Essayist Richard Rodriguez, editor of the "Pacific News Service,"
considers what it means to be Hispanic.
RICHARD Census Bureau predicted that by the year 2005 Hispanics will
replace black Americans as our nation’s largest minority. 2050 one quarter
of all Americans will be Hispanic. The only question I have is this: Do
Hispanics exist?
24 million Americans
of Hispanic origin.
There are around 24 million Americans who trace their heritage to various
countries of Latin America. We call them Hispanics. But I meet Hispanics all
the time who reject the label. If they speak of themselves by reference to
their ancestral past, they speak of themselves as Bolivians or Puerto Ricans
or Colombians or Mexicans.
It was Richard Nixon’s administration that came up with the notion of the
Hispanic. In 1973, federal bureaucrats divided the nation’s population into
five: Native American/Eskimo; Asian/Pacific Islander; White; Black; Hispanic.
Nearly 25 years later we see and use the word "Hispanic" routinely.
I say I am Hispanic. I tell you I am standing on a rundown corner of downtown
Los Angeles, the largest Hispanic city in the United States, and look, look at
the Hispanic faces. But what do you look for when you expect to see a Hispanic
face? In fact, there is no such thing as a Hispanic race.
Every race of the world exists in Latin America. There are Japanese
Hispanics. There are African Hispanics. There are blond Hispanics. If many of
us are brown, the majority of Hispanics are from Mexico and are, therefore,
Mestizo, many us are not.
It’s true a real competition is taking place today between Hispanics and
Blacks in LA, a competition for dollars, for housing, for jobs. The city’s
black neighborhoods--Watts, South Central, Compton--are becoming Hispanic,
filling with immigrants from Latin America. There is new Hispanic influence at
city hall. Hispanics recently forced the ouster of Willie Williams, LA’s
black police chief. On the other hand, immigration officials say that the
majority of calls they receive reporting illegal immigrants come from
African-Americans. While it’s important to acknowledge the friction between
Hispanic and Black, it’s important also to say that any comparison of Black
and Hispanic risks utter nonsense, for Hispanic and Black are not finally
comparable categories.
Hispanic: A cultural
identity.
To put the matter bluntly, there are many Hispanics who are Black. Hispanic
is an ethnic, a cultural category, not a racial one. Remember that the next
time you hear Hispanics compared to Whites or to Blacks. What you are actually
hearing is one group of Americans identified by culture being compared to
another Americans identified by race. Here is the most revolutionary aspect of
Hispanicity.
I stand here. I tell you I am Hispanic in a country that traditionally insists
on racial categories. I define myself not by reference to race or color but by
reference to culture. For the moment, because of so much immigration from
Latin America it seems easy to believe that there is such a thing as a
Hispanic culture. Here on Broadway, amidst the sounds of Spanish, the music,
the voices, amidst the brown faces, Hispanic culture seems evident. But as
politicians have found, there’s no single cultural experience uniting all
Hispanics.
Dividing the nation
into labels.
What--after all--does the White Cuban have in common with the Black Puerto
Rican? What does the Guatemalan Indian, who arrived today in the United
States, have in common with the new Mexican who traces his family back to
colonial Spain? Some of us speak Spanish; some do not. Some are Catholic; many
are becoming Protestant. It’s possible as Hispanic numbers grow that the
slipperiness of the label will see more apparent to Americans and our
government’s practice of dividing our nation into five neat pieces will seem
absurd. In the meanwhile, we go around talking about Asians and Hispanics and
Blacks imagining neat distinctions in borders where they may not exist.
For the moment, Madonna, the singer/actress, plays Eva Peron from Argentina,
while in real life Madonna’s baby daughter, Lourdes, is Hispanic, as is
Henry Cisneros and Anthony Quinn, and the children of Lucille Ball, and
several of the grandchildren of George and Barbara Bush.
For the moment, with a growing sense of irony, I check "yes" on
the government form. In English, I acknowledge I am Hispanic.
I’m Richard Rodriguez.
