Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or not

[Matthew Gordon]

The Sotomayor nomination seems to put some journalists in a linguistic bind.
It is my impression (and I haven't looked into this empirically) that there
is a general preference for "Latino/Latina" over "Hispanic" among
journalists and others in the media or at least among liberalish ones (who
also like to pronounce "Latino/a" without aspirating the /t/). Yet they
can't describe Sotomayor as the first Latina justice on the Court b/c it's
gender marked and therefore not as general as "Hispanic."

Matt Gordon

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