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Help us grow! Follow In The Hyphen on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for videos about U.S. Latino culture.

Hi {{first_name | friend}},

It’s so hot in Los Angeles (90+), but this is not another hate-the-heat post. I like it. However, it is weird to be so warm in October, even in L.A. That’s spooky szn in a different way. 👻

Like my mini-docs, my newsletter explores the hyphen between two topics through the lens of Latino culture. In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know I say this in every. single. video: “My name is Fernando, and I cover U.S. Latinos.”

Well, I did. And then I stopped a few months ago.

The reason? One fateful dinner in Los Angeles. I was at a restaurant when, after taking our drink order, our table’s server asked: “Is your name Fernando by chance?”

I said, “Yes, why?”

The server, whose name I’ll change to Javier, said, “I follow you on Instagram.”

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Javier said, “I didn’t understand the ‘U.S. Latinos’ part at first. But I do now.”

I gasped quietly, internally. Not because I was offended he didn’t know what I meant by “U.S. Latinos,” but because I realized it is such a weird term. Rarely do people use it in colloquial speech. I realized I was so caught up in the marketing language we read in trade publications about audience segments that I didn’t stop to think about how the average consumer refers to the Latino community in the U.S. You rarely hear people talking about “U.S. Latinos.” What you do hear people talk about “Hispanics” or “Latinos.” The “U.S.” is implied if that person is in the United States. It hit me that the term “U.S. Latinos” might be alienating people. Using it without explaining might be leaving some people confused.

So I stopped using it, and instead changed my introductory phrase to something a little longer: “My name is Fernando, and I cover Latinos in the United States.”

That’s better, right? More clear.

Wrong.

Fast-forward a month or two. I was at singer-songwriter Becky G’s album release party in L.A., where a few people came up to me and asked if I was “Fernando.” Two of these conversations I remember concretely because they went very differently than the conversation with Javier.

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Dave Ramsey is one of the most well known personal finance experts in the United States. His flagship show, “The Ramsey Show,” airs five days a week, with live callers phoning in to have their finances scrutinized by Ramsey. They also get helpful advice.

But some people find general personal finance advice ignores cultural norms, migration and multigenerational families.

That’s where the Latina Dave Ramseys come in: More specifically, I’m talking about the wave of first-generation personal finance creators who are giving advice through the lens of being the first in your family to build wealth in the United States. And women, specifically, are driving a lot of those conversations.

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