The National Association for the Advancement of Caucasian Latinos (NAACL)
The History
Before the “Hispanic” Era
Sadly, most people born after the mid 1960’s would likely think that the Hispanic race has always existed in America. Of those few who do know better, most probably believe the government and media’s line that Hispanics experienced severe discrimination before the 1970’s, when the government came along and made things better.
The fact is that the Hispanic-Latino race did not exist before 1970. Before this time, the few occasions the terms were used, they were used in their academically correct way. In this pre-defamation era, only five races existed: black, white, American Indian, Oriental, and other. You may notice that the word “other” is rarely used today. Unfortunately, that is because it has been replaced by the modern day catch all term- “Hispanic.”
These “white Hispanics” don’t say how they define “white.” A “National Association for the Advancement of Tarbrushed Anglo and Creole Whites” might make the same arguments.
If this were true that Hispanics were simply accepted as “White”, why did so many Hispanics change their names to English sounding ones and hide their Hispanic heritage? They could pass as mainstream, but they still downplayed a part of their identity. The other factor that this article doesn’t consider is that Upper class Mexicans might have passed and shared stars. Even American actors going to work in Mexico. But that did not translate to the lower classes.
Mon 8/30/2004 8:02 PM
Maybe you can join forces….Though from a cursory look at the site, I doubt if they would include as white people with significant non-white ancestry. They appear to be focused on Latinos of pure Spanish ancestry.
Based on their objectives, they aren’t particularly interested in abandoning racial labels or exploring how asserting their whiteness might be divisive in their respective Latino communities.
Tue 8/31/2004 6:47 AM
This one is interesting…I wonder how the Latinos on this board feel about this organization. It seems to claim that race is real and that there are racially white Latinos and racially non-white ones.
Additionally, the site doesn’t seem interested in expanding the definition of whiteness to include Latinos regardless of appearance.
I wonder how large this organization is?
Tue 8/31/2004 6:40 AM
There are dozens of millions of white “Hispanics” in the world, whose ancestors were Spaniards, Italians or from other European countries. Try an educational trip to Argentina or Chile and you’ll see. The problem is that most whites in this country are used to seeing “Hispanics” from Mexico, who have mostly American indian (i.e., Aztec or Maya) ancenstry. The bottom line is: “Hispanic” is NOT a race. Some idiot from the U.S. Census Bureau, who probably never traveled outside a 200 mile-radius from his home town, came up with this new “race” 25 years ago and now all of us who happen to speak Spanish, including His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain, are stuck with this misnomer.
Well I have always know that hispanic/latinos,ladinos,chicanos, mexicans were a culture not a race. I mean why don’t they ask if your are Italian or portuguese or french which are all of latin/iberian/gaelic decent what they are. anyways we as latin american decent come in different races. Why is it that north americans think they have a monopoly on race. ?
Comment by corina — 11/17/2005 @ 12:10 am