Is La Raza a Race?

Charles Kamasaki from the National Council of La Raza makes a point near and dear to my heart: "we have a racial paradigm in this country that is largely built either on slavery or on immigration and when you have a population that is of many colors and comes from many different places . . . it’s very difficult to fit that population into a traditional paradigm."

Ironically, this had come to my mind just minutes before when Kamasaki asked the audience if any Hispanics in the house could raise their/our hands. I'm never 100 percent certain how to answer questions like that. According to the racial paradigm, I think I'm supposed to raise my hand. But at the same time, I have white skin, I'm a fourth-generation American, and my knowledge of Spanish is limited to a summer semester I took at NYU years ago.

Comments

Take it from someone who is as Hispanic enough for states to get extra money for him, you are classed as a "white hispanic" and so in this context I don't think you count.

Posted by MNPundit | July 1, 2008 5:17 PM

Matt, you really need to learn the history of Mexican racial ideology. The term "la raza" or "la raza cosmica" was invented by Mexican Minister of Education José Vasconcelos in 1925 to provide a salve after the quasi-race wars that had wracked Mexico during its history.

The idea was that Mexicans were a new, superior race that blended the best of Europeans and New World Indians (the African element, which appears to be around 5% of DNA, got forgotten along the way). Diego Rivera and other leftist painters were hired to create huge murals on the walls of government building celebrating the indigenous element in Mexican culture. Statues of Benito Juarez, the one Indian president of Mexico, were churned out in vast numbers.

Of course, in reality, more or less white people continue to more or less rule Mexico (former President Fox, for example, is close to 6'6" and his paternal grandfather was an Irish-American born in Cincinnati). Hard-charging young dark-skinned men tend to be biologically absorbed into the ruling class -- they usually marry fairer women and their grandchildren are much whiter than they are, so the social system is highly stable, with whitish people on top for most of the last 487 years.

But the ideology honors Indians and mestizos, so that may have helped Mexico avoid the horrific race wars that have plagued neighboring Guatemala as recently as the 1980s.

What we see in this post, of course, is that white American intellectuals, like Matt, pay no attention to Mexican thinking, even though there are now more than 30 million people of Mexican background in the U.S. It's all about white vs. white competition for status, and minorities are just useful props. But white people don't take non-whites seriously.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 5:23 PM

I am Hispanic but my birth certificate says "White." That is always good for a laugh when you are as dark as me. My wife who is also Hispanic is white as snow. Go figure.

If I was in the room I would raise my hand to the question but probably not if they asked "white" people to raise their hand. I think it is really how you choose to identify yourself. I stopped fighting about whether I as "Hispanic", "Latino", or "Chicano" years ago.

Posted by Bob Oso | July 1, 2008 5:28 PM

When in doubt, trust your iPod.

Posted by Gabriel | July 1, 2008 5:41 PM

My impression was that La Raza got it name from Vasconcelos, as Sailer says. The only quibble with the account I have is that Juarez statues weren't produced as some kind of Indian heritage month promotion, he was a bona fide liberal founding father who was and is honored by liberal Mexicans.

The take home point is that La Raza Cosmica is a Mexican, not a Latino or Hispanic concept. It's not merely an ethno-lingistic idea, and doesn't include Spanish immigrants to the United States in it at all. So Yglesias is not a part of La Raza.

As with all ethnicities, there's an unavoidable subjective element in being Hispanic, which comes with a certain indeterminacy. Some "Hispanics" don't feel very Hispanic and that's in the nature of the thing. But Hispanic also has a kind of objective indeterminacy in that non-Hispanics are categorizing people according to the use a language they don't know. So Brazilians are miscategorized, as are people who have Hispanic names but don't speak Spanish.

Posted by Colatina | July 1, 2008 5:44 PM

One thing that both Sailer and Colatina miss, which is crucial to understanding just about all right-wing paranoia about Hispanics, is that whatever "La Raza" meant in 1925 in Mexico, in 2008 in the United States it means nothing more than a sort of generic Hispanic pride. Just like MEChA groups on college campuses aren't infiltrating the United States to reclaim lost Aztlan.

As of right now, what you have is millions of people coming over here to work. It's really that mundane. Their children speak English and adopt American customs; perhaps we could do a better job, as part of our immigration policy, of promoting assimilation among the first generation rather than the second. But there's no reason to go back through the Steve Sailer tortured history of the term "La Raza", because Hispanics in America, in the main, don't give a crap about that. They just want to work and feed their families. The only reason this stuff gets discussed at all is because conservatives want to scare Americans about a supposed Hispanic Fifth Column.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 1, 2008 6:14 PM

If Geraldo Rivera goes through with his talk about retiring to his house in Israel and getting elected to the Knesset, then the door is open for Matt to become the most famous Spanish-surnamed journalist in America!

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 6:15 PM

Shorter Dilan Esper:

We don't need no steeenking facts about Latin American intellectual history.

Look, the staffers at the National Council of La Raza, which is what the post is about, don't want crap jobs cleaning up for white people. They want to be Alberto Sharptons and Jesus Jacksons, making a fun living in the race racket. They want to get invited to, oh, say, conferences in Aspen.

