There's apparently quite a furor going on in the U.S. about people who flew a Mexican (or other nation) flag during recent protests about proposed immigration laws.
I'll leave the discussion of that to others, but the numerous mention of the ethnicity of the protesters is something I need to talk about. Specifically I am referring to the term Hispanic, probably one of the most misused words in America.
To begin with, there's actually no such thing as an ethnic "Hispanic". That is to say, your neighbor Pedro Gonzales can walk across the border to Mexico or drive to Argentina or fly to France and he will instantaneously cease to be Hispanic, in the sense of an ethnicity. Pedro can sail a boat down the coast of Mozambique, amble along the great wall of China and ride in a hot air balloon over Indonesia but it is only when he steps foot inside the United States that he becomes "Hispanic".
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