Ethnic - Group Terms

Latin Americans and their descendants abroad have often thought about their identity as an ethnic group. In connection with this, a number of Latin American philosophers and social scientists working in the United States have independently questioned which term, if any, is adequate for reference (and self-reference) to that group. In their attempt to come up with correct answers, they have developed three clearly identifiable views. One is “nihilism,” a view sometimes favored by social scientists, according to which there is no good reason justifying the use of any ethnic-group term – not even those currently popular in the United States such as ‘Hispanic,’ and ‘Latino.’ But nihilism is not widely spread among Latin American philosophers, who have offered several arguments for one or the other of these common terms. As we shall see, proponents of this view have brought into the debate some political and moral arguments that will be discussed here. But there is also an alternative view according to which it doesn’t really matter which terms are used provided that they lack morally objectionable connotations. Not surprisingly, the issues at stake in these debates are of interest not only to Latin Americans and their descendants abroad, but more generally to anyone concerned with semantic and pragmatic analyses of terms for groups of people, including ethnic-, racial-, nationality-, and religious-group terms. By raising the issues about ethnic-group terms that will concern us here, Latin American philosophers can be said to have made an important contribution to the understanding of a sort of term largely ignored in traditional philosophical semantics and political philosophy. We’ll first consider the issue of whether ethnic-group terms should be considered names or predicates. Next, we’ll turn to their semantic properties, reconstructing some of the theories on their meaning and denotation recently advanced by Latin American philosophers. Finally we’ll look closely at normative issues involving the use of ethnic-group terms, and a recent controversy about the use of ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos’ that will bring into consideration the political and moral reasons mentioned above.