Granted, La Raza, which is mostly funded by Dead White Male-founded charities like the Ford Foundation, has more chiefs than they have Indians at present.

It's not clear, however, that it will always remain this way. We're seeing right now in Venezuela and Bolivia another example of the periodic uprisings of the darker masses against the whiter ruling class.

Will we see something like this in the U.S. someday? Hard to say, but, surely, it's advisable to not be dumb as a stump about the background of 15% of the U.S. population.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 6:44 PM

I've long since believed we have two distinct problems in America, neither of which is the "race" problem. (I'd actually like to throw the word "race" out of the political lexicon entirely because it has become so misused and abused as to render it pretty useless.)

The first is a color problem, which has to do with inherent prejudice - not necessarily malicious prejudice, but pre-judging - with respect to the hue of another's skin. It doesn't matter if a person is of African, Caribbean, Latin American, South Asian, or Arab descent, there is a stigma attached to darkness of skin that America has yet to overcome.

The second is a culture problem, which has to do with an unwillingness amongst those of the traditionally dominant American culture - which has evolved from white Anglo-Saxon protestantism - to embrace diverse cultures rather than force assimilation. Even non-WASPs can choose either to become culturally "American" or to hold fast to certain parts of his/her "non-American" cultural identity, but with the latter still come some pretty severe social consequences.

This is all to say that what makes groups like NCLR still relevant is that many Hispanic Americans, regardless of their color or country of origin, have strong "non-American" cultural identification that they are understandably unwilling to completely abandon. However, culture, unlike color, is a choice - and it is perfectly okay for a person of Hispanic descent like Matt not to identify with his ancestral culture and to, for the most part, assimilate.

Anyways, I hope that going forward, we can talk about the two problems separately. They certainly cal for different solutions.

Posted by ASDem | July 1, 2008 6:46 PM

As a darker-mixed person whose parents immigrated here from Africa in the 60s, it's also uniquely difficult. People normally just don't ask about my ethnicity, because they generally assume that a) I'm a descendant of American slaves; and/or b) I have no idea of my ethnic make-up because of a).

2.3 million people (about 6% of black Americans) are African immigrants or descendants thereof.

Posted by Andrew Fly | July 1, 2008 6:54 PM

I was at my graduation reception for my MBA with my brother, his three-year-old daughter, and some other family members. We shared a table with a Mexican-American classmate, who was there with his parents from McAllen, TX. My brother was chatting with them, and it somehow came out that his daughter was bilingual (my brother's wife is Venezuelan). He joked that she'll talk Spanish with her mom, but only English with him. And to demonstrate, he asked her in fluent Spanish why she didn't want to speak with daddy. (She answered by getting a case of the shies and hiding her face.) He chatted in Spanish with my classmates parents, who then complained, in English so that their son could understand them, that he had never learned Spanish.

The complexity of identity really hit me at that moment. My niece was clearly "Hispanic"--one parent was an immigrant from a Spanish-speaking country, and my niece speaks Spanish as well--but her last name is Scottish. My classmate's parents were bilingual Hispanic immigrants, but he was a monolongual native-born American--yet he, too, was obviously "Hispanic." My brother is about as Anglo-Scot as you can be, and is clearly not "Hispanic"--and yet he can speak Spanish like a native, lived in South America for years, and his middle name is even Cortez!

So what does it take to be Hispanic? Language? Immigrant status? The right geneology? The right surname?

Posted by RWB | July 1, 2008 6:55 PM

according to the census 50% of hispanic/latinos identify as white, 40% as "other," and the remainder are black, mixed, indigenous, etc. latinos throw a monkey wrench into the coarse sharp racial distinctions we have in these united states, but right now everyone is pretending like it isn't happening. so you have many white hispanics who can pass as anglo who are conveniently facultative people of color (they're not white when it benefits them, but they nicely get the advantage of white skin privilege in public). many white cuban americans are privately racist against non-white cuban americans (or non-whites in general), but the culturally fluent ones can also play the people of color schtick for anglos who don't want a complicated set of heuristics for dealing with all the coloreds.

Posted by razib | July 1, 2008 6:57 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(United_States_Census)#Ethnicity

look at the racial identification of hispanics. i would be willing to bet that the 42.2% who are "Some other" race are of modal frequency among california latinos, who are culturally most habituated to the "cosmic race" paradigm.

Posted by razib | July 1, 2008 7:02 PM

Re: We're seeing right now in Venezuela and Bolivia another example of the periodic uprisings of the darker masses against the whiter ruling class.

Our "darker masses" aren't Hispanics. And I suspect that the destiny of Hispanics in the US will be to merge into the "white" race, much as others have done before them. Only two groups, Native Americans and Blacks, have resisted complete assimilation (and both of them have come far along the way too).

Re: It doesn't matter if a person is of African, Caribbean, Latin American, South Asian, or Arab descent

Actually it matters a lot. Black people from Africa and (for long) from the Carribean were and often still are treated as virtual whites-- or at least much as we treat Asians. It's the Black descendants of slavery who are assumed to be lesser beings. The real problem we have is a class one, with lower income whites being taught to resent and look down on lower income Blacks to prevent them from joining together to challenge the Powers That Be above them.

