I think it's a silly term personally, because like the OP says it erases diversity. Everyone who is not of European ancestry is grouped under this umbrella term, and it comes off really Euro-centric in that you have the "white people" (who make up only like 1/5 of the world's population maximum btw) and then "everyone else".
@Dystopia - yes Hispanic is someone from a Spanish speaking country or background. There isn't a problem with the term per se, in describing the use of the Spanish language or cultures which have historically been heavily influenced by Spain. However, I do think the American classification of "Hispanic" is problematic, in that it's seen as a race.
You can be a a black Hispanic of African descent, an indigenous person of Latin America who may not even speak Spanish, mixed race or racially ambiguous, Brazilian and Portuguese speaking (therefore not "Hispanic", but America will be America). You can also be 100% of European ancestry and therefore "white" by definition, and Hispanic, as most of Argentina are. Yet America slaps this "Hispanic" label on all these groups of people as a "brown" group and that diversity is erased.
A hypothetical situation - Mexico is the dominant power of the world and the USA is poorer, so the migration happens the other way; migrants pour into Mexico from the US. Mexico labels all these migrants the same race, regardless of whether they're white, black, Asian or indigenous. That's what America does with people from Latin America.
@Dystopia - yes Hispanic is someone from a Spanish speaking country or background. There isn't a problem with the term per se, in describing the use of the Spanish language or cultures which have historically been heavily influenced by Spain. However, I do think the American classification of "Hispanic" is problematic, in that it's seen as a race.
You can be a a black Hispanic of African descent, an indigenous person of Latin America who may not even speak Spanish, mixed race or racially ambiguous, Brazilian and Portuguese speaking (therefore not "Hispanic", but America will be America). You can also be 100% of European ancestry and therefore "white" by definition, and Hispanic, as most of Argentina are. Yet America slaps this "Hispanic" label on all these groups of people as a "brown" group and that diversity is erased.
A hypothetical situation - Mexico is the dominant power of the world and the USA is poorer, so the migration happens the other way; migrants pour into Mexico from the US. Mexico labels all these migrants the same race, regardless of whether they're white, black, Asian or indigenous. That's what America does with people from Latin America.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
