Legal Commentary

What Is A Latino?

By Big Tent Democrat

In a post discussing a dispute about Jeb Bush touting the "assimilibility" of Latinos (or Hispanics, if you prefer), Matt Yglesias writes:

At any rate, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that Ezra and I are both examples of English-speaking people of partially Latin American ancestry. It seems to me that one of the roots of the problem is precisely that the general public doesn’t recognize the Matt Yglesiases of the world in this way. Only highly un-assimilated Spanish-dominant people “present” to the bulk of the country as genuinely Hispanic [. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) I chalk this up to poor phrasing by Yglesias, but this is not true. Indeed, I discussed with Yglesias the issue of the bigotry faced by Sonia Sotomayor, who is clearly English dominant, and he clearly recognized it went beyond who "presents" as Hispanic. Sometimes you get "presented." For Sotomayor, her complexion`more closely fit the stereotype. For many, Latino or Hispanic means "brown." Not just "Spanish." But sometimes just a name, like, say Yglesias, is enough.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 18, 2011 (boomark / email).