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When did the word "Latino" become offensive?

MarcB

MarcB

Walk of Fame Participant
Moderators - please feel free to delete this if you think this post is inappropriate.

Last night on my Facebook page I posted that Latino radio stations should not play Justin Beiber songs. (His latest song is in Spanglish - part Spanish Part English). When I woke up this morning I had a private message from a friend of mine from high school who was born in Puerto Rico, but grew up and went to school in New Britain, Connecticut. He told me that the word "Latino" is as offensive to Hispanics as the word "colored" is to black people and "honky and cracker" are to White people. He blocked me on Facebook before I could apologize.

So when did "Latino" become offensive? Growing up in Connecticut until the late 90s one of our Spanish Stations was known as "Latino 1230" until Mega Broadcasting bought it and change the name to Mega 1230. For the last couples year until 2016 1230 was known as "Latina 1230", which I was told is the feminized version of the word "Latino". WKKB 100.3 in Providence, RI is "Latina 100.3" and has been since Davidson bought the station from Citadel. Full-Power Radio owns the station now and kept the name.

I also see the term "Latino" on Job Applications in the volunteer EEO questions they ask. It says Are you "Hispanic/Latino"?
 
MarcB said:
Moderators - please feel free to delete this if you think this post is inappropriate.

Last night on my Facebook page I posted that Latino radio stations should not play Justin Beiber songs. (His latest song is in Spanglish - part Spanish Part English). When I woke up this morning I had a private message from a friend of mine from high school who was born in Puerto Rico, but grew up and went to school in New Britain, Connecticut. He told me that the word "Latino" is as offensive to Hispanics as the word "colored" is to black people and "honky and cracker" are to White people. He blocked me on Facebook before I could apologize.

So when did "Latino" become offensive? Growing up in Connecticut until the late 90s one of our Spanish Stations was known as "Latino 1230" until Mega Broadcasting bought it and change the name to Mega 1230. For the last couples year until 2016 1230 was known as "Latina 1230", which I was told is the feminized version of the word "Latino". WKKB 100.3 in Providence, RI is "Latina 100.3" and has been since Davidson bought the station from Citadel. Full-Power Radio owns the station now and kept the name.

I also see the term "Latino" on Job Applications in the volunteer EEO questions they ask. It says Are you "Hispanic/Latino"?
Click to expand...

There is really nothing wrong with the term "Latino" except that it is the "old" term for people in the US who are now, mostly, called "Hispanics".

In the 70's, the US government took an unused term, "Hispanic" and gave it a new meaning: persons of a place or heritage that included the use of the Spanish language. The term was created... or redefined if you will... to satisfy record-keeping and compliance with all the 60's and 70's equal opportunity and discrimination legislation. Up to the 1970 Census, Latinos or "Hispanics" were not separately categorized.

"Latino" includes, broadly, anyone from Latin America or of direct Latin American heritage. Brazilians, for example, are Latinos but are not Hispanic.

A significant number of Hispanics don't like the term "Latino" as applied to them personally. Anecdotally, one of my daughters wore, till it fell apart, a T-shirt that said, "I am not Latina, I am not Hispanic, I am Puerto Rican". In this case, part of the resentment comes from being born US citizens and being lumped in a category that is mostly made up of Immigrants.

As you can see, the terms are nuanced and have different meanings for different folks.

I use "Hispanic" when speaking of demographics. I use "Spanish language" when referring to radio stations. But that is just a matter of what I feel is appropriate, clear and respectful to my own culture.

As to the question you presented on the other forum: All across Latin America, US and English language music is played as all or part of the playlist on contemporary music radio stations. Rock stations play almost 100% English language rock. AC stations range from all Spanish language music to all English language. CHR stations today play about 75% stuff from the US and British charts. So, just as a CHR in Chile will play Katy Perry, so will most Spanish language CHRs in the US.

But, indeed, except for a small group who won't be pleased by anything, your use of "Latino" is not offensive or incorrect. Just a little dated. Your friend needs to chill.
 
WLAT 910 Hartford calls itself Tu Poder Latino, so apparently it's OK up this way.

By the way, there's WNEZ 1230/W287CS 105.3 in suburban Manchester that brands itself as Exitos 105.3. Didn't you say a while back that "Exitos" was outdated? Yet there it is in the name and on the website: "los mejores exitos de la musica pop y tropical." Que pasa?
 
CTListener said:
WLAT 910 Hartford calls itself Tu Poder Latino, so apparently it's OK up this way.

By the way, there's WNEZ 1230/W287CS 105.3 in suburban Manchester that brands itself as Exitos 105.3. Didn't you say a while back that "Exitos" was outdated? Yet there it is in the name and on the website: "los mejores exitos de la musica pop y tropical." Que pasa?
Click to expand...

Éxitos is a bit outdated, and the term was not widely used in the Greater Antilles for musical hits. There is nothing wrong with it, except that it has little in the way of links with today's terminology and with folks from the Caribbean. It just does not resonate. There are more contemporary terms that fit better in a CHR format. "Today's best music" is much better...
 
But - the 90's was when the media started shoving "latino" down our throats, because "hispanic" was somehow "offensive". One explanation I heard was because it had "panic" as part of the word.

Even the PC's can't make up their minds.
 
Sammy Reed said:
But - the 90's was when the media started shoving "latino" down our throats, because "hispanic" was somehow "offensive". One explanation I heard was because it had "panic" as part of the word.

