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Hispanic and Latino Americans

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180-580: Hispanic and Latino Americans ( Spanish : Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos ; Portuguese : Americanos Hispânicos e latinos ) are Americans (in U.S.A.) of full or partial Spanish and/or Latin American background, culture, or family origin. These demographics include all Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino regardless of race. As of 2020, the Census Bureau estimated that there were almost 65.3 million Hispanics and Latinos living in

360-733: A social construct , an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism , the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Modern scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits. Even though there

540-512: A 2015 survey, 71% of American Hispanics agreed that it "is not necessary for a person to speak Spanish to be considered Hispanic/Latino". Hispanic and Latino people may share some commonalities in their language, culture, history, and heritage. According to the Smithsonian Institution , the term Latino includes peoples with Portuguese roots, such as Brazilians , as well as those of Spanish-language origin. The difference between

720-565: A Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican American. The United States Census Bureau defines being Hispanic as being a member of an ethnicity, rather than being a member of a particular race and thus, people who are members of this group may also be members of any race. In a 2015 national survey of self-identified Hispanics, 56% said that being Hispanic is part of both their racial and ethnic background, while smaller numbers considered it part of their ethnic background only (19%) or racial background only (11%). Hispanics may be of any linguistic background; in

900-599: A Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano developed in the southern Philippines. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. The local languages of the Philippines also retain significant Spanish influence, with many words derived from Mexican Spanish , owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, until direct governance from Madrid afterwards to 1898. Race (human categorization) Race

1080-405: A big impact because it's additional pressure to pass an extra exam apart from their own original classes. Furthermore, if the exam is not passed before they attend high school, the student will fall behind in their courses due to the additional ELD courses instead of taking their normal classes in that year. However, the great majority of these programs are English Immersion, which arguably undermines

1260-452: A concept devised by Mark Shriver and Tony Frudakis , is not an objective measure of the biological aspects of race as Shriver and Frudakis claim it is. She argues that it is actually just a "local category shaped by the U.S. context of its production, especially the forensic aim of being able to predict the race or ethnicity of an unknown suspect based on DNA found at the crime scene". Recent studies of human genetic clustering have included

1440-602: A concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor , and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world. The first post- Graeco-Roman published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier 's Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by

1620-603: A considerable number of words from Arabic , as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin , the form of Latin in use at that time. According to

1800-404: A debate over how genetic variation is organized, with clusters and clines as the main possible orderings. Serre & Pääbo (2004) argued for smooth, clinal genetic variation in ancestral populations even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques. Rosenberg et al. (2005) disputed this and offered an analysis of

1980-522: A dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants , known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes , which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of

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2160-482: A first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos ( Ilustrados ). Despite a public education system set up by the colonial government, by the end of Spanish rule in 1898, only about 10% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, mostly those of Spanish descent or elite standing. Spanish continued to be official and used in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration after

2340-405: A great deal more diversity than elsewhere and that diversity should decrease the further from Africa a population is sampled. Hence, the 85% average figure is misleading: Long and Kittles find that rather than 85% of human genetic diversity existing in all human populations, about 100% of human diversity exists in a single African population, whereas only about 60% of human genetic diversity exists in

2520-517: A host of other similarities and differences (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion was that, since clines cross racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines". In a response to Livingstone, Theodore Dobzhansky argued that when talking about race one must be attentive to how the term is being used: "I agree with Dr. Livingstone that if races have to be 'discrete units', then there are no races, and if 'race'

2700-723: A large multiethnic population in the United States, and "detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity – as opposed to current residence – is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population." Witherspoon et al. (2007) have argued that even when individuals can be reliably assigned to specific population groups, it may still be possible for two randomly chosen individuals from different populations/clusters to be more similar to each other than to

2880-635: A locus-by-locus analysis of variation to derive taxonomy, it is possible to construct a human classification system based on characteristic genetic patterns, or clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data . Geographically based human studies since have shown that such genetic clusters can be derived from analyzing of a large number of loci which can assort individuals sampled into groups analogous to traditional continental racial groups. Joanna Mountain and Neil Risch cautioned that while genetic clusters may one day be shown to correspond to phenotypic variations between groups, such assumptions were premature as

3060-415: A long history in the territory of the current-day United States dating back to the 16th century. In the wake of the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty , hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers became a minoritized community in the United States. The 20th century saw further massive growth of Spanish speakers in areas where they had been hitherto scarce. According to the 2020 census, over 60 million people of

3240-720: A percentage of Americans had fled their jobs for the war, Hispanics had taken their jobs in the Industrial world. This can explain why there is such a high concentration of Hispanic Americans in Metro Areas such as the Chicago-Elgin-Naperville, Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, and Cleveland-Elyria areas. Hispanic and Latino Americans were actively involved in the broader civil rights movement of the 20th century, advocating for equal rights, social justice, and an end to discrimination and segregation. Organizations such as

3420-470: A population boom and rapid economic growth in California, transforming the social and political landscape of the region. Many Hispanic natives lived in the areas that the United States acquired, and a new wave of Mexican, Central American, Caribbean, and South American immigrants had moved to the United States for new opportunities. This was the beginning of a demographic that would rise dramatically over

3600-508: A primarily Hassaniya Arabic -speaking territory, Spanish was officially spoken as the language of the colonial administration during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Spanish is present in the partially-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as its secondary official language, and in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf ( Algeria ), where the Spanish language is still taught as

3780-454: A product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification. According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race

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3960-413: A race for political reasons. When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations. While race

