Jackie Frank

Reading journal 2.3

Pigments of Our Imagination: The Racialization of the Hispanic-Latino Category

The main idea of the reading; “Pigments of Our Imagination: The Racialization of the

Hispanic-Latino Category” explains how there is such thing as race, but questions if Hispanic or

Latino is more of a category rather than its own race. In the author's words “Or is it mainly

administrative shorthand devised for statistical purposes; a one-size-fits-all label that subsumes

diverse peoples and identities?” , the author again states how the Hispanic-Latino heritage could

just be a label that throws all different cultures into one category. In a paragraph from the

reading, the author states how “ in keeping with the logic of this classification, census data on

Hispanics have been officially reported with a footnote indicating that "Hispanics may be of any

race."”, thus stating how Hispanic could be people of any race. The reading also suggests how

many different types of ethnicities that Hispanic falls under such as Spanish, Mexican,

Colombian and more which goes to show how the label ‘Hispanic’ is more of a categorized and

organizational method of typing rather than proving it to be a specific race. The reading also

states how race is a term that is malleable and easy to mix. To identify as Hispanic, Latino or

something else shows how race could be differentiated according to the person who decides

which category the belong under. A quote from the reading shows “In response to the first open-

ended question, 28 percent gave "Hispanic" as their race, another 4 percent said "Latino," and

still others offered a variety of mixed "Hispanic" or "Latino" answers; 13 percent said "Indio,"

and another 13 percent gave their Dominican nationality as their race. Of all respondents, only

6.6 percent chose "black" and 3.8 percent "white."”. This shows the statistics of the mix of what
people have identified themselves as according to the racial options given to the by The United

States of America. We have given categories to people that not only confuse White Americans

but also have to make Latino/Hispanic Americans choose which they fall under based on ethnic

background. Some points I found interesting were how diverse ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’ are in

comparison to the Caucasian race. I also thought how interesting it was that families trace their

ethnicities back many years to figure out who they are racially. Lastly, I thought it was intriguing

how various groups pick categories for their ethnicities based on how other people see them, for

example if someone was called a Latino of the streets but they actually knew what race they

were, they would check Latino on a list anyway because that is how people perceive them.