LATINO/"HISPANIC"-WHO NEEDS A NAME?*
THE CASE AGAINST A STANDARDIZED TERMINOLOGY
Martha E. Gimenez
Originally published in The International Journal of Health Services_, Vol
19, Number 3, Pages 557-571, 1989. Reprinted with permission.
*I use quotation marks around "Hispanic" to indicate my critical stance
toward the label. In the article, whenever the label is mentioned in the
context of someone else's discourse, it will be written without quotation
marks.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
In 1985 I found out that the affirmative action office of the university
where I work was counting me as a "minority faculty," member of the so-called
"Hispanic ethnic group." It was then that I became interested in the
label and its implications for the people it identifies. I found its
political construction and usage particularly worthy of examination
because it abolishes, for all practical purposes, the qualitative
historical differences between the experiences and life chances of U.S.
minority groups of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin, and those of Latin
American and Spanish peoples. The label imputes to Latin Americans a
contrived "Hispanic ethnicity" while minoritizing them in the process
(i.e., defining them as members of a minority group even though they have
never been historically oppressed as such in the United States.) [Note
1: Working-class, unskilled Latin Americans, particularly undocumented
workers, are economically exploited and disproportionately found in the
worse jobs and in the poverty population, not because of their
"Hispanicity" and "minority group status," but because of their lack of
language skills and "human capital." On the other hand, middle-class,
upper-middle-class, and petty bourgeois Latin Americans do very well, not
in spite of their "ethnicity (i.e., they are not examples of "minority
success" or "assimilation" to "majority" values), but because their social
class entails ownership of economic and/or human capital.] Because the
label is used in the context of affirmative action, it places professional
and skilled immigrants in objective competition with members of the U.S.
minority groups and forces them to pass, statistically, as members of an
oppressed group.
Although the political and ideological unintended functions of this
label are numerous and complex, in this article I will examine primarily
the adequacy of the theoretical and methodological grounds presented in
its defense. I will argue that, far from being useful for social
science research and effective policy making and implementation, the
"Hispanic" label fulfills primarily ideological and political
functions. It cannot replace preexisting theoretical (social
class and minority group) and descriptive (national origin and
socioeconomic status) categories of analysis; its presence in scientific
and popular discourse adds nothing to knowledge while it strengthens
racist stereotypes.
The Terms of the Debate
As I began to examine the theoretical and political significance of this
label, a colleague told me about several relevant articles published in the
American Journal of Public Health which proved to be very interesting and
useful; to my knowledge, they form the only scholarly debate on this
important issue (1-5).
In these articles, both the defender and the critics of the "Hispanic"
label agree on the need for a "standardized terminology"; i.e., an
all-encompassing "Umbrella" term useful to identify all the populations
it labels. The critics make a persuasive case for using the term
"Latino," rather than "Hispanic," exposing the racist implications of the
latter (1, p. 355; 5, p. 15), pointing out the problems it creates for
implementing Civil Rights legislation (I; see also 6), and its roots in
the history of U.S. economic and political domination over Latin America
since the days of the Monroe doctrine (3). Acknowledging that Latino,
like "Hispanic," is a generic term, to ensure comparability of samples
and research findings they suggest that social scientists, in their work,
should identify also national origin (e.g., Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc.),
nativity (U.S. or foreign born), and/or generation. Since people living
in the Southwest identify themselves in a variety of ways (e.g., Hispano,
Mexicano, Manito, Chicano, Raza, etc.), regional variations ought to be
taken into account as well.
The defender (4) considers "Hispanic" a better term on scientific,
political, and pragmatic grounds. Pragmatically, because the statistics
compiled by the federal government and government agencies use the
Hispanic label, social scientists and policy makers should avoid using a
different term. This would create confusion, establishing social
scientists in the role of relabeling millions of people who self-
identified as such in the 1980 Census. Also, inhabitants of the
Southwest who identify themselves with a regional label find Latino
unacceptable, while readily agreeing to the Hispanic identifier. Unlike
Latino, therefore, the Hispanic label ensures greater population
coverage. Scientifically, it is important to have comparable
data. [Note 2: Federal, state, and private agencies, on the other hand,
often do not use the same codes for race, thus making it difficult to
compare data from different sources. See, in this respect, refrerences 7
and 8.] The use of the label in data gathering ensures coverage and
consistency; the fact that it is used in the collection of vital and
health statistics creates the possibility for trend analysis (4, p. 70).
