What is a Hispanic?
One of my questions that I have had an issue with over the years is how we define the term Hispanic and what it means and what it does not mean. I have read that some people define it by the language, the culture, where your family was born, or its only defined if the person self-relates. Did you know someone from Brazil is not Hispanic -- but Iberian or Iberian-American? What if the person lived in Brazil for a few weeks then moved to Spain -- does that change their label to Hispanic? Does anyone on here have a stronger definition or can point me in that direction?
Another one of my quandaries that I have found is that people who you would think would fit the definition do not self-identify on the 1003 (mortgage application) as Hispanic. I asked my wife, who is from Venezuela, to ask all of her friends who would most likely fit the definition if they self-identify with the term and/or if they would fill out on the 1003 or other applications that they were Hispanic. The results: 0/10 of her friends reported themselves as Hispanic and 8/10 felt the term was somewhat derogatory and did not self-identify.
Have you or your group experienced this issue at all?
What is a Hispanic?
Can you identify as a Hispanic, but do not? And why?
I would be really curious to hear your side.
I found this article awesome to see our history of self-indentification. Notice the labeling of Hispanic started in 1980. What this chart also shows is that Hispanic, Latino, and Spanish have different characteristics.
https://dilemma-x.net/2015/11/04/u-s-census-a-complete-history-of-census-race-boxes/
Thanks so much for your time, and please feel free to reach out should I be able to provide any assistance.
Innovator, Community Development Advocate, and Home Lending Executive
9 年Nadia Younes...is the Diversity Professional I mentioned. Her training was the first place I ever heard about the term Hispanic and the sensitivity and varied acceptance of the term.
Analytics, Data, and Business Intelligence Director.
9 年Michelle Rooks, That contact and the story sounds amazing; I would love to hear from her! Thanks much!
Innovator, Community Development Advocate, and Home Lending Executive
9 年One of my friends, who is a diversity professional, used to address this topic as part of one of her training programs. She tells a story about the creation of the term 'hispanic' where she speaks of the government utilizing a computer if I'm not mistaken to develop an interpretation from a number of words that served as input to come up with the term. She further talks about the varied degree of acceptance of the term and the regional differences you can find in the varied levels of acceptance. If you are interested I could reach out to her for reliable sources of information that may prove helpful. I am recalling this from memory so I may be missing some additional piece of important information. We could follow up with her to clarify my interpretation of her story if this is of interest to you.