What does "La Raza" really mean?

Heidi Beirich, the Torquemadette of the Southern Poverty Law Center, fires this round of buckshot at John Derbyshire for daring to translate “La Raza” as “The Race”:

In a recent posting to National Review Online, long-time columnist John Derbyshire ... attacked the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), for the last two words in its name, which Derbyshire translated as “The Race.” With that, Derbyshire joined thousands of other Americans who use the organization’s name to claim — entirely without foundation — that NCLR is a race-based, supremacist organization.

“La Raza,” in the context of the organization’s name, doesn’t mean “The Race” at all. In fact, the term is much more commonly translated as “the people” or “the community” and it is intended to be inclusive, encompassing the blending of European, African, and indigenous peoples in the Americas.

If She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed tells us there’s no racial meaning within the term “La Raza,” then we must believe her. After all, only border control advocates and conservatives are clever enough to use words with more than one meaning. At least, so the SPLC would have you believe. For example, they inform us, the word “welfare” is commonly "understood to be a code for people of color" among the right, and whenever a conservative mentions "cosmopolitans," they’re actually referring to Jews.

It’s on the SPLC web site, so it must be a fact. And all this time, I thought "cosmopolitans" referred to those sissy drinks Sarah Jