The New York Times and NPR Are Still Clueless About LatinosPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Communications/Media Studies, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2014-01-06 07:22Z by Steven |
The New York Times and NPR Are Still Clueless About Latinos
Alisa Valdes: Official Website for Writer and Producer Alisa Valdes
2014-01-03
More than a decade ago, when I worked as a staff writer for two of the nation’s top newspapers (The Boston Globe and the LA Times), I was often disappointed to see my fellow writers and editors using the words “Hispanic” or “Latino” as physical descriptors. They seemed to believe the US Census category of Hispanic/Latino to denote physical, “racial” characteristics, in spite of race itself being entirely a social construct with no basis in genetic or scientific fact, and in spite of the United States Census Bureau itself stating clearly that “Hispanics may be of any race.”
Put in simpler terms, Latin America is as “racially” or physically diverse as the United States as a whole. There is no single “type” or “race” of human being in Latin America, and as a result Latinos are “racially”/physically as diverse as the United States population as a whole — or as the entirety of humanity…
Read the entire article here.