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Most anthropologists recognize 3 or 4 basic races of man in existence today. These races can be further subdivided into as many as 30 subgroups.
Those are:
White/Caucasian
Mongoloid/Asian
Negroid/Black
and Australoid.
However :
The United Nations, in a 1950 statement, opted to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of “ethnic groups”. In this case, there are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world, according to a 1998 study published in the Scientific American.
Catbelle, I'm guessing you're a Spaniard, right, and not an EU migrant living in Spain? Well, if you are an española, you are probably going to be considered an ethnic minority here in the US if you ever live here. You'd get the same affirmative action/positive discrimination (UK English) quotas and programs available to you like a Puerto Rican or black person gets
Yes you right I am Spaniard (española lol) I have never lived in the US but I have travelled twice... I have never considered myself "minority" in America if we talk about appearence, I mean, I noticed most of people are "like me": caucasian, white, brown hair (others are blonde, others have black eyes or blue etc)
If we talk about my name, yes I can be minority or even more about being from Spain, even more minority but it is known once one tells to others.
Americans are not the only ignorants about Hispanic cultures and races, Europeans are not far behind.
I've seen thousands of British and German looking Mexican sombreros in souvenir gift shops in Spain. I know many average-looking Spaniards (including me) who have been told, in countries like the Netherlands or Sweden, that they didn't look Spaniards because they didn't have black hair and olive skin. I met a Norwegian who was disappointed with his trip to Spain because girls didn't look exotic at all and he was expecting more Moorish influece.
The classifications of human beings do not have clear-cut distinctions that are agreed upon by everybody. Why, then, should "Hispanic" have a clear-cut definition that is agreed upon by everyone?
Why do these same threads keep getting started over and over again?
Im really tired of being reading a perfectly interesting thread on city data, and ALWAYS coming across several post that treat "hispanic" as a race. And i mean many. Hundreds of posts are written in every forum of this site everyday just assuming hispanic is a race. People keep assuming hispanic is a race and grouping it together with other races, like black, white or asian. I ve never seen any mistake that was so commonly spread among people than this one.
I mean, i would guess that 80% of americans think hispanic if a race, if i would have to guide myself by city-data. Whatever topic they might be discussing, no matter how smart posters have proven to be regarding other issues, they ALWAYS make this mistake. Its the most common mistake across city-data.
Because race is really used more to group people by cultural background as much as appearance. Hispanics may not all look the same, but there are similar cultural patterns, most are recent immigrants. It makes more sense here to group all hispanics as one rather than separate with their race, it's reasonable in an American context. For whatever reason, it does seem like white hispanics tend to be a bit more successful and assimilate more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by french user
But, this person was in front of you? didn't he see that you were not mestiza?
I have understood that for many Americans, "white" seems reserved for what we could call a northern European look (blond, light pinky skin, etc.). I myself have been told by an American that I would pass for non-white for many people!! that really astoninshed me...
That's a bit bizarre. Most white Americans don't have blond hair anyway. I grew up in an area of the US with many people with ancestors from southern Europe, so no one would do that.
To me a Hispanic is a Mexican or Latin American. That's all you ever see when the word Hispanic is used, at least in the U.S.
What am I suppose to think? It isn't my fault if Latin Americans are mixed with Native American and African blood.
Unfortunately it is the ambiguity of classifying people either by race, country of origin, language or any other human trait which can be identified.I recall a time when a person of Mexican heritage was referred to as Chicano and for a time it was not only du jour it was a name indicative of national pride and represented ethnic and national pride and loyalty to the Mexican-American community at large. In present day America one hardly ever hears the term Chicano as it became a very poor stereotype and deriviative of negative connotations.
Best regards, sincerely
HomeIsWhere...
For what it's worth...
The Definition of Hispanic
It is important to understand that the definition of Hispanic (and Latino)varies widely depending upon the source you use.
The Office of Management and Budget combines both origins into one group, but still defines "Hispanic or Latino" as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race."
In American-English, Latino has come to be equated with Hispanic and are often used interchangeably without offense despite identifying two different origins, but neither term should be used to describe a race.
I'm Mexican-American from Los Angeleez, Californy. Growing up, you had "the whites", "the Mexicans", "the Blacks", "the Asians" (or "the Chinese" to the more unenlightened, who applied the label even to Japanese-Americans), and the amorphous "Middle Easterners" which included everyone from Egyptians to Armenians. Non-Mexican Latinos, such as Salvadorans, weren't visible enough (at least not in my neck of the woods) for most people to take them into consideration, and if they did, they were "the Salvadorans" who were kinda like "the Mexicans."
In practice, "Hispanic" was a 'polite' way of saying "Mexican." Kind of like how you'd say "Asian-American" instead of "Chinese."
And basically, "Mexican" had the same racial connotation as "Black" or "Asian." Although most whites, or at least the blue collar whites I grew up around, considered there to be less distance (however you want to define that) between whites and Mexicans (unless they were recent immigrants) than between whites and everyone else.
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that really astoninshed me...
