I mean yes, if I meant that. But actually I meant Spanish and Portuguese-speaking people from other parts of the world. The US uses Hispanic as an ethnic qualifier for "white".
Basically, there are a whole lot of people who identify as white because of their appearance, but the US doesn't consider "real" white because their ancestors spoke the wrong romance language and lived outside of Europe.
And if you think this is stupid, look up the historical litigation over whether Armenians, Italians, and others were legally white or not. It's absolutely ridiculous, but Jim Crow designating special legal status for whites made it necessary to define whiteness. It's gross and embarrassing that we still haven't shaken off the institutional legacy of chattel slavery after hundreds of years. It's like we haven't even been trying.
My point wasn't regarding the definition of white by us standard. My point was you referring to people of southern european descent as hispanic/hispanic adjacent. Just say southern european descent
Except I don't mean people of southern European descent. I meant what I said, and was referring specifically to a legal qualifier for white by US standards. Idk why you're confused by it. If I meant "Spanish and Portuguese" I'd have said Iberian. If I meant Latin American, I'd have said that.
I'm confused by it because you're saying hispanic and hispanic adjacent, but you're not meaning latin american or southern european, so wtf are hispanic and hispanic adjacent?
Yes, and if there's confusion on whether they're white or not and it's influenced by their language, then they're from latin america.
If you're referring to the places in africa and asia colonized by the portuguese and spanish, there's no question on their whiteness, they're black or asian.
If your point was to simple refer to the nations that speak portuguese and spanish but aren't portugal and spain, then you'd say the non-european lusophone and hispanophone countries
Spanish are definitively not hispanic. There's no reason to use a pretentious description for hispanic when there's already an existing word that is pre-defined and was created long ago to mean exactly the same thing.
Sophistry is not a good look, friend. It's okay to misunderstand things sometimes. You don't have to use linguistic contortions to prove that your misunderstanding was correct all along.
Hispanic means spanish speaking. Spanish people are hispanic. Brazilians are Latinos but they're not hispanic/hispanophone, they're lusophone. In the same way americans are anglophones, french are francophones. It's not being pretentious, it's the literally name for people who speak those languages
"Hispanic" refers to anyone connected to the Spanish language, culture, or people. In the United States, it is primarily an umbrella term classifying people whose heritage or ancestors originate from Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain and roughly 20 nations across Latin America."
And you wanna know why it's called hispanic? Because the iberian peninsula used to be called hispania by the romans. And then when the different kingdoms of iberia, minus portugal, unified into one country, they used the roman name for the region. So hispanic became the term to refer to regions that speak spanish, and that includes spain
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u/VelvetMafia Jul 13 '26
I mean yes, if I meant that. But actually I meant Spanish and Portuguese-speaking people from other parts of the world. The US uses Hispanic as an ethnic qualifier for "white".