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referring their own ethnicity as "Latino/Hispanic" and just rename their ethnic group, "Latin American/Mesoamericans"?
As a very light-skinned Mestizo American(US) of Mexican descent, I honestly never liked the term "Latino/Hispanic" since Latino originally meant only Latin Europeans(Spaniards, Italians, French, Portuguese and Romanians) before the existence of Latin America today or Hispanic term originating from an old Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula, Hispania that refers to Spain only. Now, the US Government just changes up the meaning of these two terms, while still including Latin Europeans, thus causing mass confusion for many people in the US, regarding race and ethnicity.
Another reason why I dislike being called "Latino/Hispanic" and prefer to call myself Latin American or Mesoamerican is because most Latin Americans have very very little in common with Spain and Portugal. We Latin Americans speak the Spanish (and Portuguese for Brazilians) as our official languages and the slight majority of us are religiously Catholic. That's where the similarity between Latin Americans and Latin Europeans end. It's not to say that I deny my Spanish ancestry or have anything against White Europeans(I still embrace my Spaniard ancestry, it's just that I was accustomed to the Mexican and American culture my whole life, not Spaniard European culture) or that I speak for every Latin American, I'm just saying there are still obvious cultural differences between Latin America and Spain and people(including Latin Americans) need to acknowledge that.
Even Spaniards straight out of Spain would tell you that we don't have much in common nor want anything to do with Latin Americans and their own cultures(which also has American Indian influences and some African influences, not just Iberian European cultural influences). That would be like referring to English-Speaking Christian Africans like Nigerians and South Africans as "Anglos"(despite that there are a lot of White Africans with Anglo roots), or how Black-Americans are referred to as "African-Americans" when most Blacks in the US just call themselves Black-Americans and reject the politically-correct umbrella term "African-American" because they don't have much culturally in common with Black Africans and they don't even know where specifically from Africa, has their ancestors came from before being bought as slaves by White Europeans.
See where I'm going?
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