4140-449: A randomly chosen member of their own cluster. They found that many thousands of genetic markers had to be used in order for the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" to be "never". This assumed three population groups separated by large geographic ranges (European, African and East Asian). The entire world population

4320-593: A result of their racial diversity, Hispanics form an ethnicity sharing a language ( Spanish ) and cultural heritage, rather than a race . Hispanic origin is independent of race and is termed "ethnicity" by the United States Census Bureau . On the 2020 United States census , 20.3% of Hispanics selected "White" as their race. This marked a large drop when compared to the 2010 United States census in which 53.0% of Hispanics identified as "White". These Hispanics make up 12,579,626 people or 3.8% of

4500-617: A second language features characteristics involving the variability of the vowel system. While far from its heyday during the Spanish protectorate in Morocco , the Spanish language has some presence in northern Morocco , stemming for example from the availability of certain Spanish-language media. According to a 2012 survey by Morocco's Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES), penetration of Spanish in Morocco reaches 4.6% of

4680-531: A second language, largely by Cuban educators. The number of Spanish speakers is unknown. Spanish is also an official language of the African Union . Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization , it was the language of government, trade, and education, and was spoken as

4860-653: A single man joins this female group). A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that about 3% of Hispanics use the term (mostly women), and only around 23% have even heard of the term. Of those, 65% said it should not be used to describe their ethnic group. Some have pointed out that the term "Hispanic" refers to a pan-ethnic identity, one that spans a range of races, national origins, and linguistic backgrounds. "Terms like Hispanic and Latino do not fully capture how we see ourselves", says Geraldo Cadava, an associate professor of history and Hispanic studies at Northwestern University . According to 2017 American Community Survey data,

5040-399: A small minority of immigrants from Brazil (2%), Portugal (2%), and the Philippines (1%) self-identified as Hispanic. Spanish explorers were pioneers in the territory of the present-day United States. The first confirmed European landing in the continental United States was by Juan Ponce de León , who landed in 1513 at a lush shore he christened La Florida . In the next three decades,

5220-458: A social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real". In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was "flawed" as "the meaning and significance of the groups is produced through social interventions". Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of

5400-634: A week in mid-September as National Hispanic Heritage Week, with Congress 's authorization. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan extended the observance to a month, designated National Hispanic Heritage Month . Hispanic Americans became the largest minority group in 2004. Hispanic and Latino Americans increasingly sought political representation and empowerment during the 20th century. The election of individuals such as Edward Roybal , Henry B. González , and Dennis Chávez to Congress marked significant milestones in Hispanic political representation. Additionally,

5580-410: A yet more inclusive "x" to replace the "a" and "o", in a complete break with the gender binary . Among the advocates of the term LatinX , one of the most frequently cited complaints of gender bias in the Spanish language is that a group of mixed or unknown gender would be referred to as Latinos , whereas Latinas refers to a group of women only (but this is changed immediately to Latinos , if even

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5760-416: Is cognate to the root word of satisfacer ("to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho ("satisfied"). Compare the examples in the following table: Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent

5940-666: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe . Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain , and about 600 million when including second language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries , as well as one of the six official languages of

6120-537: Is a Hispanic "Education Crisis" due to failed school and social policies. To this end, scholars have further offered several potential reasons including language barriers, poverty, and immigrant/nativity status resulting in Hispanics not performing well academically. Currently, Hispanic students make up 80% of English-language learners in the United States. In 2008–2009, 5.3 million students were classified as English Language Learners (ELLs) in pre-K to 12th grade. This

6300-405: Is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways. While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race

6480-474: Is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society . The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical ( phenotypical ) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as

6660-872: Is a large portion of Hispanics who trace their ancestry to settlers from New Spain (Mexico), and sometimes Spain itself, in the late 16th century through the 17th century. People from this background often self-identify as "Hispanos", "Spanish" or "Hispanic". Many of these settlers also intermarried with local Native Americans, creating a mestizo population. Likewise, southern Louisiana is home to communities of people of Canary Islands descent, known as Isleños , in addition to other people of Spanish ancestry. Californios , Nuevomexicanos and Tejanos are Americans of Spanish and/or Mexican descent, with subgroups that sometimes call themselves Chicanos . Nuevomexicanos and Tejanos are distinct southwest Hispanic cultures with their own cuisines, dialects and musical traditions. Nuyoricans are Americans of Puerto Rican descent from

6840-447: Is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers) . Under Kaplan and Winther's view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998 ) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as

7020-644: Is a result of many students entering the education system at different ages, although the majority of ELLs are not foreign born. In order to provide English instruction for Hispanic students there have been a multitude of English Language programs. Schools make demands when it comes to English fluency. There are test requirements to certify students who are non-native English speakers in writing, speaking, reading, and listening, for example. They take an ELPAC test, which evaluates their English efficiency. This assessment determines whether they are considered ELL students or not. For Hispanic students, being an ELL student will have

7200-518: Is a term "simultaneous bilinguals" it is emerged on the research from Guadalupe Valdez she states that it is used by individuals who acquire two languages as a "first" language; that most American circumstantial bilinguals acquire their ethnic or immigrant language first and then acquire English. The period of acquisition of the second language is known as incipient bilingualism. Those with a bachelor's degree or higher ranges from 50% of Venezuelans compared to 18% for Ecuadorians 25 years and older. Amongst

7380-408: Is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and

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7560-479: Is both a Hispanic and a Latino. A Brazilian American is also a Latino by this definition, which includes those of Portuguese-speaking origin from Latin America. In English, Italian Americans are not considered "Latino", as they are for the most part descended from immigrants from Europe rather than Latin America, unless they happen to have had recent history in a Latin American country. Preference of use between