Posted by JonF | July 1, 2008 7:03 PM

My husband's step-siblings are Cuban and Polish. They are not, according to their mother, Hispanic.

According to what I've seen, Equatorial Guinea is part of the Hispanic world. See their recognizable "racial" features here.

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/places/images/photos/photo_lg_equatorialguinea.jpg

The issue is that we like putting people in boxes. This is a huge segment of the world's population that demonstrates amazing morphological differences. Further, we're really bad at keeping those groups separated. So, we create a false concept and then try to get people to identify with it. I'm American. I'm also Scottish and French and German and Welsh and potentially much more fun. If you ask me, I'll say I'm a Celt. My dark olive skin, dark brown eyes and blonde hair will confuse you, and your head will explode... unless you've ever been to wales and seen the huge population of little girls who look exactly like me. But you think Celts are pale with red hair and green eyes or pale with dark hair and blue eyes. You'd probably assume I'm Spanish. Most people do. Which is amusing because the friends I've had who are of Spanish or mixed Spanish origin who look like me get funny looks when they say they're Spanish or Puerto Rican or Cuban or what have you because they have light hair. Why? People are stupid.

Posted by brenna | July 1, 2008 7:08 PM

many white "hispanic" people are ... racist against non-white "hispanic" people (or non-whites in general)

That's more in line with my experience as a potentially "white hispanic" person.

I had absolutely no inclination to get into it with Mixner in the earlier post from today, but the "Hispanic" card is a convenient one to deploy for complicating people's conception of "race".

I'm one quarter Puerto Rican (used to post here under a different handle) and three quarters swarthy European. So I'm supposed to be, what, part white and part Hispanic? (Since my swarthy European ancestors now get to count as "white" for the most part.) Except my Puerto Rican ancestors were lighter skinned than the swarthy Europeans. Is there mixed ancestry in my past? Possibly (unlikely for social reasons, actually). But as far back as we've got photos all my ancestors are presumptively white. Am I still part "Hispanic"? What the fuck is a "white Hispanic" anyway? Nobody breaks out "black Hispanic" vs. "Native American Hispanic" that I've ever seen, not to mention all the different racial mixes thereof. And what's a "Hispanic" or "Latino" person anway? I've never cared to identify as Hispanic, because personally I've found that generalization unhelpful and don't like the way it smooths over my cultural identity; I'm a (quarter) Puerto Rican (raised in the US with little Spanish). Other Puerto Ricans (among others) do self-identify under either/or Hispanic/Latino, and find it helpful, and derive pride from that, and if it works for them then more power to them. (They still wouldn't like to be confused with Dominicans, though.)

"Hispanic" is a moving target because it collapses linguistic, cultural, geographic, and genetic identities into a single term and pretends to be coherent. That we deploy it as a "racial" category is a joke, but illustrative of the joke all our other racial categories are.

(Tiresome objection prophylactic: yes, there are genetic differences between populations. Yes, some of these genetic differences dependably manifest in physical appearance. None of them map satisfyingly on our national conversation about "race".)

Posted by Medrawt | July 1, 2008 7:17 PM

Actually it matters a lot. Black people from Africa and (for long) from the Carribean were and often still are treated as virtual whites-- or at least much as we treat Asians.

As many black people (including Barack Obama) have said, the cab driver not stopping when I wave my hand doesn't care about my background. And many Americans are woefully uninterested and uninformed about in African/Caribean demographics and diaspora. While education levels for African immigrants are higher than those of any other immigrant group (yes, including Asians), to say they are treated as virtual whites is a bit of a stretch

Posted by Andrew Fly | July 1, 2008 7:19 PM

I agree with ASDem, brenna and others. It's all about skin color. I'm 1/4th Ecuadorian. But the family in Ecuador is extremely pale skinned. I have no more knowledge of Spanish than Matt does. It would never have occurred to me to label myself Hispanic. But if I was a darker shade, it might not have been an issue. People would have done the labeling for me. All I know is my parents grew up on farms in Kentucky. And my Grandma lives in Quito. But if I had black hair like my dad... would things have been different?

Posted by Brian | July 1, 2008 7:20 PM

So what does it take to be Hispanic? Language? Immigrant status? The right geneology? The right surname?

Certification by Steve Sailer . . .

Posted by rea | July 1, 2008 7:23 PM

Just because the Hispanic category isn't very logical doesn't mean it's going away.

There are big personal advantages to being eligible for affirmative action or for jobs as a token. For example, the GOP has pushed Mel Martinez into all sorts of fun jobs in recent years (Cabinet official, U.S. Senator, head of the RNC, etc.) because he has a Spanish surname, and they want to show they care about Hispanics.

Any category that comes with benefits to those who self-identify as members of that category will be around at least as long as the benefits are.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 7:48 PM

Culture is next to religion and the state as the most damaging and useless thing ever invented by man. It's a direct outgrowth - as is the state (religion has another basis) - of chimpanzee behavior.

Fuck culture. Your culture is no more important than anyone else's culture. What matters are the way things are done. All cultures have valid and useful concepts that should be adopted by all other cultures. Anything that isn't valid should be dumped. Eventually this would eradicate the very notion of "culture".

