News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative. Parent comment

Re:Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative by rsj_hn on Monday December 19, 2022 @05:09AM (#34050422)
Argentina, for example, has a huge population of those from Italy. Brazil from Portugal, Mexico and central America from Spain. This is why you generally don't want to call an Argentine or Brazilian "Hispanic".

My guess as to why we call the continent "Latin America" is because for a long time Argentina dominated, being one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, even giving birth to the expression "As rich as an Argentine". It is is still very important even today, but I don't want to get my Brazilian friends upset with me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative by umanwizard on Monday December 19, 2022 @05:13AM (#34050455)
In order to interpret this stuff correctly you have to understand that we’re talking about ethnic/cultural groups in the US, not in Latin America.

There are not many Argentines in the US, so the distinction rarely comes up.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative by rsj_hn on Monday December 19, 2022 @05:20AM (#34050493)
If you want to know why, in the US, we call someone an "X-American", whether that is a German-American, Latin-American, Hispanic-American, African-American, then you need to know where these terms come from. Words always have a historical, rather than a logical, explanation.
[ Parent | on HN ]