Latino/Hispanic culture is wider than portrayed

Sharon E. Joseph, MSS
Ph. D. Student
Mass Communications and Media Arts

Dear Editor,

As a teaching assistant/lecturer in the Black American Studies,

I was extremely happy to read that a class in Latino culture is now being taught in the anthropology department and an RSO for Native American students was being formed at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (Friday, Sept. 5 edition of the Daily Egyptian).

My pleasure quickly turned to dismay when the second sentence of the article on the Latino culture class stated that the vast majority of Latinos are Mexican in origin. This statement indicates that the author of this piece should consider taking this class herself.

The Latino/Hispanic Diaspora includes Central America (i.e. Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua), South America (i.e. Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Chile) and even though Brazil was a Portuguese colony, many also consider it part of Hispanic world. The writer also left out Hispanics of Caribbean extraction (Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic), individuals of Mexican extraction who became Americans after the Mexican War and last but not least, she failed to mention individuals who emigrated directly from Spain. What would millions of American female filmgoers do without Antonio Banderas or males without Penelope Cruz?

Latinos/Hispanics are a combination of Aboriginal, African and European ethnicities and form many rich and varied cultures. They eat different types food, listen to different types of music (as witnessed by anyone who watched the Latin Grammies last Wednesday) and have different political views (try getting a person from Cuba and one from Mexico to agree on U.S. immigration policy!).

Again, I applaud SIUC for broadening the scope of education offered about all American cultures, and I would encourage students from all backgrounds to take the Latino culture class, the many classes offered in Black America Studies, the classes offered in African, African-American and Native-American art, the Introduction to Peoples & Cultures of Africa in Anthropology or any other class that strives to revise the commonplace but outdated idea of what it means to be American. The more we know about all the cultures that make up America, the greater nation we can become.

Sharon E. Joseph, MSS

Ph. D. Student

Mass Communications and Media Arts

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