Consistent use of the label is also important from the standpoint of
policy making and implementation because the goal of public health
specialists is "to make progress in standardizing . . . ethnic and social
classification systems so that we may move forward in our understanding
of the health needs of all our populations" (4, p. 69). Politically, the
label identifies a minority group subject to severe discrimination.
Defending the minority status of "Hispanics," Trevino argues that
"despite the fact that Hispanics had lived in the U.S. for more than 400
years, [they] were still less educated than Blacks, about as poor, had no
more luck in getting good jobs, received less health care" (4, p. 71).
To replace Hispanic with Latino would undermine, in Trevino's view,
affirmative action protection for Hispanics because, academically
defined, Latino designates "the peoples, nationalities or countries such as
the French, Italian, Spanish, etc. whose languages and culture are
descended from the Latin"; this would make eligible under affirmative
action people whom the term Hispanic currently excludes (4, p. 70).
Regardless of their differences about the relative merits of Latino
versus "Hispanic" as umbrella terms, critics and defender agree about the
need to have, in addition to a standardized terminology, as much
information as possible about the population under study, to identify
needs, factors affecting health, access to health services, and so
forth. In spite of the arguments advanced in its support, however, the
label does not help either social scientists or policy makers because it
only creates an artificial population; i.e., a statistical construct
formed by aggregates of people who differ greatly in terms of national
origin, language, race, time of arrival in the United States, culture,
minority status (see, for example, 3; 5; 9, pp. 9-10; 10), social class,
and socioeconomic status. The empirical referent of "Hispanic" fully
justifies these assessments: "[T]his statistical construct has hardly
any relation to the real world" (10); "[it] vastly oversimplifies the
situation. The heterogeneity of the Hispanic population reduces the term
to a merely heuristic device" (9, p. 9). It is here that the main
theoretical and methodological problems are located. Succinctly stated:
what can this, or any other "umbrella" term, identify? Is it a minority
group? Is it an "ethnic" group? What is the meaning of the data
gathered about this population?
THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION: WHAT DO DATA AND
RESEARCH FINDINGS ABOUT "HISPANICS" ACTUALLY MEAN?
It is fascinating to observe how those writing about "Hispanics"
(discussing public policy issues, or reporting research findings and
vital statistics) do so while fully cognizant (with exceptions) of
intrapopulation variations of such magnitude as to render statements
about "Hispanics" in general either meaningless or suspect. These are
some representative statements: The birth rates for 1983 and 1984 for the
"Hispanic" population "were about 50 percent higher than those for the
non-Hispanic population. . . . [T]he fertility rate for all Hispanic
women was 42 percent above the rate for "non-Hispanic" women" (11, p.
2). "[T]he median age of the Hispanic population is 6-7 years below that
of the non-Hispanic population ... almost 8 years below that of the White
population, and almost 2 years below that of the Black population" (9, p.
21). "Hispanic population increases at 5 times rate of rest of U.S."
(12). These are descriptive statements, useful (it may seem) for
comparing "Hispanics" with whites, blacks, and Asians. What is the
meaning and purpose of such comparisons? Is it possible to account for
those patterns, or to make such comparisons, without creating
stereotypes? The demographic characteristics (age and sex tructure) and
composition (income, education, and occupational distribution) of the
"Hispanic" population can be described. Any attempt to account for those
characteristics, or for differences in fertility (or anything else) must
rest, however, either upon well-established empirical generalizations
(e.g., the inverse relationship between income, education, and
fertility), which do not necessitate the racial/ethnic classification of
the population, or upon stereotypical generalizations about "Hispanic"
culture.
The mass media and politicians exploit data about the youth, higher
fertility, and growth rate of the "Hispanic" population in ways that,
ultimately, intensify racist fears among those worried about low white
fertility, increase the likelihood of conflict with blacks (who see their
communities competing for scarce resources with an ever-growing
"minority" group), and strengthen stereotypes about "Hispanics"' cultural
traits and the perception that their presence will contribute to increase
social problems and tax payers' burdens: e.g., growth of the "Hispanic"
population will make it more difficult to eradicate poverty, will
increase welfare expenditures, will increase the demands for health care
and other social services; given their high fertility, they will be the
largest minority group by the year 2060 (13).
