population

You all know why I hate the word "Hispanic". So when Marisa from Latina Lista sent this around the other day, I couldn't stop myself from bashing them for using that most detested word.

As a Latinoamericanista by training, Latin American and by extension, Latino, means to include non-Spanish speaking countries like Brazil and Haiti. Hispanic doesn't.

Also, when we speak Latino, we don't speak of people who are only of Castillian Spanish ascendancy. They could be descendants of Persian Jews, Lebanese Christians, Tagalog Filipinos or simple any of the hundreds of Native South American and Caribbean tribes that populate our countries.

If universities across the country can make a distinction between Hispanic and Latino studies, it would behoove the political elites to make those distinctions, no? It's why I've never understood the insistence of advocacy and organizations to use the anachronistic term "Hispanic".

Any organization that doesn't embrace the diversity of the Latino community, with all our languages, ethnicities, cultures and races, is bound to always be political weak. Especially in these times when mobile and internet technologies, along with transnational economies, are breaking down the barriers of racial, ethnic and linguistic identity while fortifying those of class.

Anyhow, thanks Marisa. Am pulling a lazyweb on this one and just cutting and pasting on the blog.

(Day 3 on the THK Blog Tour belongs to the Democracy Cell Project, a website I've been known to frequent from time to time. This is the intro and outro to the Day 3 threader there -- to read the actual Q&A-with-THK portion of the program, visit the DCP blog and view it in its native habitat so I don't have to overwhelm CK by re-posting the whole thing here.)

Teresa Heinz Kerry is no stranger to the spotlight. She's been on stage in front of crowds larger than most of us can even imagine. But as far as she's concerned, her most important work takes place behind the scenes. As head of the Heinz Endowments and the Heinz Family Philanthropies, she has long been a leader in promoting responsible, sustainable social action.

One of Teresa Heinz Kerry's more visible projects is the ongoing Women's Health and the Environment Conference series. This year's keynote conference will be held in Pittsburgh on this coming Friday, April 20, and will feature a number of outstanding speakers, scientists, and activists discussing critical health issues facing women today.

We will be attending the Women’s Health & the Environment: New Science, New Solutions conference and will posting reports about it here at the DCP blog. Today, however, we're also participating in a special 17-stop virtual blog tour (see the complete tour schedule here). And that gave us the opportunity to ask Teresa Heinz Kerry a few questions of particular interest to members of the DCP community:

I am happy to kick off Teresa Heinz Kerry's blogtour promoting the “Conference on Women’s Health & the Environment” held in Pittsburgh on April 20th.

Teresa Heinz Kerry’s two marriages bring together two American political traditions, the Republican Heinz family and the Democratic Kerry family, and shows how good people in both parties have common ground. Teresa herself is of Portuguese descent and grew up in Mozambique. To those who think French is the most romantic of the Romance languages, to my mind Portuguese is a much more beautiful and romantic language, though also a bit sad and wistful. Educated in South Africa and Switzerland, Teresa is fluent in 5 languages. She received the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism in 2003 in recognition for her philanthropy through the Heinz Family Philanthropies which also sponsors the conference.

Much of her philanthropic effort has focused on two areas: the environment, and women’s health and economic security. To most Americans, environmental issues and women’s issues tend to be put in separate conceptual boxes. We have an environmental movement and a feminist movement and the two are not perceived as intersecting. But in Europe, particularly in the European Green movement, these issues are conceptually much more closely linked. I once was able to hear my mother, an Anthropology professor and one-time coordinator of Women’s Studies at California State University Northridge, speak on the link between these two movements, presenting them as, in essence, the two areas where traditional, patriarchal attitudes have most glaringly failed, leaving problems and inequalities that are among the most difficult issues of the modern world. The way I look at it, human society from the development of agriculture on has been understandably obsessed with fertility: the fertility of our crops and our families. This obsession has led both to the success of our species in thriving practically everywhere on earth, but also has led to what amounts to unacceptable treatment of both the land that sustains us, and one half of our species--women. Industrial poisoning of our water supplies and fish stocks, global warming, overpopulation, domestic violence, unequal pay for equal work, laws limiting a woman’s right to control her own fertility, and many, many other issues that make headlines today are at least in part a result of the patriarchal and agricultural obsession society has had with fertility for some 10,000 years. Not to say there aren’t other aspects to these issues, but the cultural mindset that dominates the world is one where both the environment and women are resources to be exploited for the benefit of the species and are not often valued for themselves.