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It happens to everyone in the US. You sit down to fill out a college or job application or sometimes just a survey and are faced with a seemingly simple question: “What is your ethnic group?” It's always multiple choice, and none of the answers ever fits perfectly.
Your identity is probably too complicated for just one choice: “African American,” “White,” “Asian or Pacific Islander,” “Native American,” and the really tricky one, “Hispanic” or “Latino.”
Some people could check off all of the above. For example, Wifredo Lam, one of the great surrealist painters of the 20th century, was of African, Caucasian, Chinese and very likely Arawak Indian descent, and he was born and raised in Cuba.
The second problem is that all these terms lump together people of different backgrounds, especially “Asians” and “Hispanics.” Being Chinese is not like being Filipino, but both get classified as “Asian.” A Mexican did not grow up with the same experiences, foods or attitudes as a Cuban or an Argentinean or someone from any of the other 20 Spanish-speaking nationalities in the Americas. And none of them has much in common with millions of US-born who speak little or no Spanish but whose parents or grandparents did. Surveys consistently find that most of these people would rather be described by their specific national backgrounds, such as “Mexican,” “Dominican” or “Puerto Rican” rather than “Hispanic” or “Latino.”
And finally, if you are going to get lumped together, which are you? “Hispanic” or “Latino”? Some community leaders I interviewed for my book, Hispanic Nation, hated the title. They wanted to be called “Latinos,” because “Hispanic” struck them as too European; the word comes from “Hispania,” the Latin name for Spain.
Still others dismissed “Latino” as sounding lower class and slangy, preferring “Hispanic,” which emphasizes a common linguistic heritage. After all, “Latino” is also European. It comes from “Latin America,” a phrase invented in 1850s Paris to imply South America had a pure “Latin” heritage like France.
Angelo Falcón, now senior policy executive of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, used to say, “A ‘Hispanic' is a Latino yuppie.” But he has stopped making this distinction, claiming it is divisive.
And that's the key: Unity. People will probably never agree on which term is better, just as many African Americans would rather be called “black” and some older ones were more comfortable with “colored.” It doesn't matter much, as long as they can sometimes agree on their goals and actions.
If you're like most people called “Hispanics” or “Latinos,” you probably don't like either term much. But if you've got your eye on bigger goals, you know that “la unidad hace la fuerza” -- in unity there is strength. That's why there are so many organizations like the Hispanic National Bar Association, Latino Link, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and others. The common Spanish-language heritage, the experience of discrimination and the “Anglo” tendency to treat “Latinos” alike have proven enough of a basis for people to band together to change the laws, increase political representation and enlarge employment opportunities for all.