"I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination"

SHE IS BRIGHT, smart, tough. "I'm a very controlled person," says Linda Chavez, 36, the new U.S. Civil Rights Commission staff director who sent out shock waves by denouncing hiring quotas. In her Thomas Circle office, she sits with hands folded on her desk, business suit and blouse flawlessly neat, not a hair out of place. She is smiling. Her voice is warm and low, her speech energetic.

She talks about how it feels to be treated differently because your skin is brown.

"I have had more difficulty with what I consider discriminatory and prejudiced behavior from liberals who thought they were doing me a favor than I have ever experienced from bigots," she says. "Maybe it shaped some of my attitudes on the whole affirmative action and quota business." 

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She was denigrated by Anglos, called a Mexican. "I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination . . . Blacks have experienced the most severe discrimination in our society."

 

McCombs, Phil. "The Civil Struggles Of Linda Chavez." The Washington Post, January 30, 1984

"White Persons of Spanish Surname"

 

 

Chicano, Boricua. Mexican American. Latino. Puerto Rican. Spanish American. Raza. Latin American. Hispanic. Spanish Origin. White Person of Spanish Surname. The list of names seems endless and confusing. Which term is correct? 

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This leads to a legal complication: with confusion in methodology, eligibility for civil rights and affirmative action benefits can be capriciously applied, favoring persons who do not meet the spirit of the law but fall within its literal interpretation due to methodological inconsistency. This capriciousness is beginning to generate a potentially devastating legal backlash.

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Continued use of the term "Hispanic" or "Spanish Origin" denies the very basis upon which discrimination has been based, and confuses the basis for civil rights and affirmative action efforts. Because of this terminological and methodological confusion, not only is health research hampered, but legal efforts are placed in jeopardy. In 1979 in Maryland an Anglo named Robert E. Lee had his name legally changed to Roberto E. Leon in the hope he would qualify for affirmative action benefits because he would then have a Spanish surname. This transparent ploy served to mock affirmative action. Yet, in reality, he was mocking an imprecise methodology. Judge Weber in Pittsburgh ruled that Hispanics are not a race, and denied affirmative action benefits to a person who had submitted proof that his father was a Mexican. Judge Renfrew, a proposed Carter appointee, has stated that Hispanics are no more than "lazy Caucasians", and not eligible for affirmative action efforts. One can understand such confusion as long as such terms as "white person of Spanish surname," "Hispanic," or "Spanish descent" are used for identification purposes.

 

Hayes - Bautista, D. E. Identifying "Hispanic" populations: The influence of research methodology upon public policy. American Journal of Public Health, 1980, 671-687

Passing for an oppressed minority

 

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.)’ 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.

 

Martha E. Gimenez, "Latino/'Hispanic': Who Needs a Name? The Case Against a Standardized Terminology," International Journal of Health Services 19:3 (1989), pp. 557-571. 

She made "Hispanic" official

While success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, bureaucrat-ese, it turns out, sometimes has one proud author. During her long career in government, Grace Flores-Hughes spent some time working as an assistant in what was then called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It was there, in the early 1970s, that she helped establish "Hispanic" as the government's word of choice for people of Spanish origin -- a term that made it onto the official U.S. census form in 1980.
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How did the federal government come to use the term "Hispanic"?

There are many Hispanic activists who think that Richard Nixon did it. Well, no, Richard Nixon was very busy -- he didn't have time to be doing this. When I explain it, they get relieved. They were holding this anger that some nasty Anglo named them. Well, no, it wasn't. It was this little Hispanic bureaucrat.
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So you and others in your office joined a committee to come up with the best name?

It was very contentious. Others were pulling for the word "Latino." I wanted "Hispanic." And I was the youngest one in the group. They said: " 'Latino' and 'Latina' is what we all are, that's why we should be called that." But to me the only way to accurately count us is by using the term "Hispanic."
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It was an affirmative action decision?

Essentially it was guiding any affirmative action that was going to evolve.

Who is Hispanic in your mind? Who were you thinking of when you fought for the term?

All the people in South Texas I grew up with. So many of them were poor, so many were disenfranchised. I thought: How can we argue for more federal funds or more federal help if we don't know how many they are?

Washington Post, 2009. She Made 'Hispanic' Official.