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Comment by galactus | Hacker News Reader

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galactus·

what is a "true hispanic"?

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Peoples mixed with Spaniards. The "span" part of Hispanic.

Huh?

Hispanic means a lot of different things in a lot of different places. The root word comes from Hispania, which was the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula. That includes Portugal, so some people consider Portuguese descendants to be Hispanics, although most don't.

However, (AFAICT) nobody considers Hispanic to be "mixed" peoples; most include mixed peoples in the category but there are some who only use the term to refer to white peoples in Spanish Central & South America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic

from your link:

> The term "Hispanic" broadly refers to the culture, peoples, or nations with a historical link to Spain.

I guess that was what I was getting at, but I do take your point that it is not as cut-and-dry as my short remark made it seem. So today I have learned something new to me.

Hispania is the Latin name for the Iberian Peninsula (Spain + Portugal).

However, the term Hispanic usually refers to people from Spanish speking countries in the Americas (ie excluding Brazil, Guyana, Belize, etc), regardless of race.

It's nothing. Americans spent "Native American" on their tribes and they don't want to include the other native American tribes under the same label.

"Hispanic" is a useless label because then you subdivide into "non-white hispanic" and "white hispanic" at which point it's just "Native American" and "Caucasian". Not to mention that a person who is "non-white hispanic" has no ties with Spain and all ties with Native Americans.

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