Am I Latino or Am I Hispanic ?

Soy Latino o soy Hispanic? I’m sure most of the people reading this have used these two words interchangeably, or if someone referred to you as one or the other you wouldn’t correct them. Well it’s time to answer the age old question, are you Latino or Hispanic? 

Have y’all ever been struck with that all too general question “So where are you from?” and your brain goes into critical thinking mode as you start thinking about how to answer this.  Do I tell them my race, ethnicity, nationality, maybe they’re asking where I live? So you just  pick one and hope that’s the answer they were looking for. I’ve answered that question so many times and before I didn’t really know the difference between race, ethnicity and nationality or where Latino/Hispanic fit into.

Thankfully, I’m here to break it down for anyone who still isn’t sure. Race is a category that is ascribed depending on physical appearance, usually skin color such as White, Black and Asian. Ethnicity is an ethnic group or groups a person belongs to culturally such as if your immigrant parents are from Mexico you’re ethnicity is Mexican. Nationality is the country where the person holds citizenship. Using myself as an example my race is biracial, my ethnicity is Guatemalan and Lebanese from my parents side, and my nationality is American. Now let’s get into where Latino and Hispanic fit into this.

First let’s start by explaining what these two are not.

There’s Afro-Latinx people, indigenous people, lighter complexion Latinos/Hispanics, darker complexion and much more. Some would say that their race is Latino or Hispanic but it isn’t. I’m sure we could agree that black and white are races, but aren’t there black Latinos and white Latinos too? Does that mean they don’t identify as white or black?

Pro Mexican boxer Canelo has a white complexion and is ginger, he’s white but still he is our guy and he’s Latino and Hispanic.  By no means am I undermining what it means to be Latino or Hispanic because, regardless of any data, it is a beautifully unique community and culture.

When we fill in that little circle next to Latino/Hispanic under race it’s just for demographics. Richard Nixon introduced the term to make it easier for the government to categorize us for research and law purposes. To be Hispanic or Latino is not as black and white as a race category, it’s grey. Latinx/o/a is used to label people from a geographic setting, so anybody born in Latin American countries, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and some nations in the Caribbean are Latino.

An example of people that are not technically Latino are people from Spain…. or are they? (Our very own Maria Brasero explains it here. Doesn’t mean that Spanish people are excluded from the lit Latin festivals though. Hispanic is used to label people using language. People that are from/descendants of Spanish-speaking countries are Hispanic. For example, people from Spain classify as Hispanic but people from Brazil wouldn’t because in Brazil they speak Portuguese. By the way you can be both, most people are both.

Using me as an example, if someone were to ask me my ethnicity I’d say I’m half Guatemalan. Is Guatemala in Latin America? Yup, I’m Latino. Is Guatemala’s national language Spanish? Yup, great I’m Hispanic too. Now that you know the difference go ahead and showcase your knowledge in your next conversation.