For 20 years, people of varying degrees of Spanish descent have had to base their identity on a Scantron bubble.
In 1980, the U.S. Census, in an effort to find an umbrella word for a rapidly growing demographic, chose the word Hispanic as a classification to include any person who is of Spanish-speaking descent.
Now, the word defines 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, 25.3 percent of Arizona's population and 11.2 percent of ASU at the Tempe campus' student body, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 report and the 2004 ASU Minority Review.
Although the word Hispanic is only a term, some argue the word lumps together many diverse cultures.
Hispanic - literally meaning persons from Spanish-speaking counties - is only used for people from countries that have a strong connection to Spain. Brazil, a former Portuguese colony, would not be included.
"They couldn't find one term to use for all of them," said Manuel Hernandez, an associate professor in the Spanish department.
The word has been both accepted and shunned by the people it is meant to represent. Inside the word Hispanic are a multitude of other terms representing the various cultures. Such terms include Hispano, Nuyorican, Chicano and Latino.
"It depends on the person's own awareness [of their culture] that will determine if they get mad or not," said Eric Hernandez, a management senior.
Eric Hernandez has Mexican heritage and has been called Chicano, Hispanic and Mexican-American. He said he doesn't find any of them offensive.
Although he connects with all of these words, he said most people in his generation go by Hispanic because it is the circle they bubble in most often on tests.
Manuel Hernandez said the word Hispanic was heavily used when it first came out.
"[In the 1990s] the media picked up on the word Latino," he said. "[The words] build an identity across the United States.
"Inside their own communities, everybody called themselves by their ethnic names."
The Spanish equivalent to Hispanic is the word Hispano, which is defined as Spanish-speaking.
"If you speak Spanish, many people prefer Hispano," Manuel Hernandez said.
A large portion of Hispanics consider themselves Latino - a person from Latin America.
Others use the designation Chicano, which includes first-generation Mexican descendants born in America. The word is associated with Cesar Chavez and the agricultural movement of the 1960s, hence the use in the Chicano/a studies programs offered at ASU, which focus on this political movement.
Mexican-American is another preferred word for Americans with underlying Mexican heritage.
Along with these broader terms, each country has titles for their citizens that some Americans use to identify themselves. Cuban, Puerto Rican and Costa Rican are a few.
Dan Sanders, a finance senior, said he witnesses fights over cultural names all the time.
His roommates, one a Puerto Rican and the other a Mexican, call each other various identifiers to provoke each other while joking around.
"It's funny, but I think they try to piss each other off," he said.
Reach the reporter at amanda.m.gonser@asu.edu.
