Revise your styleguide: On usage of 'La Raza'

A little Mexico detour, because I'm wondering: Do news media outlets refer to the NAACP as “The Colored People” or the AJC as “The Jewish Committee”? No, they don’t. Yet while covering this month's NCLR conference in San Diego many outlets including the L.A. Times, Washington Post, and other generally reputable sources like RealClearPolitics felt it okay to refer to NCLR as "La Raza." This means that the mainstream press has adopted the semantics tricks of the right-wing propaganda machine to conflate together two very different things: NCLR -- the largest and most middle-of-the-road, big-money-backed, non-partisan Hispanic (their word) advocacy organization in the United States, and the codeword for reconquista hallucinations advocated only by an extremely small, extremely fringe, and extremely irrelevant batch of Chicano nationalists.

Doing this plays directly into the ignorant fears of paranoid immigrant-bashers. The double-standard is unacceptable. Because there are real dangers of coding and bigotry at play here: look at what just happened in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Another hate-fueled illegal immigrant lynching. Listen to the story at Free Speech Radio News. A week later, still no arrests.

We have opportunists like Lou Dobbs and the soft racism of politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger to thank for laying the rhetorical groundwork for such a climate. It needs to stop. "La Raza," once for all, is an historical term. Its use in the NCLR name merely reflects the period of the organization's founding: the 1960s. (Does anyone in the NAACP even utter the words "colored people" anymore?) It's a question ultimately of accuracy, as Carla Marrinuci blogs at SFGate.

On its end, NCLR generously takes the pains to answer its uninformed critics, but one needs only to look at the Mexican American Princes to understand just how "dangerous" are the ambitions of modern Latinos like the kind who gathered in San Diego last week to hear speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain.

* Above, Obama at the 2007 NCLR conference in Miami Beach.

Comments

[cindylu]

Thank you for this. I was pretty surprised to hear folks on NPR call NCLR "La Raza." It definitely made me think of the Minuteman and Lou Dobbs types who think we (Chican@s) are about to take up arms and reconquer Aztlan.

[Daniel H.]

Pretty awful. Thanks, Cindylu.

[Hugo]

I've been following your work for some time now. From the LA Urban "farmers" article, to the MAP article, to now this. You are, what I hope, to be the cusp of a new generation of Latino writers who understand the "Brown berets" and "La Raza" as a historical event and term, and not a burdensome legacy that Latinos today must carry forward.

Moreover, I've never liked "la raza." It's history is filled with exclusive connotations, so much so that it is written in el Plan de Santa Barbara. I've never used the word Chicano to refer to myself because it too has an exclusive past, where those who were not of Mexican-American ancestry were not considered Chicanos. Even to this day, this tendency is still around in many of the MeCHA chapters. But I suppose we still have a long time to go before Chicano is also considered passe'.

[Hector]

Daniel,

The thing is some Spanish-language media outlets, including Univision and La Opinioin also refer to the NCLR as "La Raza," or they spell out the complete name, which includes "La Raza." It's not just mainstream English language media.

Plus, if you type in "La Raza" on the NCLR's website archive, there's countless links to articles that refer to the group as "La Raza," in both Spanish and English language media; so the group doesn't seem to be discouraging the usage.

Hector

[Daniel H.]

That's funny Hector because I've been browsing the site and all I see on their pages is "NCLR" when the organization is referencing itself. And I don't doubt that the Spanish-language press has been using "la Raza" to refer to NCLR as that usage has totally permeated in the past couple years. I still remember, before Lou Dobbs came around, that NCLR was the most common usage when covering them. Look in the L.A. Times archives and see. "La Raza" as a referent to the group is totally new. It needs to stop.

[Joe]

"La Raza" is a racist organization that promotes only views from hate-fueled people who aren't Americans.Chicanos is another racist term to keep these hate-mongers seperated from us.What happened in Pennsylvania is not from so-called immigrant bashers or racist but from LEGAL CITIZENS who are tired of these illegal(law breakers for you Chicanos)immigrants coming here do other crimes sponge off of us and go back to their native countries when their is too much heat on them by their own actions.

