Is it true that Latino is not a race?

[Jamaal510]

Please forgive me if this question sounds foolish, and I don't intend to troll. But I found some sites and videos, and I looked on Wikipedia and the U.S. Census, and they say Latino is not a race. It came as a shocker to me because all this time, I honestly thought it is. I tried to tell my big sister about it, but she told me she doesn't believe that. She said that they have a distinct look, and many of them consider themselves to be a separate race. She then said it's foolish to believe the U.S. Census when it comes to race and ethnicity because of the time when Blacks were only considered 3/5 a person.

[elleng]

1. Part of an ethnic background,

traditionally Spanish-speaking. Hispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.

[EOTE]

2. You should trust the Census and Wikipedia.

They are both correct. Hispanic/Latino are ethnicities.

[sabbat hunter]

3. hispanic or Latino

is considered an ethnic group,not a race.


Generally there are three 'races' white, black, asian. (although some have a sub classification of non-white hispanic/white hispanic but that is more used by law enforcement for identifying fugitives.)

[hlthe2b]

4. long been considered ethnicity, not race.

The US census has long categorized first by ethnicity (Hispanic/Non-Hispanic) and then by race with the following categories:

white
black/African American
American Indian or Alaskan Native
Asian
Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian
Other Race
Two or more races.

Each of those racial categories could be Hispanic or Non-Hispanic.

But, if you want to talk science, the human genome study has actually shown no unique correlations that differentiate the races. That is actually very important when people try to correlate certain aspects to race.

[NeverEnuff]

5. Latino race?

What about black Latinos or Jewish or blue eyed blondes? We should only be concerned with one race. The human race. There is more diversity in single troop of chimpanzees (about 20) than in the entire human population. We are just not that different.

[MineralMan]

6. Latino is an ethnic designation, not a race.

Latinos can be caucasian, american indian, black, or a mixture of any of those. There is no Latino race. Too much variation.

Frankly, I don't like dividing people into races at all. We're all part of the human race, and that's it.

[Confusious]

12. Too true

Should be 'ethnicity' or something like that.

[edhopper]

7. Race is an antiquated idea

from the days when it was thought certain people should not breed with one another.
There are no races. There are people with different characteristics based on the part of the world they come from.
We are all genetically identical with minor variation in appearance.
People do have ethnic identities based on their heritage and culture.

[countryjake]

8. That's why the Census asks...

when you check the box for "White", they then also ask you to further qualify "Not Hispanic or Latino". Caucasian covers a broad range of people and includes many varying ethnicities but they are all one race.

[Bacchus4.0]

9. neither race nor ethnicity. Hispanic or Latino describes people originating from geographic areas

include Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Spanish is not necessarily a prerequisite for being Latino as Brazilians and indigenous peoples throughout the region may not speak Spanish.

it is a pretty much worthless classification. Latinos are white, indian, black, even asian, and any and all combinations of the preceding.

[a la izquierda]

11. Right, at least how my family sees it.

We're part Spanish (just uncovered this), but from Spain, not anywhere in the Americas. My great-grandmother was Spanish and Italian and migrated here from Europe in the 1910s. So I don't check the Latino box.

[DevonRex]

10. There are 5 races.

And a person can be of more than one race. The races are caucasoid, negroid, australoid, mongoloid, and capoid.

[JaneQPublic]

13. Three Races:

We learned in high school social studies class there were only three races:

Caucasian (white)
Negroid (black)
Mongolian (Asian)

Of course, that may be an outdated view nowadays.

[Lawlbringer]

14. Same way Jewish isn't a nationality

but people feel that they should say they're "Half Irish, Half Jewish"


In any case, we're all Humans, that's race enough.

[izquierdista]

17. Depends where you are from

In the Soviet Union, Jewish was a nationality. Europeans look at Africans and see a black "race"; they look at each other and see different "ethnicities". Africans look at each other and see different tribes. Japanese see the world as divided into themselves, and "gaijin", a racial distinction.

There is only one species of homo sapiens, just as there is only one species of canis familiaris. In both species, selective breeding within a small population can give rise to breeds that can be judged by appearance against an archetypical standard, be it Golden Retriever, Tall Blond Swede, or Masai tribesman. While Nazi pseudo-scientists liked to read a lot into breed differences, there are only a few adaptations that humans have been bred for: resistance to malaria, low winter UV levels away from the Equator, cold and hot climates, lactose and gluten tolerance. Everything else, language included, is an environmental adaptation by the individual, not something genetically determined at birth, as "race" seems to be.

Race and ethnicity can be useful categories when it comes to medical science. Different groups have different susceptibilities to different diseases and may respond differently to different treatments. Knowing the statistical information on all those differences may be very useful when it comes to an individual as well as in a public health setting.