Poverty, however, is not something inherent in people's genes or culture;
it depends on class location and individual resources. Furthermore, if
immigration from Mexico and Central America continues to be composed
mainly of poorly educated, low-skilled workers and displaced peasants,
the percentage of "Hispanics" below or close to the poverty level will
remain high and might even increase. This kind of inference, however, is
precluded by generalizations stressing the "Hispanicity" of the
population that, regardless of their authors' motives, have inherently misleading
latent or unanticipated ideological effects. In the popular
consciousness, as well as among social scientists, "Hispanicity" seems to
be equivalent, at best, to "traditional culture" and, at worst, to the
culture of poverty. A statement taken from research on young mothers
illustrates this point (14, p. I 1):
[T]he findings for Hispanic mothers, who report generally higher
fertility expectations and lower educational expectations than do
other mothers, suggest that these women represent a relatively
unacculturated subgroup, with more traditional attitudes toward
motherhood and higher education for women.
The overgeneralization about "traditional" culture cited above is quite
typical of the mass media and the "modernization" school of U.S. social
scientists, still caught in the simplistic understanding of historical
change as a process of modernization; i.e.; change from traditional (e.g.,
"Hispanic") to modern (e.g., U.S.) culture. In fact, the assumption of
the "traditional" nature of "Hispanic" culture or "ethnicity" is built in
research that compares "Hispanic" (or Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuba, or
Central and South American) fertility (or any other demographic or social
pattern) with white and black patterns. Typical of this kind of
reasoning is the following (15, p. 376):
Hispanic origin is now an important control variable in the analysis of
religious [fertility] differentials. Hispanics are a growing
proportion of the U.S. population, they have high fertility, and about
three fourths of them are Catholic. Whether or not Hispanics were
included had a dramatic effect on the size of the religious
differential . . . .As the size of the Hispanic population grows, and
more are foreign born and from high fertility societies, we can expect
this effect to become more pronounced.
Within the parameters of this discourse, high fertility reflects religion
and the culture of "high fertility societies." A more sophisticated
theoretical analysis of fertility, as a rational household survival
strategy within given structural conditions of existence (see, for
example, 16), would focus researchers' attention on the social class,
socioeconomic strata, and actual opportunity structure confronting some
"Hispanic" women in this country. What appears as an effect of religion
and/or the culture of high fertility or "traditional" societies might be
the outcome of conditions of existence similar, in their demographic
effects. to those conducive to high fertility in the lower strata of the
working class, and in rural and urban subsistence sectors everywhere
(17). Everyone writing about "Hispanics," especially social scientists
and policy makers, ought to pay attention to Cafferty's and McCready's
warning about the dangers entailed in assuming "certain behavioral
characteristics based on group identity. [T]he serious thinker expresses
legitimate concern when he worries that any examination of Hispanics in
the United States may result in negative stereotyping" (18, p. 5).
If general statements about "Hispanics" are problematic, are statements
about national origin aggregates (e.g., Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban,
Central and South American) any better? Most social scientists
supplement general statements with observations and data about the
different aggregates included under the umbrella term. For example, the
report about births of "Hispanic" parentage also indicates that, although
"Hispanic" women begin child-bearing at young ages, the percentage of
live births to teenagers was higher among Puerto Rican (21.3 percent) and
Mexican (18.0 percent) mothers than among Cuban (8.2 percent) and Central
and South American (8.1 percent) mothers. Mothers' educational
attainment also varied according to national origin, with the highest
level found among Cuban, Central and South American mothers, and the
lowest among Mexican mothers (I 1, pp. 2-3). Those populations also
differ in their age structure; Puerto Ricans are the youngest group
(median age, 20.7) and Cubans the oldest (median age, '33.5) (9, p.
22).
To the extent that researchers use national origin not simply
descriptively, but as a proxy for culture as the main independent
variable, there is a real danger of developing stereotypes about each of
those populations. For example, why are teenage births so few among
Cuban and Central and South American mothers? Would a purely demographic
explanation (e.g., age structure) suffice? Why is educational attainment
greater in these groups? Census data show substantial differences in
levels of income and educational attainment among the national origin
groups in which data about "Hispanics" are usually classified. Data
about the foreign born are limited, but what are available show striking
differences between them (Table 1) and indicate that a great deal of
important information is lost in the construction of "Hispanics" and
national origin groups. Each national origin aggregate is different
from the others in terms of historical origins, minority status, problems
with language, class structure, socioeconomic stratification, and last
but not least, reception by the "host" country. (Compare the reception
given to the Cuban bourgeoisie and middle-class who fled to Miami after
Castro took power with the treatment given to the people living in
Mexican and Puerto Rican territories after the annexation, or to
Mexican and Puerto Rican manual workers migrating to the United States
throughout the 20th century.) This means that it is as misleading to make
general statements about "Hispanics" as it is to make them about, for
example, Puerto Ricans, Argentines, Cubans, and so forth. To avoid the
possibility of constructing stereotypes in the process of interpreting
data, social scientists need to go beyond cultural explanations to
examine class and socioeconomic status differences within each aggregate.