Anybody who thinks "X is beautiful" or "X is proud" is an idiot.

Anybody who thinks it's important to identify with some mass of people on any other basis than that they are useful to you in some concrete fashion is an idiot.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 7:56 PM

The Census Bureau defines "race" and "ethnicity" as separate, although the only ethnicities they recognize are Hispanic and non-Hispanic. A Hispanic can be of any race, and a member of any race can be Hispanic (e.g., former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru is ethnically Hispanic and racially Asian by Census standards).

Here are useful definitions that flesh out the Census Bureau's thinking:

- A racial group is a partly inbred extended family. (In other words, race is genealogical.)

- An ethnic group is a set of people who share traits that are frequently passed down within biological families (e.g., surnames, language, accent, religion, cuisine, sense of peoplehood, customs, etc.), but that don't _require_ a biological link.

For example, Alberto Fujimori's first name is an ethnic trait, while his epicanthic folds are a racial trait.

These two definitions will help clarify your thinking and help you understand how the world works better.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 7:59 PM

For example, the GOP has pushed Mel Martinez into all sorts of fun jobs in recent years (Cabinet official, U.S. Senator, head of the RNC, etc.) because he has a Spanish surname, and they want to show they care about Hispanics.

I have to, unfortunately, agree with you. Martinez is a twat. However, he's propelled by this ridiculous relationship the GOP thinks they have with those of Central and South American post-colonial origins. The Cubans fall for it because of their so often one-track brain spasms about Castro. And, everyone else is supposedly falling in line. I think they just fail to vote, though. But, lots of "whites" vote for these kinds of politicians to show that they, too, are sensitive to "Hispanics." It's stupid. It's offensive. Show me policies that are real and stop giving me bullshit. I'm not voting for you because of who you know or what you look like or what genitals you have. But I guess I'm the only one.

Posted by brenna | July 1, 2008 8:01 PM

The current legal category "Hispanic" was invented by the Nixon Administration Office of Management and Budget in 1973 for the purposes of handing out affirmative action benefits.

There wasn't much noticeable pan-Hispanic sentiment in 1973 (most Spanish surnamed people identified by nation of origin, such as Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican). But this Nixonian innovation has proven popular with politically and professionally ambitious Hispanics ever since because it gives them a larger power base to claim to represent. Thus, Mel Martinez isn't just a Cuban-American leader representing no more than 1% of the population; he's now a "Hispanic" spokesman, with an ostensible claim to speak for 45,000,000 people.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 8:16 PM

According to the racial paradigm, I think I'm supposed to raise my hand. But at the same time, I have white skin, I'm a fourth-generation American, and my knowledge of Spanish is limited to a summer semester I took at NYU years ago.

I guess I can see where you're coming from. My initial, easy answer is that if you feel you were raised in that culture (say you had a hispanic relative who imparted the identity to you through your rearing / socialization at her hands) then you're hispanic.

But thinking about it more, I guess what ethnicities you belong to depend on the context / the purpose for which your being asked. If you go to a place like northern NJ, most white people every day are for most purposes like most other white people. But (it seems like) almost none of us are people whose ancestors came to America many generations ago, and many of us retain a foreign cultural ethnicity for less common, more intimate contexts (for example, you and your relatives go to some Irish festival or Irish music events a couple of times a year, have tradtionally Irish foods at family get-togethers, you expect to marry Irish people and prefer the company of Irish people). I guess a lot of this may seem obscure to a lot of upper-class people, and a lot of it is not so conscious or talked about even among the lower/immigrant class who practice it. Then there are differences from town-to-town- if you just go to neighboring town or city, the particular ethnic culture may not have been as numerous, many not have been as culturally cohesive, or may not have valued family as much as in the next town over, so the people there are generally less "Irish" or "Polish" than they were in the town a few miles away.

Posted by Swan | July 1, 2008 8:26 PM

If you go to a place like northern NJ, most white people every day are for most purposes like most other white people.

That is, across different ethnicities.

Another thing is your skin color. If you look hispanic, then I guess you're pretty safe saying you're hispanic, almost no matter who raised you or how they raised you.

That's the point with Barack. He feels black because the country looks at black people a certain way, and people looked at him that way growing up and treated him the way this country treats black people. Then there's more to it-- because of genetics, black guys are generally physically stronger than white guys. Barack was good at basketball growing up, and I'm sure he identifies that or had the experience of people in his life seeing that as part of the bigger trend of blacks coming to dominate competitive sports in this country, and the entire set of reactions and treatment that goes along with that. So what I guess that brings us to is that what we call "ethnicity" is also for our day-to-day purposes a function of people's expectations and prejudices with regard to the particular ethnicity. And that's why some people sneer when you claim something like "Irish" ethnicity, because it's one that for most purposes, day-to-day, doesn't differ much from the rest of "white" people in America.

