Carla Marinucci/SF Chronicle misleads about the phrase "la raza"

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle offers '"La Raza" defined', a supposed attempt to define the term "la raza". She misleadingly states (sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=28138):

Literally, yes''la raza'' is ''the race.'' But what it means: ''my people, my community,'' as in ''my peeps,'' or the Italian ''paisanos.'' As a Spanish-speaker myself, I can attest: this is one of those phrases (think outside the box) where the literal translation isn't accurate... ''La Raza" as it is used by organizations, disc jockeys, musicians, and in common conversation doesn't translate into -- as many of the critics in my mailbox suggest -- an Arayan Nation-style racial supremacy reference.

Whatever its origins (which may include supremacism along the way), the word "raza" signifies that someone is a member of a certain group and that group is almost always differentiated from others by racial means. What Marinucci fails to address is Obama's attempt to declare himself "raza", when no one who's generally considered to be "raza" would agree. The word doesn't just mean "people in general", or "my peeps", or "my friends". It means people who share some characteristics, and those characteristics are at heart defined by race.

For instance, few of those who are considered "raza" would consider an Argentinian of German descent to likewise be "raza". A similar example comes from the the meanings of the German word "Volk"; while it may mean "people in general", it also means the set of Germans and those of German descent.

To pretend that "raza" is something other than racially exclusionary is completely false, and Marinucci is just a hack who's lying in order to support the National Council of La Raza.

Comments

Carla Marinncci is doing the best misleading BS In todays news, La Raza means hate for other and it means The Race its stands for evil and it wants you dead,dead,dead, La Race is just doing its little brown Nazi thing, iTS ABOUT RULE OVER ALL OTHER PEOPLE. Buy Guns and get your butt behind the ideals of the USA Freedom for all, war is coming and it will be a civil race war the most evil kind. It is good to die on the side of the ideals of 1776 against the evil third world rulers/one world pigs and its people of evil.

That's OK, define it however. IMO the problem isn't ethnocentrism ('racism') among Hispanics (or Blacks for that matter), but the lack of it among US Whites.

Literally, yes''la raza'' is ''the race.'' But what it means: ''my people, my community,'' And what exactly makes you one of those people, that community? All kinds of stuff they insist, but absolutely not race. It's silly. I am not hung up on race vs. ethnicity or however they spin it. Either is separating yourself into a distinct, separate, special interest group which, by definition, does not put the common good #1. Black groups do that but they are unmistakably American. As LW points out, what makes the La Razas of the world different is the foreign nationality chauvinism, the issues of loyalty to and interference from another nation. Due to numbers, black separatists know they can never achieve a black U.S. nationalism. Conversely, due to proximity, Latino nationalists think they have a mechanism by which they can use ethnicity to gain political power. It's driven more by the race/ethnic opportunists (groups, politicians) than their 'community' who mostly do NOT favor higher immigration even though it largely consists of what their self-appointed leaders refer to as 'their people'. If you favor lower immigration in general, these emerging elites are a problem because they are sure to forever push for as high an amount of immigration as possible so long as their group is the bulk of it. As Lonewacko frequently points out, that imbalance also creates a multitude of issues.

Anonymous you are right, but the fact is mexico city is running the pigs in the race meaing it wants death to any other people who are not of that miserable little people and the real aim of the hispanic so called people is to dominant anyone who is not of that miserable so called people who are in fact ruled by white people who use the little people of mexico as tools of evil here inside the former USA. and people who think that is nut's may as well have been jews in 1933 NAZI GERMANY talking nice about hitler,buy guns.

She's lying: raza means the same thing in Italian as it does in Spanish. The whole concept of la raza cosmica is one of a cultural aesthetic of a unified mestizo (and catholic) race which will overcome the melanin-challeneged protestant country to the north. It is absolutely the same as any Aryan Supremacy theory and practice. Lies, lies, lies. You know she is lying when they have to write an entire article to obfuscate the truth.

"People" in spanish is "gente." "Countrymen" is "paisanos" in spanish. "raza" is "race" in Spanish. Any idiot with a dictionary can look it up for themselves. I wonder if Marinucci could be sued for telling lies about an entire class of people under some defamation of character tort theory.

LOL. You facist, white KKK loving racists crack me up. You're the pot calling the kettle black. LOL. Oops....make that the Cocaine calling the sugar white. LOL.

Jose Hitler, I introduce to to Godwin's law, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law, which states, in part: "Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact... For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress." You have a big "L" on your forehead now, loser.

LOL. Who invited the brown supremacist marxi-mexican nationalist socialist in here? Don't you have a MEChA meeting to attend or something?