Were they to do so, they would most likely find greater behavioral
similarities between "Hispanics" and non-"Hispanics" of the same social
class than between "Hispanics" of different social classes and/or
national origin. On the other hand, similarities between "Hispanics" and
non-"Hispanics" of similar class and socioeconomic status should not be
reduced to the result of "acculturation"; they are, after all, something
to be expected given the relationship between class location and people's
life chances. Excessive reliance on culture as the major explanatory
variable limits researchers' ability to make sense of information already
available. For example, critical of the widely held belief that culture
is the main barrier between "Hispanics" and successful "Americanization,"
Cafferty states: "the economic success of Cuban immigrants in Miami
and of some Dominican immigrants in New York suggest that Hispanic
culture, as such, is no obstacle to achievement" (19, p. 41). This
statement fails seriously to challenge cultural explanations for
"Hispanics"' relatively low socioeconomic standing; what had to be
indicated also is the fact that some immigrant populations are more
successful not in spite of their culture, but because of the resources (economic
and/or human capital) they bring with them. Generalizations about
national origin groups, e.g., "Mexican immigrants earn less and achieve
lower occupational levels than others" (1 9, p. 41 ), if isolated from
additional data, cannot but unwittingly create stereotypes about those
groups.
To sum up: the problem facing social scientists and public health
specialists in trying to make sense of the data collected by federal,
state, and other agencies is a problem not only of comparability but of
meaning. The avowed aim of using a standardized terminology is
improvement in the identification of an ethnic group that is also,
presumably, a minority group (an issue to be examined in the next
section). However, the heterogeneity of the population included under the
umbrella term undermines the validity of defining it, for social research
and policy purposes, as an "ethnic group" (i.e., a group with common
cultural characteristics).
Table 1
country of birth thousands grad grad specialty occup. 1970 dollars
To speak about "Hispanic" fertility, child-rearing habits, health
subculture, migration patterns, etc., is to engage in empty talk, at
best, or in stereotyping. The heterogeneity of national origin groups,
in turn, undermines generalizations about the entire group. It seems
that social scientists doing research about "Hispanics" are beginning to
recognize the problems inherent in relying on ethnicity as the main
independent variable, and the advantages in studying social class
variations in behavior, attitudes, etc. As one social scientist
acknowledges, " [T] he problem with ethnicity is that it has been
overused as the sole explanation for all types of behavior among
Hispanics" (20, p. 180). To state, for example, that "Hispanic men do not
readily accept the notion that they are ill and, therefore, will not
visit the physician in the same proportions" (20, p. 161) (as whites,
presumably) is as stereotypical as saying, for example, that Mexican men
distrust modem medicine. It is important, on the other hand, to learn
that "Mexican-American men with low education [have] high levels of
distrust of modern medicine and doctors; and that age, sex, education,
and income [are] powerful factors in explaining utilization of health
services" (20, p. 161).
What is needed to make sense of the data collected under national origin
categories is a breakdown of the information on the basis of not only
nativity and length of stay in the United States, but social class and
socioeconomic status as well. In the United States there is a great deal
of overlap between race, ethnicity, and class, so that a large proportion
of "Hispanics" are located in the lower strata of the working class. This
situation leads to the masking of the effects of social class and
socioeconomic status under the cover of "ethnicity" (a code word
primarily used to refer to the culture of those considered "nonwhites"),
to the point that researchers-normally trained in viewing class and
culture only as analytically different things-feel that it is very
difficult to separate the effects of each (see, for example, 20, pp.
