On why I hate Hispanic Heritage Month

This is all fine but then when you get into other terms like Latino, Chicano, Mexican-American, Mexican, South American, Latin American, and so forth you realize that they too have shortcomings and/or over generalizations. So at the end of the day you are left with a bunch of definitions of which none are perfect.

The fact you can't parse out nationality and political terms here is ... well ... Mexican is not a shortcoming. It's a national term that has been muddled in this country by the Census giving it a racial status. It's insane. Not everybody Mexican is Mexica.

In addition, while 'Hispanic' may have meant one thing in the past, like language in general, it has evolved (especially among raza) to encompass a far more 'Latin American (including Puerto Rican)' group of people.

We're going to the mat on this one. Outside of the US NOBODY calls themselves an "hispano". In Latin America we are all latinoamericanos. Maybe, just maybe "hispanoamericanos", but it's a term that especially after the 1960's and the "Latinoamerican Boom", nobody really uses anymore.

As any linguist will tell you, the definition of terms is not what central powers give it, but how everyday users of the word define it. And in everyday usage, "Hispanic" has evolved to overcome many of the shortcomings you cite

My background is in Language and Literature with a big dose of linguistics. My point of contention is not the everyday use of the term. It's Power's use of the term.

Why would the census choose to mark as WHITE people who define themselves as OTHER and HISPANIC?

And why would a "hispanic" choose to use the term if not to become that new other "white"?

Finally, not only is this an insignificant battle but it is a battle you are not likely to win. Hispanic has become so embedded in everyday language that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to stop its usage. Unless you get every Hispanic to take a Chicano (a term, btw, not lacking in its own problems) Studies course - and most have enough sense not to waste their time - you are not likely to motivate anybody enough to work hard against its usage - leaving the word to be defined by the masses instead of leading to its elimination.

Oh, so the masses don't read?

WTF!

Which brings me to an alternative approach. If the definition of Hispanic pisses you off so much, instead of trying to eliminate its usage, why not try to focus its usage on what it means to the everyday person? This has been my approach. Instead of giving up the term to the anglo government census, I have used the term to mean precisely what many take it to mean - a person of Latin American descent. So as a first generation Mexican-American, I wear the term proudly and everybody who sees what I look like will have a much more refined definition of the term.

Given your politics, the term suits you.

That people just play along unquestioningly says a lot about the state of racism within the latinamerican communities that become "hispanic" in this country.

It's his panic.
LOL!

Let me get this straight, Lou Dobbs is a bigot because he is against illegal immigration. I find it interesting that this is the only country on Earth that thinks it's not correct to consider our own interests in choosing immigrants. Try showing up in any other country on the planet, illiterate and penniless, and announcing: "I've seen pictures of your country and it looks great. I think I'd like to live here! Oh, and by the way, would you mind changing all your government and business phone messages, street signs and ballots into my native language? Thanks!" They would laugh you out of the country. What seems not to have occurred to you is that this is a country, not a public park.

There are more than 6 billion people in the world, many of whom apparently like the idea of living in the wealthiest democracy on Earth. But if the billions of people of the world did live here, it wouldn't be "here" anymore. America is special for a reason that must transcend the right to vote — or everyone would be trying to immigrate to Iraq right now.

America has a seller's market in immigration, but thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Kennedy's bill promptly cut the number of European immigrants in half and increased Third World immigrants to 85 percent of the total.

Not surprisingly, post-1965 immigrants have sharply higher levels of poverty and welfare dependence. Europeans may not seem like ideal new immigrants, but the truth is, if what they want is welfare, they'll stay in France.

It's as if we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and instead of doubling the price, we're entertaining low-ball offers. Or more accurately, we're paying our customers to take the darn things off our hands — and the customers are still indignant with us. As hardworking as illegal immigrants are when they come here, they are immediately demagogued by liberals into adopting the victimhood pose so popular on college campuses. Everybody wants to act like his ancestors were brought here on slave ships. If America is such a bad, racist country Lisa, why did you move back here? Why are people of color from all over the world dying to come here? To be oppressed?

Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza's director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I'd be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be "offended" all the time.)

Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin — of the Guadalajara Waslins — ominously warned that while the amendment "doesn't overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities."