7740-406: Is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population." Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace ,

7920-414: Is employed to coin compounded formations (similar as franc o- in franc o canadiense 'French-Canadian', or ibero- in iberorrománico , etc.). The term Latinx (and similar neologism Xicanx ) have gained some usage. The adoption of the X would be "[r]eflecting new consciousness inspired by more recent work by LGBTQI and feminist movements, some Spanish-speaking activists are increasingly using

8100-454: Is estimated that about 486 million people speak Spanish as a native language , making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers . An additional 75 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language , making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 538 million speakers. Spanish is also

8280-487: Is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification , for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable . As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities , and social institutions. Scholars continue to debate

8460-761: Is heavily influenced by Venezuelan Spanish. In addition to sharing most of its borders with Spanish-speaking countries, the creation of Mercosur in the early 1990s induced a favorable situation for the promotion of Spanish language teaching in Brazil . In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President , making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law

8640-634: Is inherently naive or simplistic. Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same subspecies , Homo sapiens sapiens . Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of scientific racism , and has become increasingly seen as a largely pseudoscientific system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and/or loaded terms: populations , people (s) , ethnic groups , or communities , depending on context. Its use in genetics

8820-416: Is much more complex and studying an increasing number of groups would require an increasing number of markers for the same answer. The authors conclude that "caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes". Witherspoon, et al. concluded: "The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin

9000-653: Is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists. Likewise this typological approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists. In 2000, philosopher Robin Andreasen proposed that cladistics might be used to categorize human races biologically, and that races can be both biologically real and socially constructed. Andreasen cited tree diagrams of relative genetic distances among populations published by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza as

9180-518: Is now called scientific racism . After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in

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9360-732: Is related to Castile ( Castilla or archaically Castiella ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile , in turn, is usually assumed to be derived from castillo ('castle'). In the Middle Ages , the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as Romance and later also as Lengua vulgar . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as Romance castellano ( romanz castellano , romanz de Castiella ), lenguaje de Castiella , and ultimately simply as castellano (noun). Different etymologies have been suggested for

9540-844: Is spoken by very small communities in Angola due to Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned for their country's independence. Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in Africa, namely the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Canary Islands , located in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 km (62 mi) off

9720-813: Is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico . The language has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles , Miami , San Antonio , New York , San Francisco , Dallas , Tucson and Phoenix of the Arizona Sun Corridor , as well as more recently, Chicago , Las Vegas , Boston , Denver , Houston , Indianapolis , Philadelphia , Cleveland , Salt Lake City , Atlanta , Nashville , Orlando , Tampa , Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration. Although Spanish has no official recognition in

9900-411: Is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small. A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as

10080-680: Is today the American Southwest and West Coast , as well as Florida. Its holdings included present-day California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Florida, all of which constituted part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain , based in Mexico City . Later, this vast territory became part of Mexico after its independence from Spain in 1821 and until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848. Hispanic immigrants to

10260-422: Is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination . Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby

10440-715: Is used as an 'explanation' of the human variability, rather than vice versa, then the explanation is invalid." He further argued that one could use the term race if one distinguished between "race differences" and "the race concept". The former refers to any distinction in gene frequencies between populations; the latter is "a matter of judgment". He further observed that even when there is clinal variation: "Race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena ... but it does not follow that racially distinct populations must be given racial (or subspecific) labels." In short, Livingstone and Dobzhansky agree that there are genetic differences among human beings; they also agree that

10620-784: The Great Lakes states and the South Atlantic states , Mexicans and Puerto Ricans dominate. Mexicans dominate in the rest of the country, including the West , South Central and Great Plains states. As of 2022, approximately 60.1% of the nation's Hispanic population were of Mexican origin (see table). Another 9.6% were of Puerto Rican origin, and with about 3.9% each of Cuban and Salvadoran and about 3.7% Dominican origins. The remainder were of other Central American or of South American origin, or of origin directly from Spain. In 2017, Two thirds of all Hispanic Americans were born in

10800-801: The Gulf of California . In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the present United States. Also in 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican natives across today's Arizona –Mexico border and traveled as far as central Kansas , close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. Other Spanish explorers of the US territory include, among others: Alonso Alvarez de Pineda , Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón , Pánfilo de Narváez , Sebastián Vizcaíno , Gaspar de Portolà , Pedro Menéndez de Avilés , Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca , Tristán de Luna y Arellano , and Juan de Oñate , and non-Spanish explorers working for

10980-647: The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the United Farm Workers (UFW) fought for the rights of Hispanic and Latino workers and communities. Hispanic contributions in the historical past and present of the United States are addressed in more detail below (See Notables and their contributions ). To recognize the current and historic contributions of Hispanic Americans, on September 17, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson designated

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11160-591: The New York / New Jersey metropolitan area derive from a broad spectrum of Hispanic countries. The terms Hispanic and Latino refer to an ethnicity . Hispanic first came into popular use to refer to individuals with origins in Spanish-speaking countries after the Office of Management and Budget created the classification in 1977, as proposed by a subcommittee composed of three government employees,

11340-587: The New York City area. There are close to two million Nuyoricans in the United States. Prominent Nuyoricans include Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , US Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor , and singer Jennifer Lopez . Hispanics come from multi-racial and multi-ethnic countries with diversity of origins; therefore, a Hispanic can be from any race or mix of races. The most common ancestries are: Native American, European and African. Many also have colonial era New Christian Sephardic Jewish ancestry. As

11520-458: The Out of Africa and Multiregional models). In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity, a position commonly called racial essentialism . This, coupled with a belief that linguistic , cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what