Posted by Swan | July 1, 2008 8:35 PM

One thing that people who are part Latin American by ancestry could do is lobby the government to create "Multi-Ethnic" categories analogous to the "Multi-Racial" categories created for the 2000 Census.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 8:45 PM

As you no doubt recall, back in early 2000, black (and other) racial organizations were bitterly opposed to the creation of "multi-racial" categories in the upcoming 2000 Census because the number of affirmative action benefits handed out to blacks are based on the size of the black population. And it's not just explicit affirmative action, as in college admissions. The big driving force behind racial preferences is fear of "disparate impact" hiring lawsuits. The legal rule of thumb is, roughly, that if a minority group makes up less than 80% of your workforce relative to their share of the local workforce, then the burden of proof is on you, the employer, to justify the disparate impact of your hiring practices.

So, black organizations were highly agitated over the prospect of, say, Tiger Woods, putting himself down as only 25% black and thus accounting only for 25% of a potential worker toward figuring the minimum number of blacks an employer must hire to avoid discrimination in hiring lawsuits.

Thus, the more members of a legally protected minority the Census finds, the more affirmative action hiring their group enjoys.

So, just before the 2000 election, the Clinton administration therefore announced that self-identified multi-racial people would count fully toward whichever legally protected racial group they belonged to. Thus, in figuring out racial quotas, Tiger Woods, say, would count as one whole African American, one whole Native American, and one whole Asian American.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 8:49 PM

I just reminded myself of another point I wished to make, and my own comment will in a timely manner prompt even further reflection.

Posted by El Cid | July 1, 2008 8:53 PM

In contrast to black and Hispanic activists, who want to maximize the number of people counted as black or Hispanic for the purposes of allotting affirmative action benefits, American Indian tribes are now notorious for expelling members for insufficient genealogical Indianness. For example, the Cherokee Nation recently expelled a few thousand formerly Cherokee who are more black by descent (often the descendents of slaves, either owned by Cherokee, or who escaped to Oklahoma).

The main reason for this is that (besides the usual affirmative action goodies) Native American Nations get an additional but finite benefit: a single casino per tribe. The more official members of the tribe, the more slices the finite pie of the casino's profits have to be divided up into each year. Thus, you frequently see reports on Indian nations kicking out long-time members for not having enough tribal blood in their family tree. This increases the payout to each surviving member.

In contrast, affirmative action benefits are theoretically infinite, since they just are taken not from other members of the minority, but from the white majority. So, black and Hispanic activists want to maximize the number of people eligible for affirmative action to maximize the size of the voting blocs that benefit from it.

In the long run, however, affirmative action and mass immigration by those eligible for affirmative action is not sustainable.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 1, 2008 8:58 PM

El Cid: "I just reminded myself of another point I wished to make, and my own comment will in a timely manner prompt even further reflection."

Well, I do that, too, and I'm sure you've noticed.

I find Sailer's posts interesting in that regard. It's like an impromptu history or sociology lesson. Background material I might not otherwise have known about. Not always immediately relevant, but not worth complaining about - at least if one isn't into snark as a primary communication modality.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 9:07 PM

El Cid is too polite to say it directly, so I will - you are bloviating. To wit: You dislike minorities. They are bad people led by despicable jiveasses who spend their every waking moment either leeching off of or conspiring to leech off of white people, who are the only productive members of society. Unfortunately, liberals prevent us from either re-enslaving or killing them all and living happily ever after. We get it. And apparently you cannot contain your wad of rage in one post.

Posted by Vivisfugue | July 1, 2008 9:41 PM

Oh, and another thing...

Posted by Vivisfugue | July 1, 2008 9:43 PM

Why does Steve Sailer have to pollute every thread about Hispanic people? I don't believe a word he says.

Posted by Karen | July 1, 2008 10:07 PM

I had not known Sailer's point about the origins of the term "La Raza." But the Spanish Columbus Day parade in New York City (as opposed to the much bigger Italian one - yes, there used to be two parades, may still be for all I know) was known as "El Dia de la Raza." And I assure you, as one who marched with my Dad and various other Spanish immigrants in that parade during the 1960s-1970s, there weren't any Mexicans there honoring Columbus.

Posted by Gene | July 1, 2008 10:25 PM

Is it just me or has the ratio of jackass regulars/ boarderline spammers, to reasonable commenting, taken a turn for the worse recently?

Posted by JK | July 1, 2008 10:27 PM

Because he's a one-note band...and he's kind of fucking nuts if you haven't noticed.

I do have to ask though, Steve. You always have stats. They make me laugh my ass off the way you torture data to find *something* that if you glance at it supports your point. What is the dollar benefit of the affirmative action benefit that the minorities and their white dupes are conspiring to keep?

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 1, 2008 10:27 PM

http://www.nclr.org/section/translation/

The Translation of Our Name: National Council of La Raza

Many people incorrectly translate our name, “La Raza,” as “the race.” While it is true that one meaning of “raza” in Spanish is indeed “race,” in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings. As noted in several online dictionaries, “La Raza” means “the people” or “the community.” Translating our name as “the race” is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect. “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race. As anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.

The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people” or, according to some scholars, as “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.

Posted by John | July 1, 2008 10:52 PM

There was an interesting discussion of this use of the term "La Raza" in Mexico itself, and it came to a head back when Zedillo was President in the last year of the PRI dictatorship and they (as everyone else was) were coming up upon the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyages to what is now the Americas.

