Chris Blattman

Search
Close this search box.

“Hispanic is not a race”

Carlos A. Quiroz, an activist and blogger born in Peru, checked off that he was a “Non-Hispanic” American Indian, a category normally associated with North American Indians. Mr. Quiroz said he selected it because he opposed use of the word “Hispanic” as an ethnic category.

“Hispanic is not a race, ” said Mr. Quiroz, whose ancestors were the Quechua people, of the Central Andes. “Hispanic is not a culture. Hispanic is an invention by some people who wanted to erase the identity of indigenous communities in America.”

“We don’t believe we have to accept this identity just because we speak Spanish,” Mr. Quiroz added.

The NY Times looks at the growing number of Hispanics Americans to identify as “American Indian”.

12 Responses

  1. I think Carlos A. Quiroz got a point. I am from Brazil and I always check “white”, like most “fully” European background person in any part of the world nowadays. That’s kind of obvious but US racism precludes clear thinking (on such matters ) in a society that otherwise prize very well meritocracy and open debate. Manuel, the background you described fits *perfectly* US image of a Latino: given your “mixed race” background you could *never* being white in US but Latino or, perhaps, black (though I doubt American blacks would accept you as such). (Btw, green eyes doesn’t mean white appearance by any means and, anyway, race here is define by ancestry not “skin color”.) Of course, by saying that I don’t imply you should you define yourself in such and such way: I’m merely highlighting US “way” on race for a person that – like me – are used to other modes of thinking.

  2. Mr Quiroz’s approach seems reasonable to me.

    From earlier in that same NYT article:
    “The number of Amerindians – a blanket term for indigenous people of the Americas, North and South – who also identify themselves as Hispanic has tripled since 2000, to 1.2 million from 400,000. ”

    So really it’s looking at the growing number of American Indians to identify themselves as Hispanic?

  3. Thank you very much for your comment Manoel, as I did mention it is these trivial differences that tend to make us have predisposition about certain people regarding their identity and we forget the common denominator that makes us all human beings despite the differences emphasized on a racial basis.

  4. Every classification does what you say, chrsgk. It’s like the single history prof. Blattman linked few days ago. We’re trapped by single historys, but guess what? We can’t scape it. It’s too much information and complexity for human brain to process, so it’s easier to classify things in a easy way.

    For instance, I’m from Brazil, one of mygrandfathers was black. The other one was white. My brother has green eyes, I have light brown mustache and curly hair. And I have some indians descendent as well. So, What am I? Indian? Black? White? Latino? I’m all of this and much more…

  5. This kind of generalization to “simplify” identity is what has caused us serious problems. Because every identity trait comes with a whole lot of other connotations attached to it from a given cultural preconception and understanding to ethnocentric tendencies which in many cases have been used as the basis of defining societies in different parts of the world. I therefore do not agree with the idea of categorizing people as Hispanic and so on because at the end of the day it is this classification that emphasizes the differences between us and deters us from realizing the potential that we are cable of as human beings.

  6. Hmm not sure if it should be that big of a deal, I’m from Peru as well, and I don’t mind marking Hispanic, I can understand the point, However I think colloquially it is understood what Hispanic is. Nevertheless I guess if someone thinks it’s worth fighting for…

  7. And those are the last grafs. Social justice literature has long suggested letting people self-identify and eliminating the word ‘Hispanic’ as it it identifies people by their colonizers. We don’t call Francophone Africans ‘Gallic,’ nor would we think it okay if we did.

  8. Hispanic refers to people originating from Hispania (the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula) and should not be used to refer to people with different descent, e.g., Quechua, Aymara, and other indigineous people from Southamerica or Centralamerica, just because they speak the spanish language.

    However, in my opinion it could be used as an ethnic category describing, as stated above, individuals originating from Hispania… A difficulty arises when we have individuals with mixed background, e.g., Hispanic and Quechua…

    1. Hispanic does not refer to people having an origin in Iberia but people having Spanish language and culture, period. Also most Hispanics are mixed with Indian not just people in Peru. Very few are of pure Spanish blood which is European, by the way.

Why We Fight - Book Cover
Subscribe to Blog