Civil rights advocates applauded The Associated Press for dropping illegal immigrant from its stylebook.
Not that it matters to those of you lining up for Sunday morning menudo or huevos con chorizo burritos.
But it's a big deal for print and broadcast journalists.
Editors, copy editors and reporters worship the AP Stylebook. The Associated Press, one of the oldest news-gathering organizations in the world, will no longer refer to human beings as illegal.
While Colorlines.com and other civil rights crusaders said it was about time the AP used common sense in describing a group of people too often despised, some commentators on the ultra-conservative Fox News network accused The Associated Press of trying to influence the national debate on a soon to be revealed immigration reform bill. The same network still lets its commentators use the "w-word," a derogatory term often used to describe Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos in general, or anyone whose pigment is not white, regardless of immigration status or whether they were born in the USA.
If only the wizards at the AP would stop hyphenating Mexican-Americans and other ethnic groups such as African-Americans, we would all be in style heaven. And whose idea was it to label mariachis as "Latin music?" (We're here forever. Deal with our cultural differences.)
These are the same geros who insist on referring to tamal, the delicious mounds of corn masa, red chile and
I stopped using "tamal" after an editor changed the spelling to conform to AP style and made me look like an idiot. Or at least that's what the Spanish-language purists implied in their rude phone calls and emails.
It's hard to convince border readers you're not stupid when there's no flexibility in bending the style rules. Then to rub it in, the same critics said I must be a product of the University of Texas at El Paso, as if that nearly 100-year-old institution has absolutely no standards.
For the longest time, this newspaper also preferred to spell chile, the green or red peppers we all crave, as chili. Try explaining the basic elements of style to the natives in New Mexico where chile is chile, no matter what.
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Ramón Rentería: Illegal people no longer are AP style