"The 'Hispanic' Race Debate: Limitations of the Term in an Orlando School Board Controversy"
About the AuthorKristi 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 |
ConclusionsThis analysis of public discourse about the school board’s biracial committee illustrates that the panethnic label "Hispanic" has been and continues to be problematic, particularly when applied to a contemporary, public-education issue. The use of the term has not facilitated change in addressing the modified demographic makeup of the U.S. in general and in Orlando in particular. The court order’s purpose was to address civil rights issues regarding segregation, and there were “no students classified as Hispanics in the school system” at the time (Ramos, “To Join”).[4] Today, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the school district, with up to 600 students in the six elementary schools up for closure, according to activist Zoraida Rios-Andino (Ramos, “To Join”). The Orlando Sentinel also reported that in the 1960-61 school term, 83 percent of the district's students were white and the remaining were black (Hobbs). In contrast, in 2010, “the student body in the nation's 10th-largest public-school system has no majority of one race or ethnicity. It is 31 percent white, 28 percent black and 32 percent Hispanic” (Hobbs). These statistics represent the region in general, as the Hispanic population comprises 27% of the total population of Orange County in 2010 (up from 19% in 2000) (“Orange County”). Thus the court order does not represent the current racial and ethnic makeup of the school district. Nonetheless, people are reluctant to change policies based on these demographics because it would change the current power structures and allocation of resources. The conclusions from this case mirror how the term "Hispanic" is used in wider public discourse. When it is conducive for institutions, "Hispanic" is used as a race, such as in studies about health and education that allow governments and other institutions to allocate resources (and often point out negative factors of minority groups). But when Hispanics demand resources based on this same panethnic label, those same institutions revert to the stated definition in order to avoid spending money to give Hispanics visibility and legitimacy. The online public commentators were quick to denounce "Hispanic" as a race in this case, but there is no such debate about studies or other institutionalized ways that "Hispanic" is used as a race. In short, the term fails to enable political change based on group identity, even when Hispanics adopt the label imposed upon them, because the white majority maintains the power in deciding how to wield the term. The invisibility of Latinos and treatment of Latinos as second-class citizens persists. Furthermore, the argument about whether Hispanic is a race or an ethnicity is unlikely to become productive due to the socially constructed nature of race and due to the ongoing racialization of the term, despite its technical definition. Until public discourse about this term integrates more complex understandings of how labels are manipulated to facilitate hegemonic interests, the long history of social, political, and economic subordination of Latinos is likely to continue. [4] This does not mean that there were no students who would today be considered Hispanic, since the term did not enter public and institutional discourse until 1970. Once again, this statement illustrates the institutionalized invisibility of Latinos both then when the decision was made and today in how we discuss the history of the time period. |