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Yeap, it's a very inconsistent mess up here. In the media, "Latino" and "Hispanic" are often treated interchangeably, and both as though they were a race. It's

Yeap, it's a very inconsistent mess up here. In the media, "Latino" and "Hispanic" are often treated interchangeably, and both as though they were a race. It's very common to see statistics broken down like "White, Black, Hispanic". This confusion reaches even the highest levels, including people who really should know better, e.g. see this "apology" which somehow still doesn't seem to understand that "Latino" is not a race: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/07/900147716/ https://www.npr.org/2020/08/07/900147716/ > Albeit is even wrong to use in the sense of a continent giving America is just one continent, with north and south. To make matters even worse, we're taught in school is that North America is a distinct continent by itself, as is South America, and that there is no continent named "America". This leads some North American "patriots" to get upset at the idea of a single continent, hence the insistence that the word "America" and "Americans" only refer to the USA.

oscargrouch 5y ago
I'm not an expert in USA culture, but looking from a distance it looks to me that this is cartesianism (as in pattern-matching) applied to social sciences, which as it turns out, is a legacy of the 19th century which lead to it's most extremist version represented in fascism. I say this because here we have this too, as in any other part in the world, the only difference is that the targets are others. Remember the obsession of those folks to measure and document people turning this into some sort of science where you could classify people objectively giving some properties drawing hard lines that would not be crossed. Once they defined what was the superior type it would be a matter of marginalize and eliminate the weaker to achieve the super race. We all still do this here and there, but is much more organic, subtle and disguised as something else. Anyway is funny to think that in US (and Brazil), the last wave of immigrants arriving were considered the low people and only with subsequent waves of immigrants the old "dirty ones" got some sort of social upgrade. As irish in the US were marginalized and later the jews, polish and italians replace them as people with less value. Here for instance, japaneses and italians were treated pretty badly in the beginning of the 20th century. (It was even worse for black people). Its funny to see how people don't learn with history. There's no nobility by birth, at most it was the parents passing education and culture to their children. Leave a human alone in the forest and if he manage to survive it will behave like an animal.
- michaelpb 5y ago
  Hahah yeap we're basically back to skull-size measuring. And what you write is exactly correct: It's a definitely form of "othering", arbitrarily separating people. I've lived in both countries (US and Brazil) and another comparison I've heard made is between internal immigrants in Brazil such as from the Northeast, and Hispanic immigrants in the US (some internal, some external). A lot of it is economic. As an example, very similar economic & climate pressures that caused Northeasterners of Brazil to journey to SP, RJ, etc, caused many farmers in the dry lands of northern Mexico to move north (and seek jobs in the US as nannies & housekeepers, construction, large farms with horrible labor practices, etc). One huge difference is language. I know many Brazilians I've chatted with were surprised to learn that ~15% of the US speaks Spanish. The US is very much a linguistically-segregated country, as much of it was once ruled by the Spanish Empire or successor states, and thus regions of it have never traditionally spoken English (and still don't). Puerto Rico of course is entirely Spanish-speaking and always has been, and areas of different states are majority Spanish-speaking, and most cities in the US have at least one or two neighborhoods that are primarily Spanish.

oscargrouch 5y ago

I'm not an expert in USA culture, but looking from a distance it looks to me that this is cartesianism (as in pattern-matching) applied to social sciences, which as it turns out, is a legacy of the 19th century which lead to it's most extremist version represented in fascism. I say this because here we have this too, as in any other part in the world, the only difference is that the targets are others. Remember the obsession of those folks to measure and document people turning this into some sort of science where you could classify people objectively giving some properties drawing hard lines that would not be crossed. Once they defined what was the superior type it would be a matter of marginalize and eliminate the weaker to achieve the super race. We all still do this here and there, but is much more organic, subtle and disguised as something else. Anyway is funny to think that in US (and Brazil), the last wave of immigrants arriving were considered the low people and only with subsequent waves of immigrants the old "dirty ones" got some sort of social upgrade. As irish in the US were marginalized and later the jews, polish and italians replace them as people with less value. Here for instance, japaneses and italians were treated pretty badly in the beginning of the 20th century. (It was even worse for black people). Its funny to see how people don't learn with history. There's no nobility by birth, at most it was the parents passing education and culture to their children. Leave a human alone in the forest and if he manage to survive it will behave like an animal.

michaelpb 5y ago
Hahah yeap we're basically back to skull-size measuring. And what you write is exactly correct: It's a definitely form of "othering", arbitrarily separating people. I've lived in both countries (US and Brazil) and another comparison I've heard made is between internal immigrants in Brazil such as from the Northeast, and Hispanic immigrants in the US (some internal, some external). A lot of it is economic. As an example, very similar economic & climate pressures that caused Northeasterners of Brazil to journey to SP, RJ, etc, caused many farmers in the dry lands of northern Mexico to move north (and seek jobs in the US as nannies & housekeepers, construction, large farms with horrible labor practices, etc). One huge difference is language. I know many Brazilians I've chatted with were surprised to learn that ~15% of the US speaks Spanish. The US is very much a linguistically-segregated country, as much of it was once ruled by the Spanish Empire or successor states, and thus regions of it have never traditionally spoken English (and still don't). Puerto Rico of course is entirely Spanish-speaking and always has been, and areas of different states are majority Spanish-speaking, and most cities in the US have at least one or two neighborhoods that are primarily Spanish.