I am tired of hearing Latinos tell other Latinos that they are not "Latino enough."
Let's clarify the term Latino and Hispanic. Speaking Spanish doesn't make you Latino. The term Latino is letting you know about geography. Everything below the U.S., including the Caribbean, is Latin America. On the other hand, being Latino means you are from Latin America or that a family member of yours is from Latin America and you identify as a Latino because of that.
The term Hispanic means you're from a country that primarily speaks Spanish. Note that not all Latin American countries speak Spanish. For instance, in Brazil, the primary language is Portuguese. In this case, Brazilians are Latinos because Brazil is in Latin America, but they are not Hispanic since Brazil's primarily language is not Spanish.
Moving on, Latinos are very diverse. There are Afro-Latinos, Indigenous-Latinos, Latinos with European descendants as well as a mixture of others. Besides those groups of Latinos, there are also the ones that were born in the U.S. These Latinos have parents who are immigrants or have or are descendants of people who migrated to the U.S. I, along with other young adults, happen to fit this category. Even though our roots are the same, our identities are different. For instance, I am Mexican-American, or in other words, a Chicana. Since Latinos are diverse, our backgrounds vary from one another.
Besides Mexican-Americans, there are Salvadorean-Americans, Belizean-Americans, Peruvian-Americans as well as others. Although we are not the same, since each of us identifies with a different country in Latin America, we still can connect with one another. When you have parents or when your roots go back to a country in Latin America, but you were born in the U.S., you, as an individual, seem to be looked at differently by Latinos who were born in Latin America and also by non-Latin Americans. Facing this situation is what allows us to connect with one another. Although being called hyphened American is not something we asked to be called, we have always been reminded that we can never be enough with both sides of our identity.
When Latinos of my generation introduce themselves to other Latinos who weren't born in the U.S., some of them do not consider them fully Latino because their Spanish is not as perfect as theirs. They might also criticize us when we tell them that not all of us grew up listening to Spanish music or our parents did not teach us the etiquette they were once taught.
On the other hand, when we introduce ourselves as Americans, people wait and stare at us and ask, "No really, like, where were you born?" So, we just constantly stare at them back, and we have to explain that we were born in the U.S. and our parents were born in some part of Latin America.
Some Latinos and Americans do not consider me, or other people like me, Latina or American enough, and the truth is, it is getting annoying. Yes, I get it. I wasn't born in Latin America, and I was born in the U.S, but that does not make me more Latina or less American. When people have this mindset, I, and others, get stuck in the in-betweens, and half of the time, we get confused. If we tell you we are Mexican-American, Salvadorean-American, Peruvian-American, along with others, you expect us to choose one. You tell us that we are neither Latinos nor Americans. This view affects us drastically because then we ask ourselves, "Well, what are we?" We should not have to ask ourselves that. Instead, we should be taught to embrace our Latino roots as well as being an American because at the end of the day, we are all diverse.