11700-568: The Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Spanish has historically had a significant presence on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba , Bonaire and Curaçao ( ABC Islands ) throughout the centuries and in present times. The majority of the populations of each island (especially Aruba) speaking Spanish at varying although often high degrees of fluency. The local language Papiamentu (Papiamento on Aruba)

11880-508: The Spanish–American War but was eventually replaced by English as the primary language of administration and education by the 1920s. Nevertheless, despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines upon independence in 1946, alongside English and Filipino , a standardized version of Tagalog . Spanish was briefly removed from official status in 1973 but reimplemented under

12060-996: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War , as well as Florida through the Adams-Onís treaty , and the U.S territory of Puerto Rico through the Spanish-American War in 1898. Many Latinos residing in those regions during that period gained U.S. citizenship. Nonetheless, many long-established Latino residents faced significant difficulties post-citizenship. With the arrival of Anglo-Americans in these newly incorporated areas, Latino inhabitants struggled to maintain their land holdings, political influence, and cultural traditions. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 attracted people from diverse backgrounds, including Hispanic and Latino miners, merchants, and settlers. The Gold Rush led to

12240-548: The United Nations . Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese ; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English , Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani ( Hindi - Urdu ); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico . Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group , in which

12420-615: The United States and its territories . "Origin" can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage or country of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States of America. People who identify as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race, because similarly to what occurred during the colonization and post-independence of the United States, Latin American countries had their populations made up of multiracial and monoracial descendants of white European colonizers , indigenous peoples of

12600-518: The West Coast and West South Central regions, where the Hispanic population is predominantly Mexican-American , had an average of 43% Native American ancestry. On the other hand, those from the Mid-Atlantic region, where the Hispanic population is predominantly of Puerto Rican or Dominican descent, averaged only 11% Native American ancestry. As of 2014, one third, or 17.9 million, of

12780-431: The one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as " white ". Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion . This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined. According to geneticist David Reich , "while race may be

12960-512: The world , they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade , which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves . Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example,

13140-480: The 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas. As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is Latin in origin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French , it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout

13320-438: The 2010 census, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in 191 out of 366 metropolitan areas in the United States. The projected Hispanic population of the United States for July 1, 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation's total projected population on that date. US Metropolitan Statistical Areas with over 1 million Hispanics (2014) States and territories with the highest proportion of Hispanics (2021) Of

13500-404: The 2021–2022 school year alone. The local business process outsourcing industry has also helped boost the language's economic prospects. Today, while the actual number of proficient Spanish speakers is around 400,000, or under 0.5% of the population, a new generation of Spanish speakers in the Philippines has likewise emerged, though speaker estimates vary widely. Aside from standard Spanish,

13680-533: The 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara , and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City . For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language . Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2023, it

13860-417: The 21st century, including initiatives to support bilingual education, celebrate cultural traditions and festivals, and recognize the contributions of Hispanic and Latino individuals and communities to American society. As of 2020, Hispanics accounted for 19–20% of the US population, or 62–65 million people. The US Census Bureau later estimated that Hispanics were under-counted by 5.0% or 3.3 million persons in

14040-409: The Americas , descendants of black African slaves , and post-independence immigrants from Europe , Middle East , and East Asia . As one of the only two specifically designated categories of ethnicity in the United States , Hispanics and Latinos form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages, the use of the Spanish and Portuguese languages being

14220-429: The Americas were part of a broader network of trade routes that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The Spanish established trade connections with indigenous peoples, exchanging goods such as furs , hides , agricultural products, and manufactured goods. These trade networks contributed to the economic development of Spanish colonies and facilitated cultural exchange between different groups. As late as 1783, at

14400-654: The Equatoguinean education system and is the primary language used in government and business. Whereas it is not the mother tongue of virtually any of its speakers, the vast majority of the population is proficient in Spanish. The Instituto Cervantes estimates that 87.7% of the population is fluent in Spanish. The proportion of proficient Spanish speakers in Equatorial Guinea exceeds the proportion of proficient speakers in other West and Central African nations of their respective colonial languages. Spanish

14580-523: The Hispanic population was younger than 18 and a quarter, 14.6 million, were Millennials . This makes them more than half of the Hispanic population within the United States. With the increasing Hispanic population in the United States, Hispanics have had a considerable impact on the K–12 system. In 2011–12, Hispanics comprised 24% of all enrollments in the United States, including 52% and 51% of enrollment in California and Texas, respectively. Further research shows

14760-489: The Hispanic population will continue to grow in the United States, implicating that more Hispanics will populate US schools. The state of Hispanic education shows some promise. First, Hispanic students attending pre-K or kindergarten were more likely to attend full-day programs. Second, Hispanics in elementary education were the second largest group represented in gifted and talented programs. Third, Hispanics' average NAEP math and reading scores have consistently increased over

14940-800: The Human Genetic Diversity Panel showing that there were small discontinuities in the smooth genetic variation for ancestral populations at the location of geographic barriers such as the Sahara , the Oceans, and the Himalayas . Nonetheless, Rosenberg et al. (2005) stated that their findings "should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race ... Genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive 'diagnostic' genotypes." Using

15120-705: The Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque , Iberian , Lusitanian , Celtiberian and Gallaecian . The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era , the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages — Mozarabic ( Andalusi Romance ), Navarro-Aragonese , Leonese , Catalan/Valencian , Portuguese , Galician , Occitan , and later, French and Italian . Spanish also borrowed

