Same with "white" really. For a long time, when filling out "ethnicity" fields on forms, I put down "(old country name)" as that's where my people came from, way back. (There's a reason I use "Boris" as a moniker. 1/8 the syllables of the real family name, and three more vowels.) That ... generally did not go well. But the same arguments apply, do they not?
In reality, of course, I identify as "American." Or perhaps "American with an unpronounceable last name" on sillier days.
Yesterday I saw a democratic pundit commenting that one of the things that messed up the Democrats is the absurd word "latinx".
When I pronounce that (which is rarely) I always sound it as "latinks" to mock the whole thing. I also always stress that the only people who use that "word" are linguistic illiterates, and in particular people who have no understanding of the Spanish language. (Or any other of the many world languages that have "grammatical gender" -- such as my native language Dutch.)
Neighbors are Puerto Rican and he's a cop. There are times they arrest someone and even he can't understand their Spanish, so he'll actually call his wife and tell her to listen and translate. She'll be like, that's a Salvadorian accent, I hate those bastards, or that sounds like a witch from Guatemala I used to know, she's evil beyond words. Then she comes next door and dishes out the scoop to my wife.
So yeah, there's a whole barrel of stuff going on down there we are blissfully ignorant about.
I wonder how many Mexicans speak Portuguese. Heheheheh
Same with "white" really. For a long time, when filling out "ethnicity" fields on forms, I put down "(old country name)" as that's where my people came from, way back. (There's a reason I use "Boris" as a moniker. 1/8 the syllables of the real family name, and three more vowels.) That ... generally did not go well. But the same arguments apply, do they not?
In reality, of course, I identify as "American." Or perhaps "American with an unpronounceable last name" on sillier days.
Yesterday I saw a democratic pundit commenting that one of the things that messed up the Democrats is the absurd word "latinx".
When I pronounce that (which is rarely) I always sound it as "latinks" to mock the whole thing. I also always stress that the only people who use that "word" are linguistic illiterates, and in particular people who have no understanding of the Spanish language. (Or any other of the many world languages that have "grammatical gender" -- such as my native language Dutch.)
Traveling abroad and making those stereotypes and assumptions sounds like a really good way to get oneself STABBED.
Neighbors are Puerto Rican and he's a cop. There are times they arrest someone and even he can't understand their Spanish, so he'll actually call his wife and tell her to listen and translate. She'll be like, that's a Salvadorian accent, I hate those bastards, or that sounds like a witch from Guatemala I used to know, she's evil beyond words. Then she comes next door and dishes out the scoop to my wife.
So yeah, there's a whole barrel of stuff going on down there we are blissfully ignorant about.