fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3338 ]

[ SECRET POST #3338 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3338 ⌋

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 036 secrets from Secret Submission Post #477.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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He's Latino. You can't always immediately know someone's racial or ethnic background based on looks, which is why the whole idea of a strict white vs. "POC" binary is so fucking stupid in the first place.

Thank you.

I must admit that as a European I still find the whole concept of Latino's being POC curious....

And if the person in question were also European, your viewpoint would be relevant. But he's not, so you can't get mad at Americans for imposing their definition of POC on Europeans and then go imposing your own definition of POC on Americans.

I don't get mad, I just genuinely wasn't even aware they were seen as a separate race until a few years ago.

This is a prime example of Americans being American-centric about social issues.

(I'm America, FWIW.)

*American. Fine. The irony of my typo is not lost on me.

I honestly don't see what's confusing about it?

Like, when people in the Americas talk about "Latinos", that doesn't mean people from Spain and Portugal, it means people from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, mostly their former colonies in the Americas

The confusing thing for me is it being considered a different race, I guess.

As a fellow European, I agree. I think part of it is because (most?) Latinos are mixed race with both Amerindian and European and/or African roots.

Yeah, Latinos are descended from European + indigenous roots.

Like an anon said, it's because there's a heavy indigenous influence in Latino ethnic roots. There's also a very distinct cultural difference between Latinos (which are actually really diverse themselves) and white Americans (generally from the US/Canada).

I can see why it would be confusing; aren't the majority of people from Spain and Portugal white, essentially from the same general roots as all Europeans? (Honest question - not sure if there is a significant difference there compared to other European countries) People in the US who don't really think about racial backgrounds may assume Spanish people are more similar to Latino people than they are to other Europeans, actually. I realized a few years ago that that simply wasn't true. (It's one of those brain logic things; I equated Latino with Spanish-speaking rather than with Central/South American in particular.)

Sorry, going off on a tangent. It's an interesting subject to me though. ^^;

As a European, I would never call a person from Spain or Portugal PoC at least. In general, I don't think people from Europe think of race really, not in the same way as in the US at least. Not saying that we're race blind or anything, but it's more about culture and nationality I guess?

Like, I would say the Spaniard or the Southern European before I would mention anything about the colour of their skin. Same with saying the African or the Kenyan before saying black.

This is also reflected in how we view other Europeans too. As most people are what I assume Americans would call white you can't really speak of different races, so we have all our stereotypes and prejudices based on cultural things rather than racial.

(Obviously, while I say we, this is all my views and my impression of what people around me say, and not something that might go for all Europeans.)

Well, I mean, it's largely a cultural thing in Americ as well. And there's a lot of complexity underlying these things - you can talk at great length about what those categories mean, how they're constructed, and all of that. It's really not as simple as just looking at skin color. On the macro level, yes, you can divide everything into "white" and "POC", but that's something that itself is only possible for historical reasons.

Like, the concept of "white" isn't in the final analysis about the color of the skin. It's about who is seen as white, who is seen as normal, who is seen as part of the mainstream order, who is seen as belonging in the country - all of these kinds of things. You have groups of people who, at one time, were not seen as white, and who are now seen as white. Because it changes over time and because it's not just a question of skin tone. The thing that makes POC is an important category isn't because POC have dark skin; it's because they're the people who are routinely seen as other, as immigrants / foreigners / outsiders, as not being part of the natural order, as speaking differently, etc, etc, etc.

When people in America talk about Latinos being POC, they are not talking about Portuguese and Spanish as being intrinsically different from the experiences of Germans or Scots. Rather they're talking about the experience of people from Latin America, who when they come to America are seen as different, as foreign, as outsiders, as poor, and who are exploited and looked down on. That's the reality that's being referred to when Latinos are called POC. It has nothing at all to do with people in Portugal and Spain and yet no matter how many times people from America repeat this, Europeans keep remarking in bewildered wonderment that they simply don't understand this whole Latino thing.

Re: Mark Does Stuff

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-24 13:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Mark Does Stuff

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-24 14:50 (UTC) - Expand

No, that's exactly it...it's the Spanish-speaking combined with being at least partially descendants of the Spanish/Portugese who sailed there, combined with how they generally look. It's sort of how I would not consider Spanish or Italian people as a "separate" group, despite them generally being a bit more tan.

Obviously culturally they're different, but then culture is not necessarily something I equate with race, either, as I assume every country or region has their own culture anyway.

So basically I was seeing Latino people in American media, but never it never occurred to me to considered them as racially different from myself, which I think is interesting anyway, because it means our notions about race are at least partially culturally influenced.

Latino's are a mixed bag. Most of them have heritage from the native people in Latin America. But here in the united states even the ones with purely european ancestry get grouped in with them and discriminated against because of their shared language/culture.

latina here and here is my breakdown:

Latino its a description of ethnicity, not of race - but a lot of latino people are mixed race, sometimes called mestizo. There are also wholly not white latinos, usually indigenous or black. (black latinos are often left out of representation but are not a small group.)

The part where it gets weird is that white latinos are often still discriminated against in the United States. It creates a very weird situation where even if a latino is white, people won't consider them white, socially.

So basically its... not a clear line.

yeah I have a friend who is a mixed race child from a central american background (living in europe) and she's mostly amerindian/black. I never thought of her as a Latina and she just calls herself "brown" (or various hot beverage related terms) and used to mostly identify with black people. though reestablishing contact with her family made her reconsider her stance recently and I've heard her refer to herself as a latina at one point.
Here in europe the term "latina" is just so much identified with Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, all these very white, spanish looking singers or actresses, so I guess she never saw herself as one of them, and most others including me were the same way...

Yeah, that description makes a lot of sense (and your weird part does indeed sound weird to me, but I know that's how it works). Thank you!

Don't you mean Latin@?! (Sorry, ever since I saw that descriptor in one of his posts, its ridiculousness stuck with me.

it's even more feminine
see senator/senatrix

I don't unserstand your point? Latin@ is meant to be an all-inclusive phrase ("it has an o and an a!") so there'a LESS gendering going on. Senator/trix is the opposite.

how is it ridiculous?

Because @ is not actually "an o and an a".

Re: Mark Does Stuff

(Anonymous) - 2016-02-25 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

I don't even like to use the term POC

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