President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'

The Hill

Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said Tuesday that the Latino advocacy organization made a tough decision to better reflect its mission last week when it dropped “La Raza” from its name.

The influential Latino civil rights organization changed its name to UnidosUS from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at its 49th annual conference.

Murguía told The Hill the decision was made after three-and-a-half years of research, interviews and surveys on the organization's image.

"We really wanted to make sure what we were hearing was reflective of most of our community," she said. 

"We knew this step would be a big one and that not everybody would be fully supportive, but it’s hard to ignore the data and the changes that have occurred in our community," Murguía added.

The NCLR name had come under criticism from groups on the right, who pointed out that "la raza" means "the race” in Spanish, a reference that was interpreted by some as having racist undertones.

The organization got its original name in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, a reference to an academic concept put forth by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos in the 1930s

Vasconcelos's original idea of "la raza" was meant to unite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples of Latin America as part of one post-colonial identity group.

But Murguía says that image no longer represents Latinos in the United States.

"We’re not the same Hispanic or Latino community we were in 1968," she said. "We are a younger community — six in ten [Latinos] are millennials or younger -- and we’re a more diverse Latino community."

Murguía said the old name "appeared to be outdated" and "to have no resonance with our community."

"More than anything, our name appeared to be a barrier to our mission," she said. 

UnidosUS is the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, with interests in political advocacy and research on issues like tax reform, healthcare, housing and immigration. 

Murguía said the organization and the Hispanic community as a whole have achieved real gains over time in many of those areas. 

"Real progress is achievable, but it takes sustained engagement and it happens not in a moment, but over time," she said.

She pointed at issues like the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance coverage to nearly four million Latinos who previously didn’t have health insurance, and the earned income tax credit as tangible wins for Hispanics.