We really need to define “Hispanic”

The following commentary has been altered slightly, as the wording of the original copy inflated the number of people who live in Puerto Rico who have AIDS/HIV.

There finally has arisen an “issue” more illogical than the debate over whether people in the United States with ethnic ties to Latin America are “Hispanic” or “Latino.” Are people from Puerto Rico “Hispanic?”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the answer to that question is “no.”

THE CDC MADE that call earlier this month, reversing its decision from January when it decided that people from the Caribbean island that is a commonwealth of the United States qualify for “Hispanic” status.

The decision related to the statistics the agency compiles about the number of people in this country who have AIDS/HIV. Including people from Puerto Rico in the “Hispanic” category drove up the percentage of people who have the deadly immunudeficiency virus (22 percent) who are of Latino ethnic background.

Not including them brings the “Hispanic” percentage of those with AIDS down to 17.3 percent.

Which version of the statistic is more accurate depends largely on how one wants to perceive people from the Americas outside of the United States. Latino Commission on AIDS President Dennis deLeon calls the decision to remove Puerto Rico natives from the count, “discrimination.”

“THE CDC… HAS subsequently taken two steps back again by excluding Puerto Ricans from the Hispanic incidence rates,” deLeon said, in a prepared statement. “We will never have an accurate estimate… in the Hispanic community if this continues.”

Technically, excluding people who live on the island of Puerto Rico is consistent with the technical definition of Hispanic/Latino – which refers to people living in the United States who have Latin American ethnic backgrounds.

Puerto Ricans on the island like to think that despite their homeland’s economic dependence on the U.S. government, they retain some semblance of an independent culture.

So not automatically lumping Puerto Rico residents into a generic Hispanic/Latino label is correct. After all, residents of Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina or any other Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking country in the world are not Hispanic/Latino until they deem it worthy of trying to come to live in the United States.

IT’S SIMILAR TO how Puerto Rican residents whose families move to the mainland suddenly become Hispanic/Latino upon their move. Those people are being counted as “Hispanic” by the CDC.

But Puerto Rico, because it is no longer an independent nation, needs to be counted along with the 48 mainland states, Alaska and Hawaii and the District of Columbia in terms of trying to reach an accurate count of the AIDS situation in this country.

It’s not like we give Puerto Rico any special treatment in terms of its governance. In fact, all too often, the U.S. government goes out of its way to undermine the local government in Puerto Rico – almost as though it wants to remind the island natives that they are subservient to the mainland United States.

It almost makes the decision not to include Puerto Rico residents as “Hispanic” as some sort of decision meant to further isolate the island’s natives from the mainstream – almost as though they were foreigners even within their own ethnic identity.

THERE’S ALSO THE fact that on the island alone, the number of residents with AIDS/HIV is high enough that some officials might want to think it inflates the overall estimate of Latinos with the disease. Yet we need to count them if we’re to get an honest picture of how bad the spread of AIDS is in the United States.

Besides, I can’t help but think that to the masses of people in this country who don’t give Puerto Rico much thought, the idea that those Spanish-speaking natives are any different from the Spanish-speaking people who live in the southwestern U.S. or anywhere else in this country is just an absurd concept.

That is what has health-related advocates upset about the decision.

Ultimately, trying to exclude Puerto Rico residents from the “Hispanic” category by placing them in their own category is a sign of disrespect – both to those people and to the problem of the spread of the disease.

“WE CALL ON everyone to mobilize, demand respect, and call for recognition from CDC of the health crisis that HIV/AIDS represents in our Latino/Hispanic communities in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Latino Commission on AIDS vice president Guillermo Chacón said.

“We will not allow our experience of the epidemic to be invisible,” he said. “Our health crisis is real. We want an accurate picture of the impact of HIV/AIDS now.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Latino Commission on AIDS officials are in a position of arguing that Puerto Rico (http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=12093&cha=9) residents are “Hispanic.”

If AIDS among Latinos is reaching crisis levels, complete and honest figures are needed to determine how severe (http://www.projo.com/health/content/hispanic_aids_08-03-08_6RB1G39_v8.2c81f1d.html) the problem truly is.

Medical officials meeting in Mexico City argue that significant reductions in the spread of AIDS/HIV will not take place until officials take serious actions to end the level of (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aPW2H.d6tkjY&refer=home) discrimination against gay men.