual to include Hispanics among "people of color"?
>
> Barbara
>
> Barbara Need
> Chicago
>
> On 27 May 2009, at 3:12 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or not
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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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