Mother Talkers

View Story | 48 comments

  • what is hispanic? (0 / 0)

    Nobody knows.  It's a huge headache for demographers and epidemiologists trying to deal with data, because everybody checks the box using their own definition.  Sometimes multiple boxes, sometimes not.  The original definition is hardly relevant if people filling out forms don't use it.  And I'm a geneticist - don't even get me started on that problem.  Hispanic/latino and/or amerindian ends up being understudied and misrepresented as a result.

    I know two cute little girls who are the bilingual, jewish, blond daughters of two well-off doctors.  I don't think this exactly fits the stereotypes some white people hold, but they are in fact hispanic.

    • Were they Sephardic Jews? (0 / 0)

      I don't even know about being Hispanic at all. My Mom was Mrs. Santos, and she was a petite redhead with freckles. Cuban people always thought she was Cuban. And I think my maiden name in this form is actually Portuguese? It was a shortened version of our original last name.

      But yeah, my Dad's culture was a blend of European Spanish, Native Indians and a smattering of other cultures/races. In our family we actually had a grandmother who was Arabic of some sort? We realized this through geneaology and some intact Arabic words that had been passed down through our family. Crazy...

      • nope (0 / 0)

        They're Mexicans (on the mom's side) of Ashkenazi descent, classmates of my boys.  Our two families nicely illustrate how the combination of race, language, religion, and heritage all work together to obscure the definition of hispanic.

        My dark skinned son wears his central american heritage on his face, but though everyone sees him as latino he's being raised in an anglo household.  His white classmate is being raised in a spanish speaking family that values and preserves its Mexican heritage.  They're both hispanic, but about the only thing they share in common is the Jewish part.  Oh, wait . . .

        • I have a good friend (0 / 0)

          who is Ashekenazi Jewish, but his Dad "Carlos" relocated to South America in the 40's. He was originally Karl I believe, so anyhow the whole family speaks Spanish, is totally assimilated into the culture etc. Its awesome!

          But he told me that Jews from Spain (?) are Sephardic... yeah I have no idea, but Jewish cultural/racial/religious identity seems as complicated to me as defining the term "hispanic"! And he gets a two for one deal!!

View Story | 48 comments