creating racism

[Thomas Winslow]

In a discussion with my fatheran odd subject came up.

My great grandmother and grandfather were from spain and portugal giving my dad a perpetual dark brown tan and jet black hair.

 I wondered aloud if this made me more "hispanic" despite my pasty white complexion than many who claim the heritage.

My father point blank said it is a lousy label meant to create a race that never existed.

When we lived in Spain the people thought of themselves as white or black Spaniards and never as Hispanic or Latino (Latino actually being a more inaccurate label).

Why do we use such labels to drive wedges ?

[Allie]

That really is a brilliant thought there.  In trying to homogenize our society by blending the right numbers and thus having to classify those numbers, a paradox is created that puts people into boxes they would not necessarily have been in otherwise.

[Thomas Winslow]

I was a kid there when Franco died my dad was stationed at torrejon AFB.

my point is there are scholarships,loans grants etc. set aside for those in the US of hispanic origin as well as racial quotas that can be met under the equal opportunity act .

I am only eligible for IF i lay claim to being such an oppressed minority. I do not and continue to check the box marked caucasian which still seems a misnomer

I have like many in the United States a Mutt heritage that I am proudd of that

 

caucasian sounds like it should be a white russian from the caucus mountains one of the few I can not lay claim to being .

there is also a thin veneer to racism that falls under the category of I can call my brother a jerk but will beat you up if you do  attitude in media that os bothersome here .

for example tyler perrys whole medea comedy series is loved bt blacks because he is black, understands the black experience etc.etc.etc

I get ill watching people laugh at the stereotypes of themselves that they would rip me limb from limb if I did the exact same thing and attempted to call it entertainment.

wuth segregation officially dead more than 40 years black kids sit with just black kids and white kids just with white at 9 out  of ten lunch tables in my kids school .

it is the instinct jk mentioned but can still lead to hate.

[Stephen Torelli]

Hispanic and Latino normally refers to Spanish speaking people living in the USA although the interpretation varies. I think the wedge occurs because of the unknown, which creates fear. By the way, I also lived in Spain, during the Francisco Franco regime. Interesting topic, Thomas.

[jkdavies]

I guess it stems from using (back in Cro-Magnon & prehistoric times) our brains & experience to group things into "typicals" - helping us to decide quickly whether something/someone is dangerous or not; whether to flight or to fight; in times when hesitation could be fatal.

I just reread a fascinating book (Risk) which discussed how much our gut/emotions/pre-logical brain relied on this "rule of typical things" to make decisions, and how it still overrules our head/logical brain, and the limits/bad decisions the gut makes in a modern information overload society (i.e. the gut system was useful in pre-historic times but now leads us to fear things with a vanishingly low risk while ignoring high risk activities such as driving etc)

Anyway, extrapolating a little, I presume that labels as you mention are descriptions for what is going on in our guts, slightly modified by our heads. You can't say "spic" because of negative connotations, but you know you can say "Latino", so we accept that label until it is challenged. We are maybe not using them to drive wedges so much as to identify/align ourselves with our peer group.