What does Latino mean?

The term "latino" is something that has become more and more prevalent these days mostly because of not only what is going on in the political sphere due to the issue of illegal immigration, but because of the tremendous growth in this group's population over the past decade. As a matter of fact "Latinos" have surpassed blacks as the biggest minority group in America, and many politicians are looking to appeal to this group of voters for the upcoming elections. But the thing about "Latino" is that we still have not yet figured out how the classify this new group. Not all "latinos" are the same for one, because they come from a variety of countries which may include Mexico, the Domincan Republic, Panama and a whole list of others. Furthermore given the history of these places, "latino" is not a race although we seem to refer to it as some sort of racial category. In these countries just like in the U.S., there are whites, black, and there are also natives and people with a mixed background. So not only are these people different culturally, they are also a mixed bag racially but we have decided to group them together "as latino" because they come from a Spanish speaking country. The problem with this is that Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz are clearly not the same race, but the real question then becomes when they have children and grandchildren that are 3rd generation americans, that no longer speak spanish and know nothing of their country of origin, are those kids still latino, or are they now white and black? Are we later on going to start funneling latinos into the white or black groups?

This is the problem in the national discourse, talking about a group that has no real racial identity and juxtaposing that group along side actual racial groups. We seem to have this confusion with racial identification a lot these days in our society notably with bi-racial individuals, who are still considered black, but hey 80% of blacks in the country have white blood anyway (you know, the whole slavery thing), and also when talking about Muslims when we really mean Arabs and vice versa, here we confuse religion and race. Identity and heritage are important aspects of who someone is. They help us figure out who we are and how we fit in the grand scheme of things, but we've gone so far in our social construction of race that we don't even know who and what's what anymore. That is why this influx of latinos might be a good thing, it could force us to take a second look at our stringent racial classifications and help us move past these divisions that we've created, helping us realize that race and culture are not the same thing.... or at the very least we'll finally have a good soccer team. OLE OLE OLE OLE!!!!