15300-594: The Mediterranean and up the Nile into Africa. From one end of this range to the other, there is no hint of a skin color boundary, and yet the spectrum runs from the lightest in the world at the northern edge to as dark as it is possible for humans to be at the equator. In part, this is due to isolation by distance . This point called attention to a problem common to phenotype-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore

15480-540: The Old Spanish sibilants) for details. The Gramática de la lengua castellana , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija , was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I , she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to

15660-843: The Spanish Caribbean islands, including the Cuban, Dominican , Panamanian and Puerto Rican communities. In Puerto Rico, people have some Native Indigenous American ancestry as well as European and Canary Islander ancestry. There's also a population of predominantly African descent as well as populations of Native American descent as well as those with intermixed ancestries. Cubans are mostly of Iberian and Canary Islander ancestry, with some heritage from Native Indigenous Caribbean. There are also populations of Black Sub-Saharan ancestry and multi-racial people. The race and culture of each Hispanic country and their United States diaspora differs by history and geography. Welch and Sigelman found, as of

15840-481: The Spanish Crown, such as Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo . In 1565, the Spanish created the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States, at St. Augustine, Florida . Spanish missionaries and colonists founded settlements including in the present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico , El Paso , San Antonio , Tucson , Albuquerque , San Diego , Los Angeles , and San Francisco . Spanish settlements in

16020-845: The Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachian Mountains , the Mississippi River , the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains . Spanish ships sailed along the Atlantic Coast , penetrating to present-day Bangor, Maine , and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon . From 1528 to 1536, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three fellows (including an African named Estevanico ), from a Spanish expedition that foundered, journeyed from Florida to

16200-530: The Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the Kingdom of Castile , contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician , Basque , Asturian , Catalan/Valencian , Aragonese , Occitan and other minor languages. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of

16380-502: The U.S. population were of Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin. In turn, 41.8 million people in the United States aged five or older speak Spanish at home, or about 13% of the population. Spanish predominates in the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico , where it is also an official language along with English. Spanish is by far the most common second language in the country, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English

16560-504: The US census, which explains the 3 million range in the number above. In contrast, Whites were over-counted by about 3 million. The Hispanic growth rate over the April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2007, period was 28.7%—about four times the rate of the nation's total population growth (at 7.2%). The growth rate from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, alone was 3.4%—about three and a half times the rate of the nation's total population growth (at 1.0%). Based on

16740-450: The US, found that self-identified Hispanic Americans had a higher average amount of Native American ancestry compared to Black and non-Hispanic White Americans. On average, Hispanic Americans were found to be just over half European, around 38% Native American, and less than 10% African. However, these results, being an average of the entire Hispanic population, vary sharply between individuals and between regions. Hispanic participants from

16920-566: The United States, the student not only enters a new country, language or culture, but they also enter a testing culture to determine everything from their placements to advancement into the next grade level in their education. Moreover, Hispanics' immigration/nativity status plays a major role regarding their academic achievement. For instance, first- and second- generation Hispanics outperform their later generational counterparts. Additionally, their aspirations appear to decrease as well. This has major implications on their post-secondary futures. There

17100-520: The United States. There are few immigrants directly from Spain, since Spaniards have historically emigrated to Hispanic America rather than to English-speaking countries. Because of this, most Hispanics who identify themselves as Spaniard or Spanish also identify with Hispanic American national origin. In the 2017 Census estimate approximately 1.76 million Americans reported some form of " Spanish " as their ancestry, whether directly from Spain or not. In northern New Mexico and southern Colorado , there

17280-401: The United States. However, since the landmark Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe in 1982, immigrants have received access to K-12 education. This significantly impacted all immigrant groups, including Hispanics. However, their academic achievement is dependent upon several factors including, but not limited to time of arrival and schooling in country of origin. When non-native speakers arrive to

17460-489: The West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation. The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the anthropologists Franz Boas , who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, and Ashley Montagu , who relied on evidence from genetics. E. O. Wilson then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected

17640-457: The administration of Ferdinand Marcos two months later. It remained an official language until the ratification of the present constitution in 1987, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. Additionally, the constitution, in its Article XIV, stipulates that the Government shall provide the people of the Philippines with a Spanish-language translation of

17820-505: The anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless. The Human Genome Project states "People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other." Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan argue that human races do exist, and that they correspond to

18000-412: The appointment of individuals like Lauro Cavazos and Bill Richardson to cabinet positions highlighted the growing influence of Hispanic and Latino leaders in government. Hispanic and Latino Americans became the largest minority group in the United States, contributing significantly to the country's population growth. Efforts to preserve and promote Hispanic and Latino culture and heritage continued in

18180-437: The basis for a phylogenetic tree of human races (p. 661). Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks (2008) responded by arguing that Andreasen had misinterpreted the genetic literature: "These trees are phenetic (based on similarity), rather than cladistic (based on monophyletic descent, that is from a series of unique ancestors)." Evolutionary biologist Alan Templeton (2013) argued that multiple lines of evidence falsify

18360-416: The categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons. In earlier work, Winther had identified "diversity partitioning" and "clustering analysis" as two separate methodologies, with distinct questions, assumptions, and protocols. Each is also associated with opposing ontological consequences vis-a-vis the metaphysics of race. Philosopher Lisa Gannett has argued that biogeographical ancestry,

18540-428: The claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies". Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races. According to the biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks , By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that

18720-684: The classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin , as happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). Like the other Romance languages , the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin , which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War , beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages )—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages , and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in

18900-543: The clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials. Kaplan and Winther therefore argue that, seen in this way, both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification

19080-450: The consequence that the number and geographic location of any described races is highly dependent on the importance attributed to, and quantity of, the traits considered. A skin-lightening mutation, estimated to have occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, partially accounts for the appearance of light skin in people who migrated out of Africa northward into what is now Europe. East Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. On

19260-500: The consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v . Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary , and found in a small area of Calabria ), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it

19440-404: The country's constitution. In recent years changing attitudes among non-Spanish speaking Filipinos have helped spur a revival of the language, and starting in 2009 Spanish was reintroduced as part of the basic education curriculum in a number of public high schools, becoming the largest foreign language program offered by the public school system, with over 7,000 students studying the language in

19620-470: The country. In 2012, Hispanic Americans were the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United States after Asian Americans . Multiracial Americans of Indigenous American descent and European (typically Spanish) descent are the second oldest racial group (after the Native Americans ) to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Spain colonized large areas of what

19800-544: The definition to "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". This is now the common formal and colloquial definition of the term within the United States, outside of New Mexico. This definition is consistent with the 21st century usage by the US Census Bureau and OMB , as the two agencies use both terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably. The Pew Research Center believes that

19980-434: The degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed. For example, in 2008, John Hartigan Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction. In

20160-459: The different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging

20340-469: The difficulty of defining a population, the clinal nature of variation, and heterogeneity across the genome (Long and Kittles 2003). In general, however, an average of 85% of statistical genetic variation exists within local populations, ≈7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ≈8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents. The recent African origin theory for humans would predict that in Africa there exists

20520-571: The end of the American Revolutionary War (a conflict in which Spain aided and fought alongside the rebels), Spain held claim to roughly half the territory of today's continental United States. From 1819 to 1848, the United States increased its area by roughly a third at Spanish and Mexican expense, acquiring the present-day U.S states of California , Texas , Nevada , Utah , most of Colorado , New Mexico and Arizona , and parts of Oklahoma , Kansas , and Wyoming through

20700-683: The following table: Spanish is marked by palatalization of the Latin double consonants ( geminates ) nn and ll (thus Latin annum > Spanish año , and Latin anellum > Spanish anillo ). The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably " fortified " to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with

20880-466: The former British colony of Belize (known until 1973 as British Honduras ) where English is the sole official language, according to the 2022 census, 54% of the total population are able to speak the language. Due to its proximity to Spanish-speaking countries and small existing native Spanish speaking minority, Trinidad and Tobago has implemented Spanish language teaching into its education system. The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government launched

21060-676: The former, and a more liberal view on race by the latter. Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens . However, this is not the first species of homininae : the first species of genus Homo , Homo habilis , evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different parts of Africa in a relatively short time. Homo erectus evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that Archaic Homo sapiens (A group including

21240-406: The frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant 'constellation'". Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that "the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing". Moreover,

21420-815: The genetic classification of ecotypes , but that real human races do not correspond very much, if at all, to folk racial categories. In contrast, Walsh & Yun reviewed the literature in 2011 and reported: "Genetic studies using very few chromosomal loci find that genetic polymorphisms divide human populations into clusters with almost 100 percent accuracy and that they correspond to the traditional anthropological categories." Some biologists argue that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype ), and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. The distribution of genetic variants within and among human populations are impossible to describe succinctly because of

21600-604: The grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire." From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote , is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes"). In

21780-437: The haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin , on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa. As the anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observed, "Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous". Patterns such as those seen in human physical and genetic variation as described above, have led to

21960-439: The historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences. The term race was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense , starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype. The modern concept of race emerged as

22140-690: The hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people  – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual , behavioral , and moral qualities. Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, for example in China , where

22320-524: The idea of a phylogenetic tree structure to human genetic diversity, and confirm the presence of gene flow among populations. Marks, Templeton, and Cavalli-Sforza all conclude that genetics does not provide evidence of human races. Previously, anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995) had also critiqued the use of cladistics to support concepts of race. They argued that "the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples ". For example,

22500-521: The individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide . In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories

22680-540: The language is also known as Castilian ( castellano ). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo , a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile , in

22860-549: The language's hegemony in an intensely centralising Spanish state were established from the 18th century onward. Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra . Spanish is also spoken by immigrant communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom , France , Italy , and Germany . Spanish is an official language of the European Union . Today,

23040-422: The large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. They argued that this a priori grouping limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of

23220-533: The largest Hispanic groups, those with a bachelor's or higher was 25% for Cubans, 16% of Puerto Ricans, 15% of Dominicans, and 11% for Mexicans. Over 21% of all second-generation Dominican Americans have college degrees, slightly below the national average (28%) but significantly higher than US-born Mexican Americans (13%) and US-born Puerto Rican Americans (12%). Hispanics make up the second or third largest ethnic group in Ivy League universities, considered to be

23400-443: The largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time. Historical race concepts have included a wide variety of schemes to divide local or worldwide populations into races and sub-races. Across the world, different organizations and societies choose to disambiguate race to different extents: The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in

23580-542: The largest populations of Mexicans and Central American Hispanics in the United States. The Northeast region is dominated by Dominican Americans and Puerto Ricans , having the highest concentrations of both in the country. In the Mid Atlantic region, centered on the DC Metro Area , Salvadoran Americans are the largest of Hispanic groups. Florida is dominated by Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans. In both

23760-502: The last 10 years. Finally, Hispanics were more likely than other groups, including White people, to go to college. However, their academic achievement in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education lag behind other groups. For instance, their average math and reading NAEP scores were lower than every other group, except African Americans, and have the highest dropout rate of any group, 13% despite decreasing from 24%. To explain these disparities, some scholars have suggested there