The discussion of this notion of "La Raza" in popular political usage was partly prompted by the 400th anniversary, under the Porfiriato or dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

From the official Zedillo website leading up to the 500 years commemoration:

In Mexico, October 12th is a national holiday known as Día de la Raza or Day of the Race. This date is honored in other countries as Columbus Day and under other names; but the event it commemorates and the way in which it is observed have become quite controversial...

...When Mexico celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' landing, in 1892, the country was ruled by Porfirio Díaz, who remained in power for over thirty years and was a great admirer of European culture, especially the French. At that time, the government prepared a celebration of "The communion of all peoples in sentiments of justice and admiration for the past, noble aspirations and glowing hopes for the future" for October 12, 1892. As in most of the world, this event praised Columbus for his skill as navigator, for his Discovery of America and for bringing European culture to this land, although all of these things have since been questioned and re-examined...

...In 1918, philosopher Antonio Caso took October 12th as an opportunity to praise the "Mexican mestizo race", La Raza, the rich mixture of Spanish and indigenous cultures which characterizes us. He was perhaps the first to coin the term La Raza, which has now been adopted by Latinos from all across the continent. Ten years later, the Día de la Raza was declared an official national holiday by Congress, after only minor debate.

http://tinyurl.com/5za87z

Posted by El Cid | July 1, 2008 10:53 PM

Oh, since it's de rigeur to remind oneself of things, it should be recalled that the Mexican Revolution took place and the new Constitution established just before Antonio Caso's work in this vein, and as you might expect given the bottom-up nature of much of the Mexican Revolution, it was a time for lots of re-thinking of one's place in life, particularly given that part of the revolt was between the European (Spanish in this case) seeming traditionally governing elites and the Indian-based peasantry.

Posted by El Cid | July 1, 2008 11:13 PM

Oops -- last years, definitely not last year of the PRI dictatorship, and Zedillo himself actually followed Salinas into office, reaching the Presidency in 1994. The PRI didn't get formally booted out until Fox took over. Back in the year of the 500th anniversary of Columbus, Zedillo was Secretary of Education. If I forgot anything else I hereby promise to leave it forgotten, wrong, or what have you.

Posted by El Cid | July 1, 2008 11:24 PM

See now, that was educational, El Cid.

The Internet once again comes through.

Now we now EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT "La Raza" (to paraphrase Ed McMahon).

"You are wrong, Mariachi-breath"!

From Wikipedia:

Vasconcelos believed in Supremacism in that eventually all of the people within the Spanish Empire would completely mixed into a new race that had the best attributes of all the cultures; armies of these people would then go forth around the world professing their knowledge and initiating the "universal era of humanity".

Yeah, that concept would blow Sailer's and TLB's minds!

Also:

"La Raza is viewed as a racist statement by Americans of European and African decent. It is similar to White pride in that it expresses pride in ones race and culture.

White Pride??? Have I missed something? When did "Black Pride" get transmuted into "White Pride"?

As an aside, I wonder who added that last paragraph to the Wikipedia entry? There's no cite.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 11:46 PM

My wife and I go through this all the time with our family. She finds it highly amusing. But it comes up with the census, various other forms, and when we register our kids for school.

I'm a white American of German and Swedish ancestry. Clearly non-Hispanic.

My wife is Chilean. She's now a naturalized US citizen but she was born and raised in Chile and did not immigrate to the US until about age 29 when we married. Although Spanish is her first language she speaks unaccented English. She is descended from Basque and German immigrants to Chile in the 19th Century. She looks vaguely latin in an upper class Spanish sort of way but not at all Mexican. She has dark hair but light skin and European features. As a doctor in a public clinic in Texas she sees LOTS of Mexican immigrant patients who generally read her as an "Anglo" unless she speaks in Spanish. Is she Hispanic? Most people would say yes.

Our oldest daughter was born in Chile and is a dual citizen. Spanish was her first language although she is now more comfortable in English. But she is bilingual. She is not my biological daughter. Her biological father was Chilean but I have since adopted her. She immigrated to the US with my wife at the age of 3. She has strawberry blond hair and green eyes and looks like a young Lindsay Lohan circa the Parent Trap. Is she Hispanic? Should we check Hispanic or Anglo on the school registration?

Our two younger daughters both have blond hair and blue eyes. They have Chilean and American dual-citizenship. They are bilingual but English is their first language. No one in the US would ever identify them as Hispanic by appearance. However when we go back to Chile they don't stand out in my wife's family's upper class neighborhood either where half the kids are blond and blue eyed as well. Are they Hispanic?

This is the problem with the Hispanic classification. Where do you draw the line?

Posted by Kent from Waco | July 1, 2008 11:56 PM

You're Hispanic. These categories are so wildly problematic as to be meaningless upon any real scrutiny. The problem is that it's a political question, and to deny membership in the group because you're white, educated, 4th generation, etc. is worse than the sin of imprecision. I'm a mostly half Irish, quarter Mexican quarter Spanish white guy who's a third generation University of California graduate. But I absolutely check the box for Hispanic or Latino (or whatever).

