When Taking the Easy Way Out in Racial Labeling, the Truth Suffers

When a close friend recently failed to show up after a jog, we did what most people would do. We called the police.

The cops asked reasonable questions, trying to compile a physical description, such as “What was he wearing?” or “Does he have any tattoos or other identifying marks?”

But then they asked the nation’s most common ignorant question: “Is he white, black or Hispanic?”

How do you explain to a cop that the term “Hispanic” was invented in the 1970s by the U.S. Census Bureau? How do you tell a cop that even the Census Bureau states “Hispanics” may be of any race?

In other words, if we exist at all, we come in all colors.

Still, I knew what the cops meant. They meant cinnamon brown with a Spanish surname.

If only life were that simple.

The police aren’t alone in this false assumption. This newspaper often makes the assumption that all Hispanics (we use the word “Latinos”) are cinnamon-brown mestizos (a person of European and indigenous American heritage). Our policy states, as does the Census Bureau, that “Latinos may be of any race.”

Even so, since 1997, we’ve published the following phrase 87 times: “described as a Latino.” That number is dwarfed by the hundreds of other ways we write that Latinos are a separate race from blacks, whites, Asians and Native Americans (“. . .the shooting raised tensions between blacks and Latinos. . .”) when in fact there are Latinos who fit all those categories.

I’ve raised this issue endlessly with my colleagues and bosses, and most people understand: Latinos come in all colors. They know about Sammy Sosa, who is a black Latino. They know about Christina Aguilera, a white, blue-eyed Latina. They know about Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, a Latin American of Japanese heritage. They know about Cesar Chavez, a mestizo. They know all this, and yet they cannot seem to handle its implication: that “Latino” is so broad as to be irrelevant, and that its common application to just one group--brown mestizos--is false.

I’ve been told many times that for The Times to change the way we write about Latinos would “confuse” or “offend” people. This baffles me. Since when have newspapers shied away from telling the truth because it would confuse people?

I’ve also been told we continue to use “Latino” as a synonym for mestizo because most “Latinos” in Los Angeles believe that’s what it means too.

To that I say: Ignorance comes in many shades.

We love to label people in this country. We do it without thinking, or asking why--mostly, I think, because it makes stereotyping and generalizations easier.

One of those labels is the notion of a “Latino” race, a notion that flies in the face of the history that brought us all here, to North, Central and South America. We are, all of us in the Americas, linked by a shared history. And that history goes a little something like this:

A bunch of people walk across the Bering Strait from what is now China to what is now Alaska, some 20,000 years ago.

Some stay in what is now Alaska, and their descendants in 2000 go by tribal names such as Chitina, Kwinhagak, Akhiok and Qawalangin.

Others keep walking. They make homes from what is now Canada to the southern tip of what is now Chile. Some live in pueblos and farm corn. Others are nomads. Some make homes in the Amazon jungle. Some build pyramids near what is now Nashville. Some build pyramids near what is now Cancun. Some don’t build pyramids. Some build boats and move to what is now Puerto Rico. Some build boats and move to what is now Haiti. Some move to the Andes. None speak English, or Spanish. None are Latinos.

Some are nice and peaceful, some are violent and horrible.

Chapter Two: Bunch of Europeans jump in boats, fool themselves (and many generations to follow) that they have “discovered” these continents.

Some Europeans are nice and peaceful, some are violent and horrible. They intentionally and unintentionally kill so many indigenous inhabitants that in some nations they later decide to import humans from West Africa to be their slaves.

Yoruba, Congolese, Bantu and many other ethnic Africans are chained and forced to come to these continents, from what is now Canada to what is now Chile. Some slave owners speak English. Some speak Spanish. Some speak Portuguese. Some speak French. None calls himself a Latino.

Ninety-five percent of the Africans end up in what is now Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, where millions and millions of their descendants still live. Many go to the Caribbean coast of what is now Mexico. Some go to what is now the United States.

Chapter Three: Immigrants from all over the world begin to go to places like Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Baltimore and Caracas, looking for a better life, including many white people who had been indentured servants in places like Ireland and Russia.

Different nations emerge, all with European languages dominant. People of all colors and backgrounds live in all of the nations, from what is now Canada, to the southern tip of Chile. In the 1970s in one of the nations, a government agency invents the word “Hispanic,” and now 33 million people must try to fit the mold. Some come from other nations, where Spanish is the dominant European language. Others come from nations where Portuguese is the dominant language, or French. Most come from the United States.

The media in the U.S., accustomed to seeing the world through a white/black prism, present Hispanics/Latinos as a distinct race, inventing a new brown face that is a lot like the brown faces that have been on these continents for tens of thousands of years, from Canada to the southern tip of Chile.

We are suddenly Hispanics.

And the cops ask: Is he white, black or Hispanic?

And I say: He is a man who, through the corruptions of history and labeling, has been saddled with a Spanish name, is called a “Mexican American,” though his family comes from Arizona for generations, and he knows little or nothing about Mexico and speaks no Spanish.

I say: He loves jazz from New York, rock from Mexico City, vallenato folk music from Colombia and the Dixie Chicks. He eats SpaghettiOs, turkey pastrami sandwiches from the Jewish deli and fried plantains, and chili makes him sweat.

He has a human skin in one of the endless shades of beige or brown that are all of us, eyes that see beauty wherever he goes, hair that is thinning too quickly and hands that hold me when I’m sad.

He is a man.

That he carries a Spanish surname, and someone else carries a French one, that I carry a Spanish surname, yet my mother carries an English one--it is irrelevant. The languages we speak are meaningless. It is what we say with our inherited words that matters. We have a shared history. An American history, of all the Americas.

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lisa Valdes-Rodriguez is a Times pop music writer of half Cuban American and half Irish/Mexican/English/Portuguese American descent.

We love to label people in this country. We do it without thinking, or asking why--mostly, I think, because it makes stereotyping and

generalizations easier. One of those labels is the notion of a

“Latino” race, a notion that flies in the face of the history that brought us all here, to North, Central and South America. We are, all of us in the Americas, linked by a shared history.