Whom Hispanics call "Hispanic" -- or not

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/27/2009 05:41 PM, Matthew Gordon wrote:
>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."

With the aim of mollifying those Hispanics who consider only those of
Spanish ancestry, has anyone called used the gender-neutral
"Iberian"?  Probably not -- 'cause then she wouldn't be the
first!  (Iberian, that is -- that was Cardozo.)

Joel

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