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I'm confused what this has to do with politics.
by michaelmior 6y ago
I'm confused what this has to do with politics.
- Mordisquitos 6y agoApparently there are two languages: English and political.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoLatino isn't a language, it's an identity. That makes it political.
- 8note 6y agoReally it's a geographic location of origin. There's nothing particularly political about being from South america
- cpp_frog 6y agoAs someone who is latin american, I never understood what is the obsession with identity in the US. American hispanics I've talked to use it as something of a catch-all concept, but I've observed that many only have a meagre proficiency in Spanish and know nothing about the other Latin American countries that they pack with the bunch (apart from their own/their parents).
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoThis is a touchy subject in the US so I don't want to get too into it, its a bit off topic. The shortest and most neutral answer I can give is that minority political groups in the US use identity as a tool to push for political change.
- brudgers 6y agoHistorically, a large part of it goes back to the Treaty of Hildalgo. It obligated the US to enfranchise Mexican citizens living in the seceded lands of Alta California. This immediately threw a wrench in antebellum politics which only allowed "white people" the vote. Eventually the US invented a racial category based on speaking Spanish...well actually two, one black, one non-black. Fundamentally the identity of people with cultural affiliation to Spanish speaking cultures is complicated by the sanctioned narratives of US history which do not allow for the US to consider its Latin American heritage. You could sleep in a hotel in Santa Fe and eat in a restaurant when the Pilgrims came ashore at Plymouth Rock. And when "fulfilled manifest destiny" reached the California coast, there were churches there where people went on Sunday...and chattel slavery had been banned for two hundred years.
- xondono 6y agoTo me the most non-sensical part in this kind of arguments is that most of the people identifying themselves as “Latino” are people from the US. Most people actually born in latin america will self-identify with their country of origin (Argentinian, Colombian,..)
- 8note 6y agoThe advantage native English speakers have in terms of leading CS projects, making start ups, and getting the high paying tech jobs lessens if speaking English isn't a major requirement for reading and writing code. If instead you need to know Spanish, or don't need to know any one specific langauge, it challenges or changes the power structure and is thus political.
- jdgoesmarching 6y agoPeople getting defensive in this thread over the idea of a language not made for them is great evidence of this. Instead of ignoring it like the millions of new projects that don’t apply to you, we must go out of our way to explain why this is bad and wrong.