Demographics

Who is considered to be Latino or Hispanic?

In many ways Latino, or Hispanic, is a relatively new identity. It is an identity formed in the United States by people born here of parents born in different Latin American countries and by recent immigrants from those countries. The identity coexists-at least at the moment-with the original national identity (from their country of origin) that immigrants bring to the United States.

Many forces have contributed to the making of this identity. Among these are:

1. The recognition by Hispanics, and Americans too, that there is a general cultural heritage (as seen in customs, family life, and music) that is shared by people who come from Latin America. Part of the heritage includes the value (many times symbolic) that is given to the Spanish language.

2. The high percentage of people from the different Hispanic nationalities that intermarry one with the other. Their children, in many ways, create a new way of identifying.

3. The experience of discrimination and the Civil Rights Movement, especially by Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, in the 1960s made these "minorities" realize that they faced common problems and that strength was based in numbers.

4. The large presence of second, third, fourth, and fifth generation Hispanics who have maintained a sense of difference-of being American and something else, or of being Americans that are different. Today, two-thirds of those who identify as Latinos were born in the United States-they are not recent immigrants.

5. The way that the Federal government classifies people also has tended to impose this new identity. By creating categories in the census the Federal government forces individuals to classify themselves accordingly.

6. The media and advertisement campaigns by corporations also contribute to the formation of the Hispanic identity. Rather than focusing their advertisement campaigns at a specific group (for example, Dominicans) ad companies market their products to appeal to all Latinos-taken as a unit and not as separate nationalities.

7. The large Hispanic media corporations (in television, radio, and newspapers) also serve to stimulate this identity.

There is still disagreement on which term should be used to name the group. We will avoid this debate and use interchangeably both "Latino/a" and "Hispanic" for the group.