The generic Latino

Even then, it didn't seem like a great idea to everyone. Some lawmakers found the term misleading but useful. Others saw it as a way for their groups to compete with the national category of African Americans for federal money. As one elected official put it: "Some people believe that Hispanics are a political force that has to be dealt with, that they're a voting bloc, and that's not necessarily true. But as long as we can give that impression and make them deal with us on that basis, hey, it's politically wise for us to do it."

Frank del Olmo, the Los Angeles Times columnist and associate editor, put it more squarely than most when he called the adoption of the catchall term "shortsighted" and "self-defeating." Del Olmo was instrumental in establishing which term the newspaper would adopt -- "Latino" -- but he also argued, in these very pages, that because Mexican Americans made up 65% of all Latinos (compared with 10% Puerto Rican and 4% Cuban), the generic term was more advantageous to non-Mexicans than it was to Mexican Americans.

"The term Hispanic allowed other Latinos to use a large and growing Mexican American population to increase their influence," he wrote. "Add up all the Cubans and Puerto Ricans on the East Coast, for instance, and they are still outnumbered by all the Mexicans in the Los Angeles area alone."

When Obama named Sotomayor on Tuesday, the headlines made use of the generic shorthand, trumpeting her as the first Latina or the first Hispanic nominee, and fitting her into a long tradition of Supreme Court nominees that signal the acceptance and achievements of minorities and women in the U.S. As political scientist John R. Schmidhauser wrote as far back as 1959, "The pattern of judicial selection has tacitly recognized the coming of age politically of many, but not all, of the ethnic and religious groups in America."

That this was specifically on presidents' minds is born out by 20th century history. In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to appoint a Catholic for political reasons when he named William J. Brennan Jr. Since 1916, there has been a "Jewish seat" on the bench. When Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, resigned in 1991, President George H.W. Bush made a point to select another African American jurist. When Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, he was upholding a campaign promise to name a woman to the court. In 1986, Reagan and members of Congress saw the selection of Antonin Scalia as a way of reaching out to Italian Americans.