Quote:
Originally Posted by liat91
I hear a lot about blonde hair blue eyed people in Latin America. Maybe we should give it a rest. Even when people think of Greece, they don’t envision blond hair and blue eyes. Latin America is an overwhelmingly mixed geographical region. Of the minority that would be considered “white”, blond hair etc would be rare. IMO, if one might consider Turkish/Armenian people to be on the borderline of white, Latin America has about 80 million. Of that, probably 5% have blond hair and blue eyes. In the big picture, no one really cares if they exist there, because they are not wholly representative of the region in any way.
As far as the Hispanic category in the census. It’s pointless. Might as well have categories for every language group origin. The problem is with Hispanic people’s tendency to stretch whiteness a little to much, which would skew the results. They need to realize, there’s nothing wrong with being part black or part native, even if you could pass otherwise by the slimmest margins.
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Well, in general one doesn't have to be 'blond, blue eyed' to be considered white - most North Americans from European descend would not even qualify then. I guess that term is loosely used to describe 'white', as opposed to 'mixed white'.
Regardless of the nuances or inaccuracies of that term, yes, in Latin America there was far more mixing than in North America. I suspect one of the reasons was that in the 1500's, the 'conquistadors' from the Iberian peninsula were men who came alone. While in North America, mass immigration from Europe occured centuries later consisting of men and women, families with children, etc.
In addition, in Latin America there were far more indigenous people than in North America. For instance, the Inca empire in South America was thought to have had at its peak 12 million people. Those were highly sophisticated cultures, that have left a huge architectural and historical legacy. By comparison, the mostly nomadic indigenous tribes in North America did not have the same 'presence' in population and cultural legacy. Mixing with Europeans was more of a sporadic than a common occurrence.
You likely don't know it, but Latin American societies are also very segregated, racially and economically. The part of the population with the highest level of European ancestry are always the wealthy elite. The only exception is probably Argentina, which was after the US and Canada the country in the Americas that received the largest levels of European immigration. So there you would find mostly 'whites' in all levels of society. Take a trip to Buenos Aires - you would think you have landed somewhere in Europe.
So, just because your day-to-day contact in the US is with the poorer immigrants (or their descendants) from Latin America, doesn't mean that is the whole picture. It just shows you that the lack of knowledge and a global view (including international travel) gives you a very limited understanding of reality.