The USA was mostly colonized by Germans, Irish, and English. So skin tones are usually much lighter.
Central and South America had a larger indigenous population, and the Spanish/Portuguese colonizers had a bit darker skin, with much more frequent inter racial relationships.
However, the region in question is fucking huge. Don’t expect Mexicans, Columbians, Argentinians to all look the same.
Really Hispanic is more of a cultural category for all things with Spanish Legacy.
…my family ethnicity is mostly ulster scot, english/celt/french mutts who emigrated stateside before the american revolution; i’ve worked crews where i was the only english speaker and they all presumed i was argentinian…
It gets massively more complicated the more granular you get.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of distinct people groups in Latin and South America.
Many of them can directly tie their lineage back to the Maya, Aztecs, etc, and those societies themselves were amalgamations of many different people groups.
There are a ridiculous number of variations of Spanish that have different vocabulary, pronounciations rules, as a result of merging with local languages in different ways.
I would imagine the same is the case with Brazil and Portuguese. I don’t know any Portuguese, but I do know that I’ve heard Brazillians say they often have trouble understanding Portugal-Portuguese and visa versa… and Brazil is fucking huge.
… ‘Hispanic’ is roughly the American equivalent of ‘European’.
Oh, he’s European, he’s from Europe.
Oh, he’s Hispanic, he’s from south of the US.
Are proper Spaniards, people actually from Spain … Hispanic?
Uh well… according the the US government, basically, maybe. Are they brown? If yes, Hispanic.
I’ve met people from South America (Brazil specifically) that take great offense at being referred to as Hispanic and insist that they are in fact Latino.
Thank you for breaking this down. I was astonished sometime around the year 2000 when someone told me that Christina Aguilera is Latina. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, how? But her last name definitely sounds exotic so that’s fair 🤷🏼♀️
Would you consider a latino + white couple an interracial couple? The categories to select from are white, Asian, and black - after that there’s typically a question to identify if a person is Hispanic.
White and black is just a product of the USA slave system.
In Spanish territory they had:
Peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain)
Creoles (born in New Spain of Spanish parents)
Mestizos (born of Spanish and Indigenous Peoples parents)
Indigenous Peoples
Enslaved persons (brought from Africa and the Caribbean)
What is considered in a race changes over time. Hell, at times Jews and Irish weren’t considered white. Just dirty “others”. It’s only when the top caste hold on things is challenged do they let others join the ruling group.
The USA was mostly colonized by Germans, Irish, and English. So skin tones are usually much lighter.
Central and South America had a larger indigenous population, and the Spanish/Portuguese colonizers had a bit darker skin, with much more frequent inter racial relationships.
However, the region in question is fucking huge. Don’t expect Mexicans, Columbians, Argentinians to all look the same.
Really Hispanic is more of a cultural category for all things with Spanish Legacy.
…my family ethnicity is mostly ulster scot, english/celt/french mutts who emigrated stateside before the american revolution; i’ve worked crews where i was the only english speaker and they all presumed i was argentinian…
It gets massively more complicated the more granular you get.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of distinct people groups in Latin and South America.
Many of them can directly tie their lineage back to the Maya, Aztecs, etc, and those societies themselves were amalgamations of many different people groups.
There are a ridiculous number of variations of Spanish that have different vocabulary, pronounciations rules, as a result of merging with local languages in different ways.
I would imagine the same is the case with Brazil and Portuguese. I don’t know any Portuguese, but I do know that I’ve heard Brazillians say they often have trouble understanding Portugal-Portuguese and visa versa… and Brazil is fucking huge.
… ‘Hispanic’ is roughly the American equivalent of ‘European’.
Oh, he’s European, he’s from Europe.
Oh, he’s Hispanic, he’s from south of the US.
Are proper Spaniards, people actually from Spain … Hispanic?
Uh well… according the the US government, basically, maybe. Are they brown? If yes, Hispanic.
That is pretty much how it works.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/12/who-is-hispanic/
As with most race-based terms… it doesn’t actually make barely any sense.
I’ve met people from South America (Brazil specifically) that take great offense at being referred to as Hispanic and insist that they are in fact Latino.
This was also a long time ago
Thank you for breaking this down. I was astonished sometime around the year 2000 when someone told me that Christina Aguilera is Latina. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, how? But her last name definitely sounds exotic so that’s fair 🤷🏼♀️
Would you consider a latino + white couple an interracial couple? The categories to select from are white, Asian, and black - after that there’s typically a question to identify if a person is Hispanic.
White and black is just a product of the USA slave system.
In Spanish territory they had:
What is considered in a race changes over time. Hell, at times Jews and Irish weren’t considered white. Just dirty “others”. It’s only when the top caste hold on things is challenged do they let others join the ruling group.