Poll for Hispanic/Latino ILXors: do you prefer "Hispanic" vs. "Latino"?

further to my joke answer itt

I have generally avoided thinking too much about my own race as such, partly because I can and partly because I never had a great sense of it. When it comes to questionnaires I have identified variously as white, white (other), mixed race (other), Hispanic (other) and Other (please state); when people ask, I say british-mexican, half-mexican or sometimes mexican.

My mother's white, my dad is black (my dad is not genetically related to me in case that needed explaining). My sister is mixed white/black and has never described herself (in questionnaires or otherwise) as anything other than "mixed race" even though she has at times had lighter skin than mine, it just doesn't seem as much of an option. ☑ your privilege I guess. hispanic/latino is not really a meaningful category over here and I've only started asserting it in the last 5 years ago, since going back to mexico and reconnecting with mi familia (I've never had much of a connection with j0rge, my biological father, and still don't, but adore the rest). Race is a super present and super abstracted thing basically since childhood, and one that has had almost no effect on the way I personally move through things.

also I act white

http://i.imgur.com/OkMzncE.gif

hispanic/latin@s here - do you speak spanish? did you speak it growing up? if you don't speak it, how do you feel about that?

never saw that wins post before. it's great!

i speak a low to moderate amount. my dad is a native speaker but he worked all the time and didn't spend much time with us let alone speak spanish with us. my mom never learned it and she did most of the child-rearing so we spoke english in the house. all my spanish skills are from my own work learning in it school or during the time i've spent in latin america.

i strongly identify as hispanic/latino but always have felt that the gringo in me will always be very present since i don't speak fluently, and i've always felt a little self-conscious about this spending time with fluent speakers. it is also weird b/c i speak way more spanish than any of my siblings but even though i'm far from fluent they all think "marcos speaks fluent spanish", so they give me credit that i don't really deserve, and i feel kind of like i'm defrauding them in that regard even though i never claim to be fluent. i also really resent my dad that he could've given us the gift of a language but was otherwise too busy.

yes i love that wins post

Spanish was my first language, insisted on by my fluent English-speaking parents, the children of Cuban exiles whose adolescence they spent in a Miami that was closer to Birmingham in racial attitudes but with sparkling beaches. Speaking Spanglish was hell on my Spanish though. "Are we going to la bodega?" sounds cute but the shift in accents wrecks wholly Spanish sentences. I can still read it well but slowly. My mouth often outpaces my brain though when forced to hold whole conversations in Spanish: the soul is willing, the flesh weak.

I speak Spanish but my dad didn't raise us to speak it, because my mother is US born and he wanted his children to be ~real Americans~. but I heard him speaking Spanish to his family all the time & so acquired a latent capacity to speak it. so when I started studying it in middle school I was pretty fluent super fast. in particular I have a good accent, good enough to pass in Latin America & Spain (as a Latin American obv).

it's weird for me right now because now I speak French on a daily basis (these days more than English) and so my Spanish is in flux, becoming more Spanglais (not Spanglish). but my Spanish grammar is improving, even if I end up slipping between Spanish and French words too often.

the little anglo-platines in my family are oddly reluctant to speak spanish though they seem to understand it well enough

i expect they will be more or less fluent by adolescence

My mom is from Mexico, my dad was white. Growing up, my mom spoke mostly Spanish to my brother and me, and we spoke only English to her. I understand Spanish pretty much perfectly, though non-Mexican Spanish trips me up sometimes. Speaking it is harder than understanding it spoken, reading it is a little harder and slower than that, and writing it is just a problem.

My family lived in Mexico briefly when my brother was about 4 years old and he was very capably bilingual during that time. But now I can speak it far better than he can for some reason.

My dad never learned Spanish and he didn't like being excluded, so he discouraged its being spoken around him. Since my dad died, my brother and I have started using a little Spanglish with my mom, which is cool, but it would feel really weird and embarrassing to speak to her in whole sentences in Spanish.

hispanic/latin@s here - do you speak spanish? did you speak it growing up? if you don't speak it, how do you feel about that?

― marcos, Tuesday, March 24, 2015 9:58 AM (5 hours ago)

small amount of spanish, but didn't speak it growing up. frequently told 'you're basically white' and i wish i could speak better so i could rail on haterz in a tongue faster and more badass than english.

Speak, read (fluently) and write it (poorly). My parents were sticklers for Spanish at home, English outside. Turned out ok and it's helped me pick up French and a bit of Italian more easily than if I had gone from English to those languages.

about the origin of the "hispanic" box on the census, plus bonus census PSAs featuring ChiChi Rodriguez, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, y Big Bird!
http://latinousa.org/2015/05/22/the-invention-of-hispanics/

lol my therapist sometimes uses "latin" and it bothers me a little but is a sweet guy so i don't call him out on it. otherwise i hate "latin" ugh