A major Pew report, the 2011 National Survey of Latinos, has revealed a plethora of interesting insights into the modern-day opinions of U.S. Hispanics on issues that run the gamut. Sounding off about their cultural identity, for instance, about one-third of respondents say they prefer the term "Hispanic" over "Latino," while 14% prefer the latter. But more than half (51%) don't have a preference at all.
The 2011 National Survey of Latinos is based on findings from a national, bilingual survey of 1,220 Hispanic adults conducted in late 2011. It examined questions in four major areas: "Identity, Pan-Ethnicity and Race," "The American Experience," "Language Use among Latinos," and "Politics, Values and Religion."
Aside from the preference of the term "Hispanic," another interesting finding in the "Identity" category is that only 29% of respondents believe that U.S. Hispanics share a common culture. As far as "The American Experience," interesting tidbits include that 55% of Hispanics say their group has enjoyed similar success to other racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S., and 79% of Hispanic immigrants would come to the U.S. again.
The "Language Use" line of questions found that among U.S.-born Hispanics, 51% are English dominant, though among all respondents only 24% are English dominant--yet 87% believe that " adult Hispanic immigrants need to learn English to succeed in the U.S." Respondents indicated by a wide margin that it is important that future generations of Hispanics in the U.S. to be able to speak Spanish (75% said "very important," and 20% said "somewhat important").
On the social and political front, U.S. Hispanics' views on accepting homosexuality (59%) is in virtual lockstep with the public at large (58%), but Hispanics trend more conservatively on abortion, with 51% saying it should be illegal in most or all cases, versus the general public at 41%.
Many more noteworthy findings on identity, politics, religion, and other views of U.S. Hispanics from this survey can be found at the Pew Hispanic Center's Web site.