23940-624: The last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of polygenism , the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist Charles White , in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster , and in France by Julien-Joseph Virey . In the US, Samuel George Morton , Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz promoted this theory in

24120-565: The least diverse population they analyzed (the Surui, a population derived from New Guinea). Statistical analysis that takes this difference into account confirms previous findings that "Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance". A 2002 study of random biallelic genetic loci found little to no evidence that humans were divided into distinct biological groups. In his 2003 paper, " Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy ", A. W. F. Edwards argued that rather than using

24300-419: The level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to

24480-694: The majority of the Spanish speakers live in Hispanic America . Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure —of Argentina , Bolivia (co-official with 36 indigenous languages), Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cuba , Dominican Republic , Ecuador , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua , Panama , Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní ), Peru (co-official with Quechua , Aymara , and "the other indigenous languages"), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay , and Venezuela . Spanish language has

24660-623: The mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the Anthropological Society of London (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the Ethnological Society of London and its monogenic stance , their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called "Negro question": a substantial racist view by

24840-420: The more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 1930s and 1950s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races. Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at

25020-417: The most important of all. The largest national origin groups of Hispanic and Latino Americans in order of population size are: Mexican , Puerto Rican , Cuban , Salvadoran , Dominican , Brazilian , Colombian , Guatemalan , Honduran , Ecuadorian , Peruvian , Venezuelan , or Nicaraguan origin. The predominant origin of regional Hispanic and Latino populations varies widely in different locations across

25200-482: The most prestigious in the United States. Hispanic enrollment at Ivy League universities has gradually increased over the years. Today, Hispanics make up between 8% of students at Yale University to 15% at Columbia University . For example, 18% of students in the Harvard University Class of 2018 are Hispanic. Spanish language Spanish ( español ) or Castilian ( castellano )

25380-567: The nation's total Hispanic population, 49% (21.5 million) live in California or Texas . In 2022, New York City and Washington, D.C. began receiving significant numbers of Latino migrants from the state of Texas, mostly originating from Venezuela , Ecuador , Colombia , and Honduras . Over half of the Hispanic population is concentrated in the Southwest region, mostly composed of Mexican Americans. California and Texas have some of

25560-734: The northwest of the African mainland. The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands traces its origins back to the Castilian conquest in the 15th century , and, in addition to a resemblance to Western Andalusian speech patterns, it also features strong influence from the Spanish varieties spoken in the Americas, which in turn have also been influenced historically by Canarian Spanish. The Spanish spoken in North Africa by native bilingual speakers of Arabic or Berber who also speak Spanish as

25740-654: The other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language castellano . The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms— español and castellano —are regarded as synonymous and equally valid. The term castellano

25920-514: The other hand, the greater the number of traits (or alleles ) considered, the more subdivisions of humanity are detected, since traits and gene frequencies do not always correspond to the same geographical location. Or as Ossorio & Duster (2005) put it: Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans' physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation,

26100-416: The other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of Carl Linnaeus , inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species Homo sapiens into continental varieties of europaeus , asiaticus , americanus , and afer , each associated with a different humour : sanguine , melancholic , choleric , and phlegmatic , respectively. Homo sapiens europaeus

26280-400: The philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther, and the geneticist Joseph Graves , have argued that the cluster structure of genetic data is dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the influence of these hypotheses on the choice of populations to sample. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental, but if one had chosen other sampling patterns,

26460-408: The policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups. Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during

26640-442: The population. Over 42% of Hispanic Americans identify as " some other race ". Of all Americans who checked the box "Some Other Race", 97 percent were Hispanic. These Hispanics make up 26,225,882 people or 42.2% of the Hispanic population. Over half of the " two or more races " respondents were Hispanics. These Hispanics make up 20,299,960 people or 32.7% of the Hispanic population. The largest numbers of Black Hispanics are from

26820-533: The population. Many northern Moroccans have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, with Spanish being particularly significant in areas adjacent to Ceuta and Melilla. Spanish also has a presence in the education system of the country (through either selected education centers implementing Spain's education system, primarily located in the North, or the availability of Spanish as foreign language subject in secondary education). In Western Sahara , formerly Spanish Sahara ,

27000-634: The possible species H. heidelbergensis , H. rhodesiensis , and H. neanderthalensis ) evolved out of African H. erectus ( sensu lato ) or H. ergaster . Anthropologists support the idea that anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) evolved in North or East Africa from an archaic human species such as H. heidelbergensis and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis populations throughout Europe and Asia, and H. rhodesiensis populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of

27180-878: The previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist. The term race in biology is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of subspecies . (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the species level is usually the subspecies; there are narrower infraspecific ranks in botany , and race does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally, subspecies are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations. Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated. and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies. In 1978, Sewall Wright suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of

27360-403: The race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans , especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of

27540-523: The races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them". From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an " ideology of race". According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It

27720-592: The relationship between genes and complex traits remains poorly understood. However, Risch denied such limitations render the analysis useless: "Perhaps just using someone's actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? ... Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn't preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility." Early human genetic cluster analysis studies were conducted with samples taken from ancestral population groups living at extreme geographic distances from each other. It

27900-411: The social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on

28080-418: The students' culture and knowledge of their primary language. As such, there continues to be great debate within schools as to which program can address these language disparities. There are more than five million ELLs from all over the world attending public schools in the United States and speaking at least 460 different languages . Undocumented immigrants have not always had access to compulsory education in

28260-537: The term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Occitan word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin * hispaniolus ('of Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the entire Iberian Peninsula . There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that

