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