Posted by RM | July 2, 2008 12:06 AM

Given the thousand contradictions, we need first principles. "Hispanic" means "of or pertaining to Spain (Hispania)." In this context, it surely refers to the Spanish language, presumably as a first language. The rest is embroidery.

Posted by etymolog | July 2, 2008 12:20 AM

My mother is from Argentina, so I don't have a problem putting "hispanic" on the census form even though I'm a pale-skinned dude who speaks terrible Spanish...the college application was more of a dilemma though, because I figured there was a chance it would play at least a small role in admission decisions, and it's pretty obvious to me that I've never faced any special obstacles or discrimination as a result of my heritage. On the other hand, if it's their choice to ask about this, shouldn't I give an accurate response, leaving it in their hands what to do with the information? They could see what I looked like from the picture, after all. At the time I just decided to go with "white" but I might make the opposite decision if I ever apply to grad school, it's a tough call.

Posted by Jesse M. | July 2, 2008 12:42 AM

I confess I stopped reading comments after seeing that Sailer is here to hold down the fort.

However, I'll point out that only sheltered useful idiots buy anything the NCLR and similar groups tell them about the word "raza". Everyone knows what that means in the present-day context, and it isn't the "cosmica" variety. A parallel would be "Volk", and I mean that in the negative sense.

And, if anyone wants to know what the NCLR is about, click here for a one paragraph overview with links to supporting information.

Short answer: they gave an award to the guy who said the following:

"We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

Now, what kind of blogger could support a group that would give someone who'd say something like that an award?

Posted by TLB | July 2, 2008 1:05 AM

Shorter TLB: everyone who believes in "La Raza" - including the posters here who hail from Chile and Argentina and look white - is going to "kill the gringos" because some Hispanic radical said so.

And he thinks "Volk" is the problem. And he complains about Steve Sailer.

I think the appropriate comparison is that TLB equates to the Nazis who said the Jews were running everything and only white Aryans should be running the show.

That's a "Volk" problem.

I'm sure you can find some Latinos who would buy into that - there's no shortage of racists in the chimpanzee world. How any of that fits in with what Kamasaki said in Matt's post is hard to figure, however.

Try this, TLB - move to Switzerland.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 1:43 AM

Anyway-- I always thought "La Raza" referred to Mexicans only!

Posted by Swan | July 2, 2008 2:34 AM

Yeah, I think non-Mexicans that call themselves this are just being wannabes, or white supremacists are trying to portray all hispanics as adhering to this idea to make them sound like they are trying to war with other races.

La Raza is a Mexican thing.

Posted by Swan | July 2, 2008 2:39 AM

Sailer does know what he's talking about, particularly in his insight that in Latin American cultures, the class line is between the rubios and the indios (the blondes and the indians). The rich people in Latin American tend to be as fair skinned as rich people in North America (as they call the US, though I'm always ready to assimilate Canada, even parenthetically).

This dynamic of white elites using "everyone is a mestizo" myths (e.g. La Raza) to keep power is a textbook example of what Amy Chua termed a "market dominant minority". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market-dominant_minority

And Sailer is correct that its another misunderstood Californian who's the true father of the Hispanic-American "race":

The Nixon administration first pushed for a recognition of a "Spanish-speaking" identity group, as the GOP actively sought a strategy to lure Mexican American voters. President Nixon also insisted on the addition of a Hispanic-origin question on the census form.

Historian John D. Skrentny discovered a 1971 White House memo that points to the administration's ulterior motive: "Spanish-speaking Americans will take what they can get from whomever will give it…. We should exploit Spanish-speaking hostility to blacks by reminding Spanish groups of the Democrats' commitment to blacks at their expense."

But to do this, the government had to throw Mexican Americans into a single, overarching category that could be understood as analogous to blacks...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-rodriguez12nov12,0,6137605.column?coll=la-opinion-center

Posted by beowulf | July 2, 2008 4:05 AM

The funny thing is that on this thread it's Sailer who's arguably the left-wing radical - or at least consciously using the left wing radical language of people like the Sendero Luminoso and other Indian-based Latin American radical social movements. And the so-called "progressives" who attack him are using the language of the white patriarchy - happily assuming that all Native Americans really aspire to ape bourgeois white values, even if they don't know it yet. The one area Sailer is very perceptive about is just how condescending white progressives really are to Blacks and Latinos despite their talk of universalist brotherhood. I suppose it takes a white racist to see the white racism in others.

Posted by vanya | July 2, 2008 10:39 AM

I think the funniest part of this is that Kamasaki, given the name and his picture, appears to be Japanese-American! Maybe his background is part Hispanic, part Japanese.

I think all of this will become less and less relevant over time as there's more intermarriage among different racial/ethnic groups (as a lot of the posters indicate in describing their families). And that's a Good Thing.

Posted by Dave | July 2, 2008 10:44 AM

Sailer does know what he's talking about, particularly in his insight that in Latin American cultures, the class line is between the rubios and the indios...

He may have mentioned it here, but it's no insight, in the sense of some insightful conclusion -- given that everyone who either visits or has even the tiniest bit of scholarly interest in Central and South America take it for granted, at least if you add a qualifier like "has historically been".