28440-497: The term Hispanic is strictly limited to Spain , Puerto Rico , and all countries where Spanish is the only official language whereas "Latino" includes all countries in Latin America (even Brazil regardless of the fact that Portuguese is its only official language), but it does not include Spain and Portugal. The terms Latino and Latina are loan words from Italy and are ultimately from ancient Rome . In English,

28620-436: The term Latino is a condensed form of "latinoamericano" , the Spanish term for a Latin American, or someone who comes from Latin America. The term Latino has developed a number of definitions. This definition, as a "male Latin American inhabitant of the United States", is the oldest definition which is used in the United States, it was first used in 1946. Under this definition a Mexican American or Puerto Rican , for example,

28800-573: The terms Hispanic and Latino is ambiguous to some people. The US Census Bureau equates the two terms and defines them as referring to anyone from Spain or the Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries of the Americas. After the Mexican–American War concluded in 1848, term Hispanic or Spanish American was primarily used to describe the Hispanos of New Mexico within the American Southwest . The 1970 United States census controversially broadened

28980-509: The terms among Hispanics in the United States often depends on where users of the respective terms reside. Those in the Eastern United States tend to prefer the term Hispanic , whereas those in the West tend to prefer Latino . The US ethnic designation Latino is abstracted from the longer form latinoamericano . The element Latino- is actually an indeclinable, compositional form in -o (i.e. an elemento compositivo ) that

29160-444: The theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal , local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos , and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo , where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese , and, according to some authors,

29340-640: The third most used language on the Internet , after English and Chinese. Spanish is the official language of Spain . Upon the emergence of the Castilian Crown as the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the Middle Ages, the Romance vernacular associated with this polity became increasingly used in instances of prestige and influence, and the distinction between "Castilian" and "Spanish" started to become blurred. Hard policies imposing

29520-1092: The true patterns of affinity. In 2015, Keith Hunley, Graciela Cabana, and Jeffrey Long analyzed the Human Genome Diversity Project sample of 1,037 individuals in 52 populations, finding that diversity among non-African populations is the result of a serial founder effect process, with non-African populations as a whole nested among African populations, that "some African populations are equally related to other African populations and to non-African populations", and that "outside of Africa, regional groupings of populations are nested inside one another, and many of them are not monophyletic". Earlier research had also suggested that there has always been considerable gene flow between human populations, meaning that human population groups are not monophyletic. Rachel Caspari has argued that, since no groups currently regarded as races are monophyletic, by definition none of these groups can be clades. One crucial innovation in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation

29700-443: The use of the race concept to classify people, and how the race concept is used, is a matter of social convention. They differ on whether the race concept remains a meaningful and useful social convention. In 1964, the biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly – for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for

29880-585: The whole of Spain, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages "). Article III reads as follows: El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas... Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities... The Royal Spanish Academy ( Real Academia Española ), on

30060-571: The world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued: "It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other." While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there

30240-582: The world. Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences . Spanish is also the third most used language on the internet by number of users after English and Chinese and the second most used language by number of websites after English. Spanish is used as an official language by many international organizations , including the United Nations , European Union , Organization of American States , Union of South American Nations , Community of Latin American and Caribbean States , African Union , among others. In Spain and some other parts of

30420-500: The year 2000, lower interaction between Latinos of different nationalities (such as between Cubans and Mexicans) than between Latinos and non-Latinos. This is a reminder that while they are often treated as such, Latinos in the United States are not a monolith, and often view their own ethnic or national identity as vastly different from that of other Latinos. An automosal DNA study published in 2019, focusing specifically on Native American ancestry in different ethnic/racial groups within

30600-521: The years. During the 20th and 21st centuries, Hispanic immigration to the United States increased markedly following changes to the immigration law in 1965. During the World Wars, Hispanic Americans and immigrants had helped stabilize the American economy from falling due to the industrial boom in the Midwest in states such as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. While

30780-713: Was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless. The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind", by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race , the Mongoloid race , the Ethiopian race (later termed Negroid ), the American Indian race , and the Malayan race , but he did not propose any hierarchy among

30960-634: Was developed in the cities of Toledo , in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid , from the 1570s. The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages , including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in

31140-622: Was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages ). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus , much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic -derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language

31320-713: Was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h- , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects, it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and neighboring Romance languages, there are many f -/ h - doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both words pertaining to depth in Spanish, though fondo means "bottom", while hondo means "deep"); additionally, hacer ("to make")

31500-400: Was formally renounced by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2023. Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on

31680-628: Was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon , Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. In the United States the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites. In

31860-594: Was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790. According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution , which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds , and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions . As Europeans encountered people from different parts of

32040-462: Was revoked by Michel Temer after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff . In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa, with the language introduced during the Spanish colonial period . Enshrined in the constitution as an official language (alongside French and Portuguese), Spanish features prominently in

32220-457: Was the anthropologist C. Loring Brace 's observation that such variations, insofar as they are affected by natural selection , slow migration, or genetic drift , are distributed along geographic gradations or clines . For example, with respect to skin color in Europe and Africa, Brace writes: To this day, skin color grades by imperceptible means from Europe southward around the eastern end of

32400-535: Was thought that such large geographic distances would maximize the genetic variation between the groups sampled in the analysis, and thus maximize the probability of finding cluster patterns unique to each group. In light of the historically recent acceleration of human migration (and correspondingly, human gene flow) on a global scale, further studies were conducted to judge the degree to which genetic cluster analysis can pattern ancestrally identified groups as well as geographically separated groups. One such study looked at

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