179-183). Dialectically, however, culture is not a thing one learns or
unlearns (thus becoming "acculturated"); it is the lived experience of
people shaped by their location in the class and socioeconomic
stratification systems. Therefore, research should be aimed not at the
assessment of the amount of variance to be explained by class or by
culture, but to establish the complex connections between culture,
behavior, and their objective basis in people's class location. But this
approach, which would result in better social research and more effective
policies, cannot be pursued because researchers are trained, to some
extent, to consider social class superficially (i.e., reducing it to
socioeconomic status), mechanically "controlling" for education, income,
and/or occupation whenever possible. Furthermore, even if concerned
with social class and socioeconomic status differences, social scientists
are constrained by having to use data specifically designed to construct
"ethnicities" while providing scant information about class and
socioeconomic status indicators. As long as social scientists and policy
makers spend time and resources in the construction of standardized
terminologies for the identification of politically constructed
"ethnicities" (e.g., whites, blacks, "Hispanics," Asians) through the
racialization and ethnicization of national origin, improvements in data
collection are not likely to contribute to credible, nonstereotypical
research findings and effective policy making and implementation. In
fact, standardized terminologies pose problems for dealing with data
about all the "racial" and "ethnic" categories currently in vogue. The
problems inherent in lumping together populations heterogenous in terms
of class, socioeconomic status, culture and national origin obtain
also for the white, black, and Asian populations.
THE COERCIVE NATURE OF SELF-IDENTIFICATION:
DOES IT CONFIRM THE EXISTENCE OF A SINGLE MINORITY GROUP?
Forty percent of those whom demographers (21) analyzing Census responses
classify as "'Hispanics' using secondary identifiers" gave a negative
answer to the Spanish/Hispanic origin Census question [Note 3:
The Census self-identification question is as follows:
Is this person of Spanish/Hispanic origin?
No (not Spanish/Hispanic).
Is this person
Those who exhibited the greatest "consistency," self-identifying as
"Spanish/Hispanic" in addition to secondary "Hispanic" identifiers (place
of birth, ancestry, Spanish "race," surname, and language) (21, p. 8),
were primarily of Mexican and Puerto Rican origins and had considerably
lower socioeconomic status (in terms of income, occupation, and
education) than the "inconsistent" 40 percent mentioned above.
"Inconsistent" respondents were primarily Central and South Americans; a
small percentage were Puerto Ricans and Cubans, and a higher percentage,
Mexicans (21, pp. 9-17).
These facts, from my standpoint as a sociologist who is also Latin American
(specifically, Argentine), indicate that a large percentage of Latin
Americans not only know precisely who they are but prefer their
historical identities (e.g., Mexican, Colombian, Argentine, etc.) to a
label devised by some government officials, conservative politicians,
and academics. (I am indebted to Rodolfo Alvarez (Department of
Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles) for calling my
attention to the relationship between the invention of "Hispanics" and
the"Nixon Southern Strategy.") Those respondents are telling U.S. social
scientists and politicians who presume to know better - e.g., "[A]fter more
than thirty years of experimentation with enumeration strategies, we
should by now know what a Hispanic is" (4, p. 71) - that they are, in
fact, wrong. That, however, is not the way U.S. social scientists
interpret their response. In their eyes, it is a case of response error
(9, p. 10) or worse. According to Trevino, this means that they (the
"inconsistent" respondents) "perceive Hispanic ethnicity to constitute a
race" and "use of interviewer-observed race would result in most of this
40 percent being reclassified as White. . . . (M]ost of these Hispanics
are White Hispanics who do not believe or understand they are White" (4,
p. 70). In fact, as a casual reading shows, the question intended to
elicit "race" is poorly constructed; it cues people for racial categories
and national origin (2 1, p. 5). Trevino's interpretation is exceedingly
problematic in its implications, and as patronizing as that offered by
Tienda and Ortiz (21, pp. I 1-1 5):
[T]hese individuals were likely to be Hispanics with ambivalent
ethnic identities who misreported their origin either because they
objected to the lack of response choices on the full-enumeration item
(e.g., no Venezuelan, Argentine, etc, choices), or who deliberately
denied their Hispanic origins . . . .[I]nconsistent "Hispanic"
[sic] respondents . . . appear to exhibit ambiguity about their
"Hispanicity" [sic].