Meanwhile, Americans aren't allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is "potentially dangerous to our communities." Here, please — we'll pay you, just take the whole Xbox 360 factory.

I'm not touching most of this since it wasn't aimed at me...Liza can handle you herself just fine. But I would like to point out that Liza was born American. She's from Puerto Rico. Last I looked, that is officially and completely part of America. So don't talk to her about moving "here" because we incorporated Puerto Rico into "here" long before she was born. If you want to rant, fine. But at least keep it factual.

The % of migrant workers coming in to the US is actually small compared to Europe and other parts of the world.

Second, you're full of shit when you call migrant workers of today less skilled than the European rif raf that came here at the turn of the 20th century. Mostly agrarian people with very literacy in their own languages who basically ended up in slums across all the major cities of this country. NYC wouldn't be what it is had it not been for the urban refuse of italians, germans, irish, greek and other europeans who littered our landscape in the 1800s.

Third, asshole, I was born here and even if I had been born in Puerto Rico, I still would be a natural born American.

And the future of this country is supposed to be in the hands of gringos like you?

Pendejo.

You said this racist thing: "NYC wouldn't be what it is had it not been for the urban refuse of italians, germans, irish, greek and other europeans who littered our landscape in the 1800s." Those ethnic groups you degraded built NYC. They came to this country legally, and have made great contributions to this country. The fact is that about half of those interned by the U.S. government during WWII were Italian-Americans and German-Americans. Needless to say, no of those internees have received money, an apology or a monument and their sufferings have been erased from history.

It's interesting that you refuse to respond to any of my points. Those groups came here to give their children a better life. Assimilation was the goal. Mexicans who are coming here today don't have the same intentions. As La Raza has said that they are against assimilation.

There are innumerable reasons to want our border secure. We know our infrastructure is being ravaged--emergency rooms overwhelmed, hospitals closing, our highways jammed, school rooms overcrowded, tax revenue lost, it goes on and on. When illegal immigrants are discussed in the media, the picture painted is of a hard working family man or woman, the sort of person President Bush refers to when he pitches his "guest worker" program. "Hard working people who want a better way of life," is how he casts them.

While many fit that bill, the dirty little secret is the fact that illegal aliens are not only destroying our infrastructure by stealing valuable services such as health care and schooling, they're also committing horrific crimes throughout our great nation. The fact that police departments in virtually every major city (and not so major ones) spend their time responding to crime by illegal aliens, looking for the illegal alien culprits, arresting illegal aliens (when their local laws allow them to), processing them through the system, means more officers, more departments, are stretched to the limit, by people who shouldn't be here in the first place.

At the end of that road, our prison system then provides them with, shall we say, a quality of life (shelter, food, protection, health care, cable television, gyms) one would not find in regular housing in the pit of any South American city. The latest insult to this nation, the latest slap in the face we receive by those who use this country like a convenient dish rag, is a continuation of that rape, but this time it’s a literal one.

On October 4, 2005 WKMG television in Florida reported on their website that fourteen “field laborers broke into an 18-year-old woman’s home, dragged her across the street and then took turns raping her.” This rampaging gang of “field laborers” consisted of men ranging in age from 18 to 56. The victim reported they choked her until she passed out. When she awoke, they were pouring alcohol in her mouth. She was then raped by each and every one of them. When these animals finished they pushed her out the front door like a piece of used meat. Somehow this girl managed to get to a phone where she called the police. Deputies arrested the 14 men who were still at the house where the rape occurred. They will be charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and sexual battery by multiple perpetrators. They face life in prison if convicted.

Not until we get to the end of the WKMG website story is the fact that the rapists aren’t just “farm laborers.” Indeed, they are all illegal aliens. Only at the end of their story do we learn, “Twelve of the men are from Guatemala, one from Puerto Rico and the other from Mexico.”

The rather euphemistic headline is our first clue that it’s now very politically incorrect to even state the truth about a situation when it comes to illegals. The fact is, besides the obvious primary importance of the girl being gang raped, the other clearly important cultural element is the fact that it was carried out by a gang of illegal aliens.