But race and ethnicity really don't mean much when it comes to individual interactions. It is much better to know if someone is smart or stupid, trustworthy or deceitful, than it is to know if they are African or Pacific Islander. But no matter how many times you tell them, there are people who think that the answer to the latter gives them good reason to suspect what the answer to the former two will be. They will go on making up racial classifications, as if it is an obvious case of cause and effect.

[pnwmom]

15. Yes, it is true. Some Latinos consider themselves white, some black, and some mixed.

Latinos aren't a race any more than Europeans are a race.

[TreasonousBastard]

16. Blacks haven't been 3/5 of a person for a long time low, and everyone's ashamed of all...

those horrific compromises over slavery. Or should be.

So that is irrelevant.

I work for the Census Bureau and can't give you a definitive answer, although Hispanics have been a problem we've had to deal with because they often self-identify as a separate race, although no one else considers them as anything other than an ethnic group with many subgroups. Frankly, I don't think many Hispanics have thought much about racial identity at all until asked, and then they are confused and assume Hispanic is a racial group. Can't blame them for the way we insist on classifying people, though.

Census includes racial questions because other departments ask for it, and they all have their own specific definitions. At one point Census had maybe 30 racial subcategories, including such things as native Guamian and three from the Indian subcontinent.

It's all bullshit, of course, but people keep insisting race is important for some reason. Me, I wish it would all go away since it's been historically just a means to separate people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. The only place where it might, operative word might,

Have some bearing is for immigration data.

I agree with you, bullshit.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

18. All of these people are "latino" or "hispanic".

That should answer your question. No way your sister could tell me where any of these people were born before hearing them speak or them telling her where they were born.

[chester13]

19. Latino is not a race

Latino can NOT be a race, the same as blonde or Brazilian can not be a race. It is, however an ethnicity due to the similar backgrounds and languages. Most Latinos are a cross between Spaniards and one or more Native American tribal groups, with possibly some African tossed in as well. This is true whether the Latino in question is from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, any of the Central American countries, or the good old U. S. of A. Calling Latino a race is the same as calling Irish, Scots, Norwegian, or Persian a race.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

20. I don't think it's a race either

When I worked in Long Beach, California I sometimes had lunch at a small Chinese restaurant called The Great Wall. I was surprised one day to hear the Chinese owner laughing and joking with Mexican customers in perfect Spanish. I asked him where he learned it and he told me he was born in Mexico and considered himself as much Hispanic as Chinese. It seems that over half a million Mexicans have Chinese origins, their ancestors having arrived from China in the 1800s to work the mines. There are about two million Mexicans who have some measure of African ancestry. If these Spanish speakers came to the United States, should they identify as black, latino, or something else? Argentinians speak Spanish and call themselves latinos if they come to the U.S. but most of them have neither Spanish nor Indian blood and many have German, Russian, or Italian ancestry and have more in common culturally speaking with Europe than Latin America. What about Brazilians? They don't speak Spanish but Portuguese. Since Portuguese is derived from Latin and their culture is of southern European origin, can we call them latino? I knew a blonde Jewish guy from Brazil who called himself a latino. Does only Spanish speaking culture have a monopoly on the word "latino"? Are Dominicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans latinos? If so, then why aren't Haitians, Guadeloupans, and Martiniquans who speak French also latinos as French is a latin-derived language and a latin-influenced culture like Spanish? To me, the definition of what is a latino is not very clear.

[sabbat hunter]

21. a latino basically is

someone who is from a country that was once a colony of Spain in the western hemisphere. At least to my understanding.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. One oftje best Chinese restaurants I ever ate at

Is indeed in Tijuana.

Nothing like Chinese food with a Mexican touch.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Scientifically speaking black and white are not a race either

These are social constructs meant to justify a system of exploitation.

We are all so close genetically, I know white supremacists don't like this, it's not even funny. There is more we emerged from the same genetic bottleneck oh about 120k years ago.

[Johonny]

27. +1

yip.

[Cleita]

23. I'm from South America myself and no it's not a race.

Latinos can be represented by many races often all mixed up in one person. What we have in common is the fact that we all originate south of the USA border. That's it. Although Spanish is the predominantly spoken language, there are many other languages both from the Old World and of the indigenous people spoken there. Customs are most often Spanish but many cultures are represented and integrated into the social systems. Each country has it's own unique mores and characteristics as well as music although there can be crossovers. Mostly the Roman Catholic religion is the main one but not the only one. I suspect that this is where the word Latino originated, from the religion, whose official language is Latin.

[bighart]

25. La Raza

In the Spanish language the term Raza translates to "The Race"
The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States

[vaberella]

28. Yes it is true. It not a race just an Ethnic grouping. Poor Brazilians.

No need. It's confusing shit. By American standards Brazilians are normally classed as Hispanic when technically they are not.