Using the status inconsistency perspective, they suggest that it is
desire to assimilate and upward mobility that presumably lead people to
hide their ethnic identity: "ambiguity in their social identity derives
from their desire to be recognized by the majority group (non-Hispanics)
based on their socioeconomic credentials" (21, p. 15). This interpretation
overlooks the politically constructed nature of the label (22, 23), which
makes it unrealistic to expect a universally favorable reception. That many
respondents chose to write their national origin where they did, while
declining to accept a "Spanish/Hispanic origin," reveals, in all
likelihood, neither error, ignorance, or an effort to hide an
embarrassing "ethnic" identity, but rejection of the coercive nature of
the self-identification question. The question forces respondents to
agree to having "Spanish/Hispanic" origin, something which for a
substantial number of people makes no sense, both in terms of their
actual ancestry and/or in terms of their historical sense of who they are
and/or (in the case of Latin Americans) their nationalist allegiance to
their country of origin. The status inconsistency perspective is a
subtle exercise in "majority" power. It "scientifically" neutralizes
the assertion of an alternative identity (or the scholarly critique of
the label, as the case may be), ignoring its historical structural
determinants and reducing it to the effect of psychological states:
i.e., suppression of, or ambivalence about, "real" "ethnic identity,"
an identity that exists mainly in the eyes of the "majority" beholder.
On the other hand, the relatively low socioeconomic status of those who
"agreed" to being labeled "Hispanics" and the fact that 74.2 percent of them
were of Mexican American (59.8 percent) and Puerto Rican (14.4 percent)
origin (21, p. 13)-two historically evolved U.S. minority groups with
origins in colonial conquest-suggest that the ideological construction of
reality to which people are exposed through the mass media and state
power (via the Census itself) might be more effective among those
politically less powerful because of their minority status within the
U.S. ethnic stratification system.
The preceding discussion highlights some of the problems entailed by the
use of a self-identification question to enumerate an ethnic group that,
in this case, is presumably a minority group. The Civil Rights approach
to the amelioration of problems created not only by discrimination but by
the normal functioning of the capitalist economy, generates self-interest
in agreeing to being identified as a member of a minority group; under
such conditions, "consistent responses" are far from yielding
scientifically useful information (21, p. 20: 23).
Given the characteristics of the population included under the umbrella
term, the "Hispanic" label does not identify a minority group; it only adds
together a variety of peoples, 25 percent of whom (Cubans, other Latin
Americans, and a proportion of "Other Spanish") "have not lived in the
U.S. for more than 400 years" and cannot claim to have been historically
subject to racial discrimination and economic oppression in the United
States. Like the Cuban bourgeoisie, or the small number of Argentine
immigrants whose median household income in 1980 was higher than that of
the native-born population (Table I ), some are, in fact, quite
privileged. This situation has not remained unnoticed (9, p. 10; 1, p. 355):
[N]ot all Hispanics agree that they themselves are part of a minority
group, and some who claim minority status for themselves would reject
it for certain others (for example, they might reject it for
well-educated professionals who immigrate from South American
countries). [Note 5: An interesting illustration of the effects of
including well-educated South American professionals in the "Hispanic
minority group" is the recent award of a minority fellowship, by Boulder's
local newspaper, to a high school senior "minority" student, the
talented and multilingual (speaking English, Spanish, French, and
German) Argentine-born son of two Argentine university processors
(24). This example clearly shows how the statistical definition of
minorities makes a travesty of the concept and subverts the goals of
policies devised to do away with discrimination.]
Continued use of the term "Hispanic" [sic] or "Spanish Origin" [sic]
denies the very basis upon which discrimination has been based, and
confuses the basis for civil rights and affirmative action efforts.
This situation is politically counterproductive; it sets the basis for
political opportunism, it strengthens the perception of people in racial
terms, and because it minoritizes foreign technical workers, scientists,
and professionals, it creates a misleading appearance of minority
advancement (6, pp. 46-52). Trevino dismisses this issue too lightly (4,
p. 70); not only can foreigners legally seek minority status protection
under affirmative action (though they are protected against discrimination in
employment by the Civil Rights Act of 1866), but also minority status is
routinely imposed upon them by employers, whether employees argue to
being thus labeled and counted or not. As Lowry points out,
"[T]ypically, an ethnic identity is assigned to each employee by his
employer, based on whatever clues can be found in physiognomy, speech
patterns, name and place of birth. Employees rarely know how they have been
classified" (23, pp. 61-62). Third-party identification is another
important source of data unreliability whose effects in the construction
of "ethnicity" are, for all practical purposes, impossible to assess or
eradicate. In vital statistics, both in birth and death certificates,
third-party identification creates populations different from those
identified by Census data. To make matters worse in terms of
comparability and quality of data, there are three different methods to
assign race/ethnicity to the newborn: the National Center for Health
Statistics instructions, "Hispanic" parentage, and the race/ethnicity of
the mother and father. Depending on the method, the "ethnicity" of the
infant will vary; comparisons between "Hispanics" and non-"Hispanics"
will yield different results (25, 26). Insistence on considering
"Hispanic" anyone who has at least one "Hispanic" parent or ancestor
betrays a remarkable obsession with racial purity and racial
classification that should not remain unnoticed or escape criticism at a
time when racism is, presumably, under attack. It also indicates
allegiance to a reified concept of culture, as if it were genetically
inherited. In the light of the problems examined here and in the preceding
section, continued use of this label can only have political motivations;
e.g., the cultural or racial legitimation of economic success or
failure, or the belief-among some minority leaders- that greater numbers
mean, necessarily, greater power. As the example of South Africa
indicates, numbers and political strength are not necessarily
equivalent. The differences among "Hispanics" are greater than their imputed
commonalities; it is unlikely that they may become united as a single
political force, although they may form local alliances around
single-issue objectives (for an assessment of the political potential of
the label, see 27).
