"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.