This is not, unfortunately, a freakish, one-of-a-kind event. Last year, the L.A Times addressed the astounding impact of illegal alien criminals. The Globe noted that in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

And that’s just that statistics of one city in the midst of a nationwide problem. Our nation's security rests on our securing the borders; that's a given. Most of our persuasion and rhetoric on the issue has been based in the points I made at the beginning of this article. I contend, however, the much-ignored security threat posed by illegal aliens is at least as insidious (if not more so) as al-Qaeda. When it comes to illegal immigration, the president not only hasn’t declared war on the group responsible for a massive wave of crime including murder and rape, but wants to invite them in with a guest worker program. Instead of supporting the incredibly courageous Minuteman Project, the president calls them “vigilantes.” I wonder, how many rapes and murders were stopped because of their success in sealing the border in April? The Minutemen have returned for October, thank goodness, with 4500 hundred volunteers. This time, it’s not just Arizona, but the entire 2,000 mile Mexican/American border that is under watch.

While it is too late for the young woman in Florida, and all the others who will be victimized by illegals in the days and weeks to come, we can no longer ignore our duty to expose the dirty little secret of illegal alien crime. I contend, however, it’s not just contempt for the law, but contempt for the people of this nation. After all, after they pushed their victim out the door like a piece of trash, their staying on the premises said volumes. They didn't expect her to do a thing about the violence they inflicted on her. The contempt was present in the act and even after the fact. It's time for every American to exhibit some righteous contempt of our own--contempt for being used, contempt for those who commit violence, contempt for those eating away at this nation like parasites.

I was wondering. Could you explain to me what "WOP" means?

White people did invent Everything! Except for Slavery,we can thank Blacks and Arabs for that. The Department of African American Studies at most universitys have been notorious for their ideological narrowness, their racism, and their lack of credible scholarship – all present from the moment it was conceived as a department. But it has always been protected by the leftist leadership, fearful of applying credible academic standards to this racial fiefdom. Several books have been written about the travesty of African American Studies Department by eminent classical scholars from across the political spectrum. These books have demonstrated the fraudulent nature of its scholarship and of its central doctrine of “Afro-centricity,” which has been exposed as a racist idea based on made-up history. The most famous of these authorities, Mary Lefkowitz, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, emeritus, at Wellesley College, was instrumental in bringing women into the leadership of the American Philological Association, the professional association of classical scholars and ancient historians in the United States.

In her book Not Out of Africa, Lefkowitz characterizes “Afro-centricty” as the teaching of “myths disguised as history.” Professor Lefkowitz’s summary of these myths is as follows: “There is little or no historical substance to many of the Afro-centrists’ most striking claims about the ancient world. There is no evidence that Socrates, Hannibal, and Cleopatra had African ancestors. There is no archaeological data to support the notion that Egyptians migrated to Greece during the second millennium B.C. (or before that). There is no reason to think that Greek religious practices originated in Egypt…. Other assertions are not merely unscientific; they are false. Democritus could not have copied his philosophy from books stolen from Egypt by Anaxarchus, because he had died many years before Alexander's invasion [of Egypt]. Aristotle could not have stolen his philosophy from books in the library at Alexandria, because the library was not built until [fifty years] after his death. There never was such thing as an Egyptian Mystery System (which is a central part of Afro-centrist teaching).”

The fact of the matter is White people have made the greatest contributions to the world. We have Thomas Hobbes, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Guglielmo Marconi, James Joyce, Vasco De Gama, Jonas Salk, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Louis Daguerre, J. Robert Oppenbeimer, Gregg Pincus, Enrico Fermi, William Harvey, Ben Franklin, Marie Curie, Picasso, Werner Heisenberg, FDR, Magellen, Kant, Walt Disney, D.W Griffith, Jean-Luc Godard, Winston Churchill, Ed Jenner, Charles Babbage, Alexander Graham Bell, Mendel, Bill Gates, The Wright Brothers, Dante, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Alexander Fleming, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Rene Descartes, Watson & Crick, Beethoven, Henry Ford, Bach, Mozart, Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Karl Marx, Gutenberg, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Freud, Edison, The Beatles, etc. Whites continue to this day, to contribute greatly to society and lead the world in the fields of science, medicine, and engineering. Don't feel bad, you have Jen Lopez and Mark Anthony.

