How language is changing Brazilians' relationship with Latinidad

I was born in America to Brazilian immigrant parents and thus am a citizen of both countries, but growing up with my first name in a conservative, white suburb has a way of othering you. Yet, since 1997, just before a critical mass of Brazilian Americans emerged, the U.S. government has formally excluded us from both categories, redundantly treating Latino as no different than Hispanic. Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last estimated, in 2021, that more than 1.9 million Brazilians reside in America, or about 3% of the Latino population in the U.S. Within a 2003 study of Brazilian identity in America, Harvard sociologist Helen Marrow explained that the Office of Management and Budget’s official definition of Hispanic/Latino identity encourages Brazilians not to identify in the category — “first by presenting a formal definition alongside the census question that excludes groups not of ‘Spanish origin or culture’, and second by ‘cleaning’ some of their ‘other Hispanic’ responses outside this group.” Still, Marrow’s study found 77% of Brazilian American youth said they considered themselves Latin American, and 55% said they considered themselves Latino or Latina. As Pew has written: “The use of the terms ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’ to describe Americans of Spanish origin or descent is unique to the U.S. and their meaning continue to change and evolve.