CONCLUSION
The "Hispanic" label is eminently political: it identifies neither an
ethnic group nor a minority group. It is the temporary outcome of
political struggles between the major parties to win elections,
particularly in the Southwest, and will serve its role as long as
political alignments, the terms of acceptable political discourse, and
the definition of legitimate channels of access to social and health
services, education, and the road to upward mobility for minority groups
remain unchanged. Central to the dominant political discourse is the
notion that the "majority" has access to health, social services,
education, and employment opportunities through the impersonal mechanism
of market allocation. Minorities, on the other hand, are
disproportionately poor, are less educated, earn lower incomes, and are
relatively excluded from the better paying jobs not because they are also
disproportionately working class (where they occupy the lower strata),
unemployed, or underemployed, but because of their culture and nonmarket
processes such as, for example, racial discrimination and segregation.
Their problems, it follows, require nonmarket solutions (e.g.,
affirmative action and development of policies designed to maximize their
access to needed social and health services, education, etc.) contingent
upon the identification of the population whose needs have to be served.
Individuals and groups, therefore, have to accept whatever legal identity
and social status they are given to qualify for benefits and have access
to legal protection; at tills time, that means accepting the "Hispanic"
label. Public health officials, policy makers, and social scientists, on
the other hand, are concerned with the quality and comparability of the
data. However, as I have argued in this article, the label is far from
being appropriate for social research, and for policy making and
implementation; on the contrary, it has created an irresolvable tension
between political and research needs that, in the long run, will result
in ineffective policies and the accumulation of data of doubtful
significance. Cafferty's and McCready's assessment of the label is correct
(28, p. 254):
[P]olicies are created for Hispanics which help some and harm others
because there are . . . no "generic" Hispanics. . . . "Hispanics"
[sic] is much too generic a term for policy makers and . . . much
greater information and insight must be generated in order to enable
our contemporary system to make intelligent and productive responses
to the needs of these citizens and newcomers to the country.
The real issue, in the last instance, is not whether Latino of "Hispanic"
is a better umbrella term, but whether it is wise to have an umbrella
term at all. In my view, the answer is self-evident. Regardless of
politicians' concerns for numbers, social scientists and policy makers
must seriously confront the problems attached to this and any other
umbrella term: the stereotyping and minoritization of foreigners; the
transformation of minority groups into mere statistical categories, thus
subverting the historical reasons for their situation and their claims
upon the resources of the state; the creation of a synthetic or
artificial "ethnicity"; the production of data difficult to interpret
in nonracist or stereotypical fashion, and so on.
There is a simple alternative to the umbrella term: to acknowledge the
existence of qualitative differences in history, culture, class, and
social stratification, and racial/ethnic composition of populations that
ought to be publicly named by their real historical names, and
understood (through social research) and treated (through social and
health policies) in their own right. These populations are the following:
+Two minority groups: people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who,
because of the historical conditions surrounding their entry into the
United States, the integration of the U.S. economy with that of Mexico
and Puerto Rico, and the presence of migration flows and counterflows,
constitute two special populations with features and problems of
their own. Because of the heritage of economic exclusion and racial
discrimination, it is in their context that affirmative action makes
sense.
