It’s Time To 86The Word “Hispanic” from Our Vocabulary

I’ve been in countless meetings, and I’m sure you have too when the subject turns to targeting or segmenting the “Hispanic” market,  or I’ve heard “we have a Hispanic Marketing program.”  This conversation always tends to annoy me because we don’t say let’s target the “Anglo-European” market or rarely do you say let’s target the “African-American” market (I think political campaigns are the worst offenders of this).  I look forward to the day when marketers and demographers, politicians, and the media stop labeling people with such a broad brush.

“Hispanic” is more often than not considered a race among many U.S. citizens (It isn’t.) A Puerto Rican man in the Bronx even refused to fill out his Census form because the term “Hispanic” was not considered a race, something he considered plain offensive.

I think the 2010 Census took a positive step forward on question 8 by offering “Hispanics” or those of Spanish origin to list a more specific country of origin.  My wife is Argentinean.  In America she usually gets lumped into the “Hispanic” crowd, but her background, culture, and family history identifies more with Italians.  It just so happens that she speaks Spanish because she grew up in Argentina.  She fills out government forms saying she is White.  After all you wouldn’t expect an Italian American to fill out a form saying they were Hispanic.  Why should a Argentinean-Italian who happens to be an American citizen fill out a form saying they are “Hispanic?”  America’s vast cultural mosaic is too complicated and diverse to even bother labeling anymore with these over-simplified labels.

In question nine of the Census many Americans found an easy way out: Taking advantage of the 19-character free space box under “race,” many chose to spell out the word “mestizo,“ indicating the mixed nature of their heritage.  I look forward to the day when everyone recognizes that we are all “mestizo” or we can just put on a form “American,”  and be done with it.