Latinas and Latinos

 If you really understand the word Hispanic, you will never use it again. Instead, you will want to use the culturally more correct words, Latinas and Latinos. Latinas and Latinos are appropriate for citizens of the American continent. Latinas & Latinos were here, like the indigenous people whom someone, whether it was or wasn't Columbus, dubbed Indians, for hundreds if not for thousands of years before a white European god ever set foot on these islands and this continent. Hispanic is a made up word created by the Nixon administration for the United States census because they couldn't understand how to classify the growing population of people from the south of the Rio Grande river who spoke Spanish and Portuguese as their native language. Latinas and Latinos belong to this hemisphere and deserve their own words to identify their languages, customs, music, and culture. The people of Spain are Spanish and the people of Portugal are Portuguese, not Hispanic, because that word is a fiction of Nixon. Even the words Latinas and Latinos are loaned words from the European language of Latin. The peoples called themselves by their own names, just like the first Americans called themselves Cherokee, Osage, and a thousand other of their own names. Here is why I use Latinas and Latinos. The Spanish language is patronymic, like all masculine leaning languages, and requires the masculine plural Latinos if any males are included. If 900 women are present with one male, it's Latinos. I have been a feminist since 1992 to atone for the life I lived as a misogynistic man before then. I put women first in my writing and speech so use Latinas and Latinos in that order. In English, we always say “Women and men” because they are two unique words. I can use hombres y mujeres, but I prefer the sound of Latinas and Latinos.