It doesn't include Spaniards and Portuguese people.... you Europeans are out!
According to the Post, "Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, "The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness."
Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single "Latino culture." In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different "Latino" cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.
As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico's rich and sometimes proud Indian heritage is similar to Argentina's cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) "not to become another Mexico."
And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.
And for example, Mexican-Americans' tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.
Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a "Nordic-American Museum?" Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a "Latin-European-American Museum" - hang on - that doesn't fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.
For the record, I don't believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum?
And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or "fill-in-the-blank"-American artists are in the mainstream museums, then let's fight that fight to get them into the best goddamned museum in the land and not just take the easy/hard route of having "our own" museums.
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