Greek culture and power extended itself across the known world. While the classical age of Greece produced great literature, poetry, philosophy, drama, and art, the Hellenistic age impacted the world. However, the Macedonians did more than control territory; they actively exported Greek culture: politics, law, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. This was a new idea, exporting culture, and more than anything else this exporting of culture would deeply influence all the civilizations and cultures that would later erupt from this soil: the Romans, the Christians, the Jewish Diaspora, and Islam. Hellenism changed the world and defined the way in which the world would operate.

Ummm...no. I assume history is not your strong point.

First off, you ignore the contributions of China and the rest of Asia! Or do you just count them as "white?" A great deal came from Asia. Even pottery was first developed in Japan LONG before it was (probably independently) invented in the Middle East. It is also interesting how so many do NOT include Middle Easterners as "white" unless it is to claim their achievements for whites.

Egypt, Turkey and what is now Iraq argueably invented many things. India and China also invented a great deal. Your focus on Greece and Rome ignores the fact that they took a large part of their civilization from the Middle East. You also claim Arabs and Africans invented slavery. So how do you explain widespread slavery among Greeks and Romans? They held slaves LONG before there was a large African or Arab slave trade. Much of what was invented in Eurasia and North Africa was independently invented in the Americas, too, though later.

Racist theories of history don't really hold water. Read Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. It is an intelligent, sane book describing why Eurasia came out ahead in modern times. It is a nice antidote to the racist theories of history like the discredited "Bell Curve."

But ... seriously ... I understand why you use it. "HispanicPundit" is a good brand after all

I still stand on everything I've said. "Hispanic" is really about a nostalgia for all things European that, quite frankly, a lot of people were never connected to in our countries outside of just the language and the religion.

Truth be told, I don't hear neither "hispanic" nor "latino" used in daily parlance. I live in a part of NYC where there's a lot of caribeños and immigrants in general, so most people here talk about being PRican, Dominican, Mexican --even 2, 3 generations away from the "patria".

So peace man. I didn't mean to be mean, just saying that politically there are two different intentions behind the use of the term and that, for that reason, they can't be considered interchangeable.

This is where you fail :

If we agree that there is something in common between all those persons, what is it? It is the fact that they come from countries that were colonies of Spain,

Latinoamerica was not all owned by Spain nor do all peoples coming from former Spanish colonies happen to speak Spanish.

So, you fail.

There should not be just a month. I am in favor of 365 days of Spanish-language education as well as 12 years of world history education with at least a heavy does of latin american studies.

That's my point. Get rid of the month. Make latino studies a mandatory component of elementary and secondary education.

That its nice to see Latinos actuallying fighting for thier identity, sometimes I feel alone when it comes to this topic. I always try to talk to my family and friends about thier true roots but even with that their reaction to my words is like a silent acceptance that they have some great connection with Spain. Anyways, Liza I skimed through what you said in your first post and I know for the most part I agree with you.

AND AS FOR THAT PERSON THAT USED "But White people did invent everything" as the title to his/her post

I'm only responding to the title alone because I was too angered by the title alone, even if the body of the post was completly different to the title, I would still like to say that...

European came to my ancesters (Incan Civilization) lands and stole all our riches and destroyed our way of life. We had so much gold that it was used as pavement for our streets, dye for our clothes and paint for our walls. But gold wasn't valued as money by my ancesters, it was simply used as a color for our things YET they had an abundence of goods. My ancesters built posts, lets say 1 mile apart from each other, inwhich men would run carrying messages from 1 post to the next in order to commicate and of course theyre native tongue, Qechau. And not only that they were an extremely moral and hard working people, its no wonder that they said hello as "Ama Suah Ama Yayah Ama Kiah" which means Do not steal, Do not lie and Do not be lazy and then came those european retards. Now if you study your history, europeans had an economic explosion due to all the gold and riches Europeans STOLE and how do you think those europeans got so smart? TIME! Now that they were rich they had plenty of time to think and invent while they lived on thier new STOLEN wealth. So don't credit white people so easily for anything! My ancestors wealth was the resource of it all, all of Europe and U.S. is in debt to South Americans, that I can say for sure because a great amount of their wealth came from my ancesters wealth.

South Americans would've beeen one of the most powerful people on Earth right now, it wouldn't be some "white" nation.

-Israel