On HispanicLatino and not ‘Hispanic’ nor ‘Latino’

Standing in a conference room atop a bank building in Miami last week, I had been looking out at the spectacular vista.  From the city’s mammoth airport to the west, my gaze spanned eastward, marveling at the jewel-islands linked by the necklace of causeways that connects all to the island of Miami Beach, itself ensconced by the emerald beauty of the Atlantic.  I forced myself to return my head to business and stepped into the hallway to snatch a cup of coffee.  Upon my return, a man who had spoken earlier to the meeting I was attending introduced himself.

The usual banter ensued, and soon enough the inevitable question that has plagued humanity since it invented small talk came my way from the Anglo marketing consultant: What do you do for a living?

I write a blog on HispanicLatinos at HispanicLatino.com.

Oh. He paused.  You are combining the terms.  He paused again, then: Thank you!  Before I could smile in return, he continued in spurts of sentences.  We never know what to say…at my company…which term to use…we go back and forth…in reports and stuff…we do not want to offend anybody….

My response was a bit more organized:

To me, the population has gotten too large, and it needs a more unified term to manage itself and for others to understand it.

The encounter re-enforced my point about the term ‘HispanicLatino’ as did the Pew Hispanic Center report this week about what the mostly Spanish-surnamed HispanicLatino population calls itself.  Like Anglos’ confusion over how to describe it, the Spanish-surnamed population, whatever its legal status, is tautologically all over the map.  Most HispanicLatinos are ‘Hispanics’ and others are ‘Latinos’, and most but not all can go either way.  And almost all put high priority on their recent or past place of origin, so that the smallest of all groups, the Paraguayans, call themselves…Paraguayans.  Really?  In the United States of America? Paraguayans?  Yet, that, too, makes sense, for the basic, foundational essence of America celebrates personal freedom based on the liberty of the individual.

Everyone is free to develop their own thoughts, lead their own lives and chart their own ways forward – including what to name themselves.  Yet the lack of a unified, common self-designation is especially critical for a Spanish-rooted population that in the past four decades has quintupled in number, growing from about 10 million in 1972 to about 52 million today from a mostly Mexican-derived demographic base.

The numerical growth of the HispanicLatino population is comparable in importance to the great demographic events that shaped the American experience.  Like the initial, immigrant-creation of the country or the removal of the original native population or the introduction of a slave population from another continent or the transcontinental expansion of a population from coast to coast, the growth of the HispanicLatino is on a historic scale within a specific geographic setting.  It is not as muddled a phenomenon as many would want it to be.  It is a singular, unique development that is probably pivotal to the future of the country.

So it was that the growth of a population with identifiable and discernable Spanish surnames and characteristics caused the federal government – for informational and organizational purposes – to appropriate for all of these individuals a category it labeled “Hispanic”, including the mighty Paraguayan population.  And the government was right to do so.  Its intentions were honorable.  Yet it included groups whose members were long accustomed to describing themselves as “Latinos”.

More important than a tussle over semantics is that the combined population is growing both in number and in the share of the national population as the country undergoes a dramatic demographic and economic transformation.  And this is no small moment.  It is existentially critical to the country.  The nation’s changing demography – a result in no small part of a receding “Anglo” population whose birth rates have collapsed – is weakening the nation’s economy, which itself is being cornered and diminished by a new global economic order.  Amid these complexities, the nation’s fiscal prospects are burdensome at best.  In sum, the country cannot now and might not in the future be able to pay its bills.

The result is a tumultuous time in which anxiety grows into worry and worry metastasizes into fear, and so from many local and state governments have come initiates, laws, regulations and actions clearly aimed to suppress HispanicLatinos politically but giving them reason to coalesce socially, which is a good thing — a very good thing, indeed.

This essential, national moment the country has entered demands that a population group – whose role is potentially decisive – unify itself.  The moment now upon us will turn on whether this special, Spanish-tinted population can bring all “Hispanic” and “Latino” groups together to defend itself from attack on the one hand and on the other promote their personal advancement for the good of the country.

This new and historic moment gives HispanicLatinos the mission statement they never had; it provides them with a clear idea about how they fit in the future and from both can come a new identity rooted in the understanding that they are being called to serve a greater, national purpose.  This is of elemental importance to a country whose paralyzed government and decomposing political processes are the most obvious manifestation of its worrisome drift.

To maximize their reach into a future in which the world might still depend on a successful America, the HispanicLatino community must approach the days ahead with a new sense of purpose and a new, all-encompassing name that befits its historic significance and that thus might help it obtain the self-advancement that has long eluded it…for the benefit of all.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.