"The 'Hispanic' Race Debate: Limitations of the Term in an Orlando School Board Controversy"

About the Author

Kristi McDuffie is a Ph.D. Student in English Studies at Illinois State University with a focus on Rhetoric and Composition. Her research interests center on rhetorics of race, Latin@ rhetorics, language ideologies, and digital literacies. Her publications to date have explored writing center pedagogy, narrative discourse in television, and models of literacy in young adult dystopian fiction.

Contents

Introduction

The Term "Hispanic"

Research Methods

The Use of Hispanic

Hispanic as an Ethnicity

Hispanic as a Race

Conclusions

Works Cited

The Use of "Hispanic"

"Hispanic" is the central term used in this debate. The Orlando Sentinel uses the term, rather than "Latino" or terms of ethnic origin, in its articles. The blog that covers Hispanic-related events is calledHispanosphere. This particular news story uses the phrase “Hispanic Activists” to refer to Hispanics who want recognition on the biracial committee (Ramos, “School District”), and it is unclear whether the journalist coined that phrase or whether the activists described themselves that way. It is possible that the activists adopted this term for greater group identity to enable political action. People are already labeled "white," "black," and "Hispanic" by the data that the school board maintains about the student population, so the activists may have mimicked this term to draw legitimacy to their claims.

In addition to the simple mimicking of labels that others use to identify Hispanics, Hispanics might have some additional motivations for adopting this term. "White," "black," and "Hispanic" labels delineate groups of people based on race and ethnicity, so to further delineate Hispanics might reduce the effectiveness of group activism. In addition, Hispanics might adopt this term because they are accustomed to the label, especially if they are more accustomed to U.S. discourses. Michael Jones-Correa and David Leal found that “the further removed from the moment of immigration, the more likely the person was to use a term such as ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic’ to refer to himself/herself” (qtd. in Caminero-Santangelo 20). This finding implies that second and third generation immigrants more readily accept a panethnic term as part of assimilation.

Natalie Masuoka also provides some reasons why Hispanics might adopt the label. In a study to determine what kinds of collective behavior and group identity characteristics Asian Americans and Latinos exhibit, Masuoka found that higher education is positively correlated with panethnic identification, probably because “increased education most likely fosters greater understanding of racial inequality and discrimination for Latinos” (1006). Considering that the Hispanic activists are most likely native-born and -educated, due to their participation in local school board politics, these factors might influence an acceptance of the term. One remaining motivation for Hispanics’ acceptance of the label may be perceived discrimination. Masuoka also found that “[p]erceptions of discrimination encourage stronger panethnic identities among Latinos,” although actual discrimination does not (1009). Activists perceive the exclusion of Hispanics from a biracial committee to be discriminatory, thus potentially encouraging activists to adopt the panethnic term.

Regardless of the motivations of The Orlando Sentinel to use the term "Hispanic" or the motivations of Hispanics to accept this label, the outcome is that "Hispanic" is the used and accepted term in this situation, and this term is the root of the debate about this minority group’s right to representation on a school board committee.