A while back there was a story in the Washington Post about a Latino Museum on the National Mall.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea's feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and "might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution."

According to the story by Jacqueline Trescott, "This is one issue that unites our community," said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.

Let me be the first one to disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive ideas to have come out of anyone's minds in years. And I think that I am definately part of the "community."

Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos in the existing national museums, period.

I note also, the use of the word "Latino" as opposed to the now almost not PC term - "Hispanic." Otherwise we'd have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream "regular" museums and put them in a "Hispanic" museum.... thank God for that.

As it is now, if this misguided idea comes through, we'll have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, Diego Riveras, etc. out of the other plain-old-fine-arts museums and put them in the "Latino Museum."

But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the DC area is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex: female!

The semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly one.

Anyway... Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry... it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry. "Latinos" can be blonde, blue-eyed Teutonic Argentines, or Japanese-ancestry Brazilians or Celtic Gallegos in Cuba and Uruguay or pure-blooded Mayans in any Central American Republic!