Reply to Why is the term Hispanic used as an ethnic category instead of Mestizo?

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Reply to "Why is the term Hispanic used as an ethnic category instead of Mestizo?"

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, that's n interesting but loaded question (but you knew that). You are also generalizing in a way that kind of undermines your point. A lot of the brownness of the Caribbean, for example is African not indigenous.

I am not splitting hairs here--these differences lay at the heart of your question. When the term "Hispanic" was in vogue--which it isn't really anymore--people likes it because it unified people's of different ancestry through their language--Spanish. Brazilians were never included. For a while the term was used more specifically for US-born people of Latin American decent as opposed to "Latin Americans." Even when almost everyone said "hispanic"  academic circles lots of  people preferred "Latino" because it harkened back much farther... skipping the conquering nations AND because it included speakers of other languages like the Brazilians.

All that said, people don't use "mestizo" because... it is a totally dated term that was common at a time when the social hierarchies were fixed and being "mestizo" was inferior to "criollo" which was inferior to European and so on and so forth. Why would anyone bring back a term from that time? Bizarre. It sounds as dated as saying "Moor"... or actually, what it really sounds like is saying "why doesn't anybody say 'mulatto' anymore?"[/quote]

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