My mom moved to New Orleans when she was seven. Having grown up in Guatemala, she struggled with learning English at her elementary school. She also struggled with her identity; she was frequently called la canche by the other Guatemalan kids — a slang term for someone with blond hair and blue eyes. My mom has neither, but the point was the same: She was different.
As a White Latino, I, too, have a different lived experience from others who share my ethnic identity. When I introduce myself to someone, I’m initially perceived as White, which affords me certain advantages in the United States today, where 62% of Hispanic adults report that having a darker skin color hurts their ability to get ahead. But at the same time, I’m constantly fighting to prove my Latinidad.
Latinidad refers to the shared cultural identity and heritage that connects people of Latin American descent. It encompasses a rich blend of traditions, languages, histories, and experiences that define what it means to be Latino. The most important thing to understand about Latinidad is that it doesn’t condense those similarities into any single defining characteristic, but rather celebrates the diversity of distinct Latino experiences.
But this isn’t always recognized. This prevalent American view of Latino as solely a racial construct has created a challenging dynamic between my ethnic and racial identity. Race is based on an arbitrary basis of skin color and other physical features, whereas ethnicity relates to a shared culture, language, history, and set of traditions. Because my appearance doesn’t fit the racial mold that many mistakenly tie to Latinidad, I’m constantly fighting to prove myself as a “real Latino,” whether through explaining my family history or my ability to speak Spanish.
A new definition of Latinidad has emerged alongside a recent change to the census, bringing the discussion of Latino identity into the national spotlight. Hispanic or Latino will be listed as “one race/ethnicity category, and people of Middle Eastern or North African descent will have their own checkbox under new race and ethnicity standards adopted by the Biden administration.”
Previously, the census asked respondents if they identified ethnically as Hispanic or Latino, followed by a separate question on race with options including White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, and “Some Other Race.” In 2020, an estimated 94% of “Some Other Race” indications came from Latinos, making it difficult to accurately determine the racial composition of the Latino population. This change aims to lower the percentage of Latinos who check the S.O.R. box and yield “a more accurate portrait of how people report their Hispanic origin and race.”
For the Mestizo-Latino majority, the updated census offers a much-needed option for answering the race question, promising more accurate data that better reflects their identity. However, not all Latinos feel the same way. This change has revealed conflicts within Latino communities, underscoring the pluralistic nature of Latino identity that requires historical context to fully understand.
The partial origins of this complexity lie in the European colonization that introduced the Casta system into the lives of Spanish, Indigenous, and enslaved people in 16th-century Spanish colonies. In an effort to separate the competing racial identities, this system ranked individuals based on their level of “Spanish purity.” Although the system officially lost its legal relevance in the mid-19th century, its social and cultural influence remains.
For instance, Argentina has traditionally embraced a White European self-image, creating a racial profile that many Argentinians feel “distinguishes their country from the rest of Latin America even today.” This historical preference for a homogeneous identity led to deliberate efforts by the government to erase Argentina’s rich Black heritage from its cultural fabric. In 1816, Africans and Afro-descendants accounted for 30% of the population of Buenos Aires.
However, from the end of the 19th century, Argentina’s census bureau stopped collecting racial information, effectively erasing the visibility of these populations. It wasn’t until 2010 that the census once again included an option for Argentinians to self-identify as Afro-Argentine. Although this inclusion was important, it was only applied to “one in every ten households,” leading to the incorrect conclusion that just half a percent of the population self-identify this way. University of Buenos Aires lecturer Patricia Gomes, an Afro-Argentine researcher who uncovered this issue, concluded that census data was manipulated to erase these populations “first from the statistics,” and then “from the history books.”
This “whitening” process represents the danger of combining Latinidad with a single racial story. As Victor Ramos, president of the anti-discrimination SOS Internacional, put it, “in Argentina, there is no racism because there are no blacks.” His statement underscores the extent to which the erasure and marginalization of Black and indigenous populations have been internalized, resulting in a national narrative that minimizes their existence and contributions to Argentine society.
The racial diversity and systemic racism present within the Latino community highlight that classifying “Latino” as solely a race can’t possibly represent everyone’s ethnological narrative. Therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge that “Latino” can also encompass a shared ethnic identity that is separate from one’s racial identity. While the recent U.S. census revision benefits Latino groups who feel they can tie their racial and ethnic identity together, opposition from Afro-Latino communities has demonstrated that there is no single answer that fits all.
In response to the announcement, several Afro-Latino organizations have argued that a combined race-and-ethnicity question would further marginalize Latinos of African descent. Nancy López, an Afro-Dominican sociologist at the University of New Mexico, told the New Yorker that the change would assert Latinidad as a monolith, arguing that “to say otherwise is to eradicate our ability to document inequities based on what you look like.”
These updates won’t be reflected in the census until the 2030 survey, but the debate is crucial for everyone to understand, particularly those who aren’t Latino. When discussing my identity with others, it’s impossible not to use both “White” and “Latino.” As “Let’s Talk Race” creator Nicholle Lamartina Palacios claims, combining the terms is like an oxymoron. “Latino” often connotes “marginalization and repression,” while “White” is linked to “control and domination.”
It’s important to recognize that my lived experience as a White Latino differs from that of other Latinos, despite our shared language and cultural identity, and from that of other White people, even though we share the same skin color. Ultimately, both “White” and “Latino” are imagined concepts that reflect broader societal frameworks rather than fixed truths. Navigating Latinidad involves recognizing that these terms don’t define me; instead, I determine how they play into my personal story.There is no perfect “Latino” question for the census. While any change could favor certain Latino communities, there will inevitably be others that are disadvantaged by an adjustment. Latinidad is far too important a topic to be oversimplified, so let’s not turn it into a single story that defines everybody. Instead, we must embrace the complexity of Latinidad so we can best recognize all of the varied experiences that fall under the “Latino” umbrella.