Posted by El Cid | July 2, 2008 11:44 AM

El Cid,

Geez, next you're going to tell me Columbus didn't "discover" America. The insight part is Sailer applied this reality (which you may take for granted, but the next US politician who discusses it will be the first) to American politics.

Posted by beowulf | July 2, 2008 12:49 PM

However, I'll point out that only sheltered useful idiots buy anything the NCLR and similar groups tell them about the word "raza". Everyone knows what that means in the present-day context, and it isn't the "cosmica" variety. A parallel would be "Volk", and I mean that in the negative sense.

Actually, there is a "Volk" analogy, but it's not one that helps your argument.

"La Raza" is like "Volkswagen". It is a term that has an interesting intellectual history, and one that a few eccentrics still care about (there are still people who won't buy Volkswagens even though the modern company has nothing to do with Hitler). But for the vast majority of people, "Volkswagen" no longer even has any association with pre-World War II conceptions of who was and wasn't a part of the German "people".

Well, "La Raza" is the same way. AT THIS POINT IN HISTORY, it doesn't mean, to its members, what it might have meant in the past. And only crazy people on the other side still obsess about the earlier meaning.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 2, 2008 1:34 PM

TLB wrote:
And, if anyone wants to know what the NCLR is about, click here for a one paragraph overview with links to supporting information.

It's a popular meme among right-wing extremist groups that NCLR and MEChA are latino supremacists who want to reclaim the southwest for "Aztlan", but it's not supported by the actual evidence--see this post and this one from the excellent "Orcinus" blog (which is devoted to documenting the way that ideas from right-wing extremist groups, including white supremacist organizations, often filter their way into mainstream 'conservative' thought).

Short answer: they gave an award to the guy who said the following:
"We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

Yeah, except for the part where there's no documentation that Gutierrez ever said that, and he specifically denies it--see the Criticism section of his wikipedia article. He is supposed to have made some other controversial remarks about "gringos" but he also has said: "Not all Anglos are gringos, and not all gringos are white. I have met some Hispanics, blacks and Mexican nationals that are as racist and prejudiced against our Raza in the U.S. as any gringo. In fact, in Mexican society there is an entire class of anti-Mexican Mexicans. I have met many of them." He is also quoted as saying "It's a mindset. To me, a gringo is anyone with anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant views. Some of them are us. There are 'High-Spanics' who want to be anything but Mexican. It doesn't follow at all that all Anglo-Saxons are gringos. Racism is not the exclusive venue of white people."

Posted by Jesse M. | July 2, 2008 2:21 PM

Technically, Hispanics or Latinos (whichever you prefer), are not a race, they're an ethnicity. This is because they are again technically mixed races or mestizos.

Posted by bum | July 2, 2008 3:36 PM

Maybe it's due to my childhood in South Florida, but I've always considered 'hispanic'(at least here in the US) to simply indicate someone who speaks the Spanish language as a primary or native language, whereas 'Latino/a' might indicate more of a cultural identity, and something much more complex or loose. Similarly, regardless of whether a Portuguese-speaking person came from Brazil, Portugal, or Angola, I'd consider him as a lusophone. Neither the color of one's skin nor the country of origin(or nationality) would factor into this definition. But based on the responses here, it seems that different people use these terms to mean very different things; that's what causes so much confusion when discussing these issues.
Getting a solid definition for 'latino/a' seems much trickier. In South Florida at least, it seems to indicate not necessarily a particular race, skin color, or nationality, but a perceived connection between immigrants(and their descendents) who vaguely share cultural proclivities and a similiar colonization history(commonly envisioned as those countries colonized by Spain or Portugal). I don't think it's necessarily a fixed concept, either, since it seems there's a wide spectrum of traditions, values, etc. that fall under that umbrella of 'latino/a'. Thus, some Mexicans, Cubans, and even a few Brazilians in the US might self-identify as 'latino' regardless of skin color. For example, a Cuban with 'afro' features might self-identify as latino in this construct, the prominence of miscegenation causing identity as 'black' to become more complex than what we see in North America(racial physical traits mattering less than economic status...as the old saying in Brazil goes: 'money whitens'). But the anglo-american would probably lump him into the 'black' category due to our 'one drop' conception of race. At the same time, a Haitian or Jamaican here in the US might not self-identify as 'latino', due to the combined greater difference in cultural traditions, language, and a stronger identification with people of the African diaspora(well, and of course different colonial histories). But what of a Bolivian who immigrates to the US from the altiplano? How much would he share culturally with a 2nd-generation Cuban-American? Aside from (possibly)language? Perhaps after being here a while, diverse groups notice the advantage in being part of a wider group that has acquired some political power, thus go along with the flow, and eventually self-identify as 'latino', regardless of how vague that term can be. Or maybe they just get tired of explaining.
By the way, the term 'gringo' can mean very different things, too. When used by Brazilians speaking Portuguese, it means simply 'foreigner', with no negative connotations or reference to anglo vs non-anglo.

Posted by kristi | July 2, 2008 5:40 PM

The few Chinese in South Africa applied and won designation as black. Look it up! How's that for perspective?

Posted by Pfumo | July 2, 2008 5:46 PM