[Gustavo Arellano]

You're sick, Joe: excusing the murder of a human as the frustrations of citizens over illegal immigrants. Goebbels would've LOVED you. Idiot.

[Daniel H.]

Oh no, the trolls have arrived. I'm leaving alone the comment from "Joe" above merely because it helps illustrate exactly my point: the merging in the eye of bigoted lunatics who troll online and attack immigrants on the streets of, again, two distinct things. In the end, working immigrants are the victims here. Let's get responsible, friends.

[Gustavo Arellano]

I say keep the trolls, Daniel: the world must know and ridicule hate!

[anisa]

This is for Hugo up there who wonders why the term "Chicano" excludes those not of Mexican-American descent. It's because Chicanos are of Mexican descent. Read on:

"The term seems to have come into first use in the fields of California in derision of the inability of native Nahuatl speakers from Morelos state to refer to themselves as "Mexicanos," and instead spoke of themselves as "Mesheecanos," in accordance with the pronunciation rules of their language (for additional details. An equivocal factor is that in vulgar Spanish it is common for Mexicans to use the "CH" conjunction in place of certain consonants in order to create a term of endearment. Whatever its origin, it was at first insulting to be identified by this name. The term was appropriated by Mexican-American activists who took part in the Brown Power movement of the 60s and 70s in the US southwest, and has now come into widespread usage. Among more "assimilated" Mexican-Americans, the term still retains an unsavory connotation, particularly because it is preferred by political activists and by those who seek to create a new and fresh identity for their culture rather than to subsume it blandly under the guise of any mainstream culture."

For additional information and resources on Chicano Studies, a good starting point is the Chicano-Latino Network (CLNET) accessible through the University of California.

www.azteca.net

[Hector]

Daniel, you're right in saying that NCLR does not refer to itself as "La Raza." What I'm saying is they archive stories, including neutral or positive ones about the organization that refer to it as "La Raza."

I've got to admit if you told me about the "NCLR," I wouldn't know what you're talking about; I have, however, heard about the National Council for La Raza.

And therein lies one reason why that term gets used, including by the mainstream media. When you mention the acronyms NASA, NASCAR, NCAA, NAACP, those conjure a mental image; "NCLR" doesn't and I bet I'm the rule rather than the exception, even among Latinos.

The National Council for La Raza sort of does; therefore, it's used, misused, and abused. Maybe the NCLR should change it's name; I realize it may be a logistical headache, but in the history of fresh starts, there's been more daunting ones.

As for getting the mainstream media to stop calling NCLR "La Raza" is as easy as pie; NCLR just needs to get on the phone or send emails or press releases to the MSM and voila! there you go. The media, on the whole, is amenable about these things, and is pretty sensitive to being perceived as racially insensitive.

But that's not going to stop a lot of other people from referring to the organization as "La Raza," and that'll especially be the case as long as it's the "NCLR" because NCLR is an acronym, and people have a habit of trying to find out what acronyms stand for--especially when it's a less than memorable acronym.

[Tania]

Daniel,

I totally agree with Hugo when he states : "You are, what I hope, to be the cusp of a new generation of Latino writers who understand the "Brown berets" and "La Raza" as a historical event and term, and not a burdensome legacy that Latinos today must carry forward."

I've been reading your blog too for about a year or so and continue to be amazed by the range of topics you cover. Thanks for being an effective voice for us young writers. You bring a lot of hope, especially with such topics covered on 'Intersections'.

T

[Daniel H.]

Thank you Tania! Thank you, Hugo. Thank you, de veras.

[Free soul]

People you have it all wrong NCLR is National Council of la Raza not for la raza gosh you really have to do some research before you say anything else that’s a false fact. Also NCLR is not a racist organization it’s not all about immigrants that are Mexican it’s for all type of immigrants that come to the United States. They talk about issues that affect the youth such as me and they talk about school and how to go to collage and get scholarships but it never talks about being races to others, because NCLR focuses on making leaders for the community.