Yes, We're Calling It Hispanic Heritage Month And We Know It Makes Some Of You Cringe

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/ [login to see] /yes-were-calling-it-hispanic-heritage-month-and-we-know-it-makes-some-of-you-cri
As the headline unambiguously states, here at NPR we've kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month.

Not Latino Heritage Month. Not Latinx Heritage Month. Not even a compromise or a combination of the three: Hispanic/Latino/Latinx Heritage Month.

To be honest, as far as this team goes, NPR began to participate in the national event that is called Hispanic Heritage Month with no discussion about existing tensions within Latino communities regarding the use of the word Hispanic, its origins and whether it may be time to swap out the catchall label for something different.

Perhaps that has something to do with the rapid pace of the news recently regarding the end of a 20-year-long war in Afghanistan, another terrifying spike in the COVID-19 pandemic or this week's recall election in California. Or, in full transparency, it could have something to do with the fact that as of 2020 only 6% of the NPR's newsroom and on-air journalists identify as Hispanic or Latino.

But it's not too late to pose the following thorny questions: What's the harm in lumping together roughly 62 million people with complex identities under a single umbrella? Is a blanket pan-ethnic term necessary to unite and reflect a shared culture that is still largely (infuriatingly) excluded from mainstream popular culture? Or the more basic question: ¿Porque Hispanic?