Even the PC's can't make up their minds.
Click to expand...

I do not recall any point in the 90's where the collective media started using "Latino" (with a capital... it's a proper noun) instead of "Hispanic". In fact, "Hispanic" (Also with a cap at the beginning) was being increasingly used because that was the "official" term of the Bureau of the Census, the OMB and, thus the U.S. Government.

Despite being involved with Hispanic media (in markets like LA, New York, Miami, Dallas, San Juan) throughout the 90's, I never heard the "panic" explanation... ever! You either made that up or it is a micro urban legend.
 
I've seen "Latinx" among the PC crowd lately (assuming an attempt to neuter the gender reference). One of my between jobs jobs was working for the census; they were very clear that "Hispanic" could not be designated as the race of a respondent.
 
"Bieber" is far more offensive than "Hispanic" or "Latino." :D

(Hey, somebody had to say it.)
 
gr8oldies said:
I've seen "Latinx" among the PC crowd lately (assuming an attempt to neuter the gender reference). One of my between jobs jobs was working for the census; they were very clear that "Hispanic" could not be designated as the race of a respondent.
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It's tough to de-gender a language that is based on Latin, where gender forms the core of the tongue. Any attempts to do so are artificial. In any case, "Hispanic" is the more acceptable term and is the one most recognized by the U.S. Government that created it.

You were correctly trained by the Census Bureau. "Hispanic" is a cultural denominator, not a racial one and it's presented on the Census questionnaire as a Yes/No item independent of race. However, there is pressure being placed on the Census Bureau to include "Hispanic" as a racial option in 2020. That idea represents a redefinition of "race" to include ethnicity instead of the current definition. Since Hispanics can be Asian, Native American, Black, White and any combination of those classifications, using "Hispanic" as a racial classification is a confusing idea.

This is, to bring the thread back to radio, an issue for broadcasters. "Hispanic" is a stratification variable for Nielsen, as are "Spanish dominant" and "English dominant" subsets and are used to establish sampling quotas or targets. If the definition of Hispanic changes, it can potentially upset the way radio is measured.

This is an enigmatic area. Example: Was Jerry Garcia Hispanic? Did he consider himself to be Hispanic?
 
Mr. Eduardo gave an excellent historical background. The phrase was originally coined by the Nixon Administration who thought that such a move might help them to appeal to Hispanic voters.

I was not aware that the term was now regarded as offensive.
 
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FreddyE1977 said:
Mr. Eduardo gave an excellent historical background. The phrase was originally coined by the Nixon Administration who thought that such a move might help them to appeal to Hispanic voters.

I was not aware that the term was now regarded as offensive.
Click to expand...

While the term "arose" during the Nixon administration, it was created at a very non-political level.

Recent and ongoing legislation demanded that minority groups be guaranteed equal rights in everything from education to employment. It was easy to determine percentages and quotas for Blacks and for Asians, and also for Native Americans. All were exact definitions based on the Census "race" question.

But most Latinos were classified as "white" with a smaller number, mostly from the Caribbean Basin, classified as Black.

The term "Latino" was thought to be ambiguous, as it came from the term "Latin" which meant people of French, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian heritage. To be language specific with what was intended to be a cultural or ethnic classification, they dug up the term "Hispanic" which previously meant "anyone from the lands of the ancient Roman province of Hispania or their descendants" and made it mean "anyone whose language and culture are or descend from nations and cultures where Spanish is spoken."

It took a while to introduce the change in terms, and the 1980 Census forced the adoption so that the group, now called Hispanics, could be enumerated to comply with the laws.

I have heard the term criticized as being "artificial". I have seen a couple of comments about it lumping together everyone from the descendants of WW II European refugees to pure Zapotec indigenous peoples from Mexico to Kechua indigenous peoples from Ecuador, some of whom do not even speak Spanish.
 
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Sammy Reed said:
But - the 90's was when the media started shoving "latino" down our throats, because "hispanic" was somehow "offensive". One explanation I heard was because it had "panic" as part of the word.

Even the PC's can't make up their minds.
Click to expand...

I suspect objection to "Hispanic" was because they consider it the long form of "ess-pee-eye-cee".*



*It turns out that there's a filter here that turns the actual word into ****


Hadn't really thought of it before, but this may be the first time in my life I've had occasion to use that word.


Unless it was half a century ago and and the rest of the phrase was "and span".
 
unitron said:
I suspect objection to "Hispanic" was because they consider it the long form of "ess-pee-eye-cee".*
Click to expand...

I have never heard that interpretation in my nearly 6 decades in the Hispanic community.
 
I was wondering (somewhat tongue in cheek) if even a "wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences" would be able to decide which was acceptable and which was not and why, when I started wondering why Latin America is called Latin America, and learned, via the Google, something: It's actually the French who are to credit or blame for naming it that, and that it includes French-speaking parts of the New World, except Canada and Louisiana.


So there's your answer: Your friend is mad because he thinks you accused him of being French. :D
 
unitron said:
I was wondering (somewhat tongue in cheek) if even a "wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences" would be able to decide which was acceptable and which was not and why, when I started wondering why Latin America is called Latin America, and learned, via the Google, something: It's actually the French who are to credit or blame for naming it that, and that it includes French-speaking parts of the New World, except Canada and Louisiana.
Click to expand...

And that is explained by the fact, except for a couple of British and Dutch outposts, all European colonized areas South of the USA speak a Latin-based language: French, Spanish, Portuguese.
 
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