These six populations are themselves stratified on the basis of class
and socioeconomic status; this ought to warn social researchers and
policy makers against making generalizations, assuming a common culture
or "ethnicity" as the major explanatory variable. To identify these
populations in terms of national origin is easy (except in the case of
undocumented workers and refugees) and, politically, less laden with
racist innuendos than the effort to minimize their differences by placing
them all under a common label. The need to identify Spanish-speaking
populations to provide better health care and other social services does
not justify the use of a label that, because it racializes national
origin and triggers the perception of recipients in terms of stereotyped
"Hispanic" traits, may generate a "blaming the victim" understanding of
their problems and the provision of low quality services. In the last
instance, access to good health care is not a function of race,
ethnicity, or language skills; it is a function of social class and
location in the socioeconomic stratification system, a social science
truism that bears repeating over and over in a social, academic, and
policy-making context that downplays the existence of class differences
and their impact upon people's life chances. Advocates of a standardized
terminology should assess its short-term benefits for gathering data of
doubtful quality in the light of its long-term political, ideological,
and scientific costs, and give it up.
Acknowledgments - I would like to thank Estevan T. Flores, Benjamin F.
Hadis, and Richard Rogers for their helpful suggestions.
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Direct reprint requests to:
Public health specialists, policy makers, social scientists, and
politicians, for different reasons, have welcomed the "Hispanic" label.
The label presumably identifies an ethnic group that is also a minority
group (i.e., a group historically subject to economic exploitation and
racial discrimination). Consequently, its consistent use by federal and
state agencies would produce large quantities of comparable data useful
for research, and for policy making and implementation. Critics have argued
that the label is racist, it mystifies the real reasons for the
disproportionately high proportion of people of Mexican and Puerto Rican
descent in disadvantaged social and economic conditions, and stands in
the way of a fair implementation of affirmative action. Latino, a
race-neutral term with historical roots, has been suggested as an
alternative to be used in conjunction with national origin or regional
forms of self-identification, In this article, I argue that any
standardized terminology is unavoidably flawed and conducive to the
development of racist or, at best, trivial stereotypical analysis of the
data thus produced. The "Hispanic" label does not identify an ethnic
group or a minority group, but a heterogeneous population whose
characteristics and behavior cannot be understood without necessarily
falling into stereotyping. The label should be abandoned; social
scientists and policy makers should, instead, acknowledge the existence
of six aggregates, qualitatively different in their socioeconomic
stratification, needs, and form of integration in the U.S. economy: two
minority groups (people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent), and four
immigrant populations (Cubans, Central American refugees, Central
American immigrants, and South American immigrants).
Selected characteristics of the population by selected country of birth: 1980*
Median
Nationality Total High household
and selected persons, school College Prof. Service income,
Native 212,466 67.7% 16.3% 12.3% 12.7% $17,010
Foreign born
Mexico 2,199 21.3% 3.0% 2.5% 16.6% $12,747
Colombia 144 62.8% 14.6% 8.1% 15.8% $15,883
Dominican Rep 169 30.1% 4.3% 3.1% 18.5% $10,130
El Salvador 94 41.4% 6.5% 2.6% 31.7% $12,261
Ecuador 86 56.0% 9.3% 5.3% 14.7% $15,402
Guatemala 63 42.7% 6.9% 3.9% 27.9% $13,385
Cuba 608 54.9% 16.1% 9.2% 12.2% $16,326
Argentina 69 70.9% 24.2% 16.3% 13.1% $18,892
*Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstracts of the United
States: 1987, Ed. 107, p. 30. Washington, D.C., 1986,
Yes, Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano.
Yes, Puerto Rican.
Yes, Cuban.
Yes, other Spanish/Hispanic.]
instead, they wrote their country of origin in the space left for "other"
in the question designed to establish race. [Note 4:
The Census question is as follows:
White Asian Indian
Black or Negro Hawaiian
Japanese Guamanian
Chinese Samoan
Filipino Eskimo
Korean Aleut
Vietnamese Other ________ Specify ___________
Indian (Amer.)
Print Tribe: _____________________]
+Four additional aggregates: Cuban immigrants, Central America
refugees, Central American immigrants, and South American immigrants.
Privileged classes within these immigrant populations do very well;
those who do not, do poorly because of lack of human capital. The
determinants of the social stratification and the needs of these
populations are different from those subject to generations of
racial/ethnic discrimination. Policies designed to serve their needs
should, therefore, differ from those designed to ameliorate the
historical effects of discrimination (29).
Dr. Martha E. Gimenez
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309