talia previously said:

Afro-latino why is this so important to you? I'm getting a lot reiteration from you based on race. Yeah, its important to know who you are. But one is not just their race, or hair texture, or native country, they're not even just a disease (if they have one). Everyone wants specifications on things but why spend some much immense time on something that obviously distinguishes us and give little attention to things that can unite us such as our minds, and different universal aspects for our self-preservation. I'll even give you some other topics to speak on, interject and/or support:

• Economy
  Birth rates, health issues,
  enviromental issues
  education
  employment
  housing
  charities and foundations in the carribean (particularly Haiti and the DR which I'm interested in)
  

-And the real task is to try to do this without directly sending it to a racial platform. Afro-latino I know you've said a lot on the board but give it go, try it out. And maybe you have done this but look at it again.

-And Afro-latino generally when people accept something about themselves they either where it as a badge of honor or as a cross of pain.

Manhattanite previously said:

Well sounds like we believe a lot in common Jabao, but I just wanted to balance out the extreme statement of latino as a farce.

To say Italians are more Latino I think is not accurate, and too reductive. This is an unnecessary hangup on the distant origin of the word Latino. I've seen attempts to get people to switch to Ibero-____ but hey I say let's just live with the word we have. Forget that Latino has anything to do with Rome. To the extent it transmits some information about the diverse individuals who claim the label, or elicits some solidarity between ppl, then it is useful. I hear your argument that it may not denote much more than Spanish-speaking but from my lens it does say more. On the level of food for example, though there are wildly different cuisines it is fair to say I can walk into a restaurant of any of these cuisines and find some familiar items. Also family organization, religion, and other areas you can make decent guesses off the label.

dread you are right about the numbers game, and it plays out the same in US. Some groups stay close knit enough in large numbers that within their enclaves they identify strictky with their nationality and Latino is just a word they hear on Univision sometimes. But what happens to their kids and grandkids when they go off to a college campus? Or when they themselves move out of the immigrant enclaves? I think then the notion of Latino suddenly becomes useful to these individuals and they recognize its validity, however limited.

Also I would add that with the largest Latino population (Mexicans) even they have come up with a word for their ethnicity as something other than just Mexican, while on the other hand some of them identify by regional associations from back home in Mexico. So essentially this is all messy business and very individual and contingent on class, geography, age, education, etc. Ultimately we should just strive to learn about the particular person but in answer to AfroLatino as a very general and broad ethnicity Latino (modified as you wish) works.