Latino Identity, Philosophy of

Overview

The earliest recorded use of the term Latino occurred in 1946, in Green Payton's book San Antonio: City in the Sun. The word came from the term latinoamericano, which means native or inhabitant of Latin America, but was used to refer to Latin American families living in the United States. In recent years this term has been at the center of a linguistic debate that attempts to answer the following question: Should we refer to this population as “Hispanics” or “Latinos”? Or is it more appropriate to use more specific labels, such as “Mexicans,” “Puerto Ricans,” or “Cubans”? The answer depends on various considerations such as whether the choice of label is consistent with a folk or scientific use, whether the aspects being indicated by the label “Latino” or “Hispanic” have a basis in lived experience, and whether the choice of label affects the way we approach ethical and political issues such as identity, education, affirmative action, reparations, and racism. Social theorists working within and across various disciplines such as philosophy, education, Latino/Latin American studies, African American studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and political science have offered different answers to these questions—in some cases for the respective groups they were studying, which can provide an important basis for comparison. Within Latino/Latin studies, the three most influential philosophical contributions to this query are: the familial–historical view put forth by Jorge J. E. Gracia, the public policy view espoused by Angelo Corlett, and the ethnoracial view proposed by Linda Martín Alcoff. Although these three scholars are philosophers, their work intersects with the aforementioned disciplines as well.

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