Talk:Latino (demonym)

Criticism section

I created the criticism section because the subject reallt deserves it. There are millions of Latin American people who utterly reject that artificial label.--Scandza (talk) 11:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Part of the problem

African Americans have a strong sense of community identity due to their shared history. There is a tendency for other groups to aspire to the same thing. I think this is part of the problem with people's unhappiness with "Latino." Just putting a label on a collection of people is not going to make it a strong group, be it Latin Americans, Asian Americans, or for that matter white Americans. Northwestgnome (talk) 15:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Merged from Talk:Criticism of the term Latino

I created this article because everyone thinks that all Latin Americans agree to be tagged under the label "Latino" while there is, indeed, a large amount of general and academic criticism. This view should be balanced and I hope there will be more contributions.

This page is a completely loaded, opinionated, point of view piece of writing done by an editor who prefers the racist term Hispanic over the encompassing term Latino. I feel like blanking this page but because he has provided sources I do not think I should do this. But what I did do is search for the articles "Praise of the term Latino", "Critisism of the word Hispanic". Praise of the term Hispanic" and similarly a quick search of other ethnic groups with related articles such as "Criticism of the word African American" and can you guess my findings? Yep no big surprise, I found nothing! The reason for this is because this is just a page used to enforce it's creators opinion on others and does not warrant it's own article. I feel both the praise and criticism for both term are effectively covered on pages such as Latino, Latin American, Hispanic, Latino American, Hispanic American. etc. Can someone please deleted this soapbox, thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CartelCacique (talk • contribs) 07:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand that you don't like the arguments of the critics but I really think they should be included in an article because, just like you find the term "Hispanic" derogatory, there are indeed MORE people who feel the same of the term "Latino". Don't get me wrong, I didn't write it to favour the word Hispanic, on the contrary, any tag stick to millions of people is quite insulting specially if the vast majority rejects it. Like I said I hope there would be more neutral and fruitful contributions from either side. And as for your search of "criticism of the word African American" of course there's none since this is not a label like "nigger". Nigger was used fifty or sixty years ago pritty much like the word Latino is used today by the mass media and now has evolved into a pejorative term. This is what happens with labels, they sepearate people instead of unite them. I wrote the article trying to present with facts and sources the disagreement (academic, civil, political and cultural) of millions of people who don't need to "belong" to any "identity" or things of the sort. If you read carefully I present statistics and data that can be consulted.--Scandza (talk) 12:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

You say there are more but I think there are more who find hispanic offensive over latino. And are you trying to make me laugh? You are actually comparing latino to nigger?! WTF, no comparison at all. I'm proud to be Latino not Hispanic but I reject the racist word spic, which is like nigger. Latino is no way like nigger, spic is like nigger. This article is a soapbox for your opinion and as such should be deleted.

If you think it's my opinion you should look up at the sources I provide and at the hundreds of other sources easily found on the internet and in libraries. This is a real phenomenon that deserves an article, there are similar ones in wikipedia such as:

• American (word)
• Native American name controversy
• Northern Ireland naming dispute
• Origin of the name Eskimo

In the most strict sense the word "nigger" of course couldn't be compared to Latino but what many people don't happen to realise is that these labels often evolve into derogatory ones. The wikipedia entry of Nigger says:

The word originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger, meaning "black".

The use and overuse of the term has rendered it an insult even though it just means black. Also in Canada and Greenland Eskimo is considered insulting while in other parts is not. The same is felt of Latino. You say Hispanic is racist but what about Latino??? What about the millions of indigenous people in Latin America who don't give a damn about European, Hispanic or Latin cultures?? Why should they be tagged under that term? Latino is a fad, a very californian trend to be precise, and as such it is not immune to the massive amount of criticism and objection.

This article should not exist as it is completely one-sided.143.231.249.138 (talk) 16:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

As long as nobody presents actual proofs that this article is biased or mainly POV oriented it should stay. The people opposed to it are actually expressing their own points of view without any justification. Also, I recommend to check other articles such as ethnonym, Berberism, Arab Jew and Arab world to get a more global idea of what ethnic naming disputes really are.

In the article Arab world we read:

"Certain populations have expressed resentment towards the term "Arab World," and believe that their national and political rights have been unjustly brushed aside by modern governments' focus on Pan-Arabism and promoting an Arab identity. In some cases this has led to severe conflicts between the ethnic nationalism of these groups and the Arab nationalism promoted by governments lead by Arab leaders, which sometimes amounted to denying the existence of or forcibly suppressing non-Arab minorities within their borders".

To call every single person from Morocco or Argelia an "Arab" is the same thing as to call every single person from Latin America a "Latino". These are optional, self-describing terms and any use beyond that is abusive and politically incorrect. --Scandza (talk) 14:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Merge Proposal from Criticism of the term Latino

A merge has already beem started by CartelCacique (talk · contribs) but halted because consensus had not been reached at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of the term Latino. I do not think there is enough standalone info at the source article but it would do fine in this article, which is essentially a definition page. ZabMilenko^{How am I driving?} 12:13, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I started the Criticism of the term Latino article and as far as I see some people agreed to keep it and some others wanted it to be either deleted or merged. Now I think that the best option would be to merge it into a new article covering the criticism of both the Hispanic and Latino labels. I started to write it under the name Hispanic/Latino naming disputes--Scandza (talk) 15:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Voilà, here's the brand new article: Hispanic/Latino naming dispute; The bulk of the Criticism of the term Latino article is found there plus criticism of Hispanic.--Scandza (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Alright! There are a small handful fixes needed but there is no question that the article stands alone. Nice work. ZabMilenko^{How am I driving?} 15:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

"Latino" is not the same as "Latin American"

Latino doesn't have anything to do with Latin American. That term refers to the alleged "common identity" of people of Latin American descent LIVING IN THE US. Check the following links:

• Latino is a U.S. construct
• The concept of “Latino” is an American concept
• Being Latino is an American identity
• "The very term Latino has meaning only in reference to the U.S. experience. Outside the United States, we don't speak of Latinos; we speak of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and so forth. Latinos are made in the USA. Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Mariela Páez, Latinos: Remaking America (University of California Press, 2008) ISBN 0520258274, p. 4.

So please don't use that arbitrary and stereotype-loaded term to refer to Latin Americans outside the US.--Scandza (talk) 11:38, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Moving

Hello, everyone. It's been a while.

The use of "Latino" in reference to U.S. Hispanics/Latinos constitutes an absolutely overwhelming majority of the term's use. This article already acknowledges that, somewhat. But Google leaves no doubt, as upwards of 85% of uses of "Latino" are about the U.S. ethnic group, per a search of ["latino" -wikipedia]. Within Wikipedia the ratio is only greater. Special:WhatLinksHere shows that the virtual totality of the incoming wikilinks are about Hispanic and Latino Americans. That's no typo: I sampled at least 20 links, randomly, and all were about U.S. Hispanics/Latinos. So, it being clear that this group is the primary topic for "Latino", I'm moving this page (back) to "Latino (demonym)" and making this title redirect to Hispanic and Latino Americans, with a hatnote at the latter linking to "Latino (disambiguation)". SamEV (talk) 08:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Italian dictionaries?

In the "Definitions in other languages" section of this article, it gives the on-line Italian dictionary (Sapero.it) as source # 36. The article claims that the Italian dictionary defines "latino" as "the ancient Latins and Romans, and their language, as well as the neo-Latin nations". This is simply not true. For those who read Italian, the Sapero.it dictionary defines "latino" not only as the ancient Latins and Romans, and their language...but also modern Italians and other people from Romance language-speaking European countries. Sapero.it has a separate definition for Latin Americans called "latino-americano". Why does Wikipedia bother giving references if it doesn't tell the truth about what those references mean in English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.67.217.237 (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)