Boy, am I confused.<p>AP uses "Hispanic" to refer to people of Spanish, Caribbean, Mexican and some Latin American descents. At my paper, however, our executive editor has decreed that "Hispanic" is a stupid and ignorant way to describe these folks, and that we should substitute "Latino" wherever possible.<p>This week, however, I, like many editors of wire copy, sifted through the daily AP stories moving on the National Council of La Raza convention, which has been dealing with politically charged Hispanic/Latino issues. I have been dutifully substituting "Latino" for "Hispanic" outside of quoted material, as per my editor's instructions, which worked well as long as the quotes from the La Raza folks used the term "Latino" as well -- which they did until last night.<p>*****<p>Example No. 1:<p>By DEBORAH KONG, AP Minority Issues Writer <p>MIAMI - A new report estimates the number of Hispanics casting ballots could increase from more than 5.7 million in 2000 to at least 7.9 million in 2004, but claims politicians who are courting Hispanics are doing so in mostly superficial ways. <p>The report, to be released Wednesday at the National Council of La Raza's annual conference, said politicians are delivering speeches in Spanish or eating at Mexican restaurants but they have failed to focus on issues that concern Hispanics. <p>"We are seeing a lot of people talking about paying attention to Latinos. We want to make clear that it's not just about catching our eye," said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, one of the authors of the report. "It's about substantive policies." <p>*****<p>Then I came across a story about La Raza in which a high-ranking official from that group was quoted at length using the term "Hispanic." It seemed embarrassing and a bit disengenuous to substitute the reporter's use of "Hispanic" for "Latino" when a presumably politically sensitive member of said ethnic group is using the OTHER term. <p>*****<p>Example No. 2:<p>La Raza offers 'voice,' vision
Hispanic group shares its goals at conference in Miami Beach
By CARA BUCKLEY
cbuckley@herald.com<p>Because la raza translates to ''race,'' a loaded term no matter how you slice it, Lisa Navarrete has spent long hours defending the name of the organization she represents.<p>'People think we have this intensely radical agenda, that we're supremacists because we have the word `race' in our name,'' said Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza.<p>''We want kids to have a better education,'' she said. ``We want people to have jobs, and access to affordable housing. We want Hispanics to have a voice in the political process. That is our stunningly radical agenda.''<p>*****

I pointed this out to my editor, who merely shrugged and said, "Well, that's his choice what he wants to say in his quotes. If he wants to look out of step, that's his lookout." (I should hasten to add that the editor is white, but grew up in a predominantly Hispanic/Latino area of Southern California and is married to a Guatemalan woman. Side note -- is SHE Hispanic by AP definition???)<p>Like I said, I'm confused. If some members of that ethnic group consider "Hispanic" to be a bad, incorrect, outdated or offensive term, akin to "mankind" or "colored" or "Negro" -- and I'm told that's the case in some circles because the term comes from Columbus, who named the first major land mass in the "New World" on which he landed "Hispaniola," and because revisionist history has shown Columbus to be slave-trading, native-slaughtering Eurotrash -- then shouldn't "Latino" be just as offensive for giving a gender preference to a catch-all term for an ethnic group? (Males are "Latino" and females are "Latina.")<p>I bring this up now and again, and people just shrug. One co-worker who has worked in both Texas and the Northeast said that it's a geographic distinction -- in Texas, "they" prefer the term "Hispanic," while "Latino" is more dominant in New England.<p>Can anybody here shed any light on this? What's "right?" What's "appropriate?" What's "sensitive"? <p>Are the terms pragmatically interchangeable? (An argument I found to buttress that supposition comes from La Raza's Web site, which states that "Some of NCLR’s major reports include a statistical analysis on the educational status of Hispanics titled "Latino Education Status and Prospects: State of Hispanic America 1998." <p>What's the rationale behind AP's style decision? <p>What does your own paper do in this case, and what do you believe your paper SHOULD do?<p>Signed, Politically Paralyzed in Port Angeles

I am not sure if this help or will confuse you more, but the following is a "usage note" from the online version of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (www.dictionary.com):<p>"Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for 'Spain,' has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latino -- which in Spanish means 'Latin' but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano -- refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word.<p>"A more important distinction concerns the sociopolitical rift that has opened between Latino and Hispanic in American usage. For a certain segment of the Spanish-speaking population, Latino is a term of ethnic pride and Hispanic a label that borders on the offensive. According to this view, Hispanic lacks the authenticity and cultural resonance of Latino, with its Spanish sound and its ability to show the feminine form Latina when used of women. Furthermore, Hispanic -- the term used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other government agencies -- is said to bear the stamp of an Anglo establishment far removed from the concerns of the Spanish-speaking community. While these views are strongly held by some, they are by no means universal, and the division in usage seems as related to geography as it is to politics, with Latino widely preferred in California and Hispanic the more usual term in Florida and Texas. Even in these regions, however, usage is often mixed, and it is not uncommon to find both terms used by the same writer or speaker."

Jim Thomsen asked:
Are the terms pragmatically interchangeable? (An argument I found to buttress that supposition comes from La Raza's Web site, which states that "Some of NCLR’s major reports include a statistical analysis on the educational status of Hispanics titled "Latino Education Status and Prospects: State of Hispanic America 1998." <p>Here at U.S. News, yes, they are interchangeable, with one exception. The stylebook entry for Hispanic says it's "acceptable as a noun and an adjective referring to people tracing their descent to Latin America, Spain, or Portugal...." Under Latino, it says, "acceptable as a noun and adjective for people of Spanish-speaking or Latin Aemrican descent. When deciding whether to apply Latino, Hispanic, or Chicano to particular individuals or groups, take personal preference into account."<p>For your purposes in dealing with La Raza's convention, I'd say they're interchangeable. The distinction seems necessary only if we're talking about the Portuguese. My own tendency is to use Hispanic for Spaniards as well. Nobody's complained yet! :)<p>[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: SusanV ]</p>

The American Heritage entry seems to imply political correctness plays a part ("For a certain segment of the Spanish-speaking population, Latino is a term of ethnic pride and Hispanic a label that borders on the offensive.") If that's the case, AP generally avoids politically correct neologisms, as when it points out that "African" is not a synonym for "black" as commonly used in "African-American."<p>(Then again, I don't know how trustworthy the American Heritage info can be, considering that its writer actually used the phrase "more exclusively.")<p>My paper has no set style but leans toward "Latino," probably for that ethnic-sensitivity reason.<p>My personal take? The biggest difference I see is that "Hispanic" is an English word, Latino(-a) a Spanish one. Practically every place/ethnicity name in English is a different word from what the people of that place/ethnicity use in their language, and I haven't seen serious efforts to change that in any other cases besides "Latino" -- for example, there's no stampede in the media to return to referring to the land of my ancestors as Cymru in print. (But that's probably because Welsh-Americans haven't formed lobbying groups to accuse users of the word "Wales" of being insensitive bigots.) So I tend to think of people who insist on "Latino" as being the oversensitive type; there's nothing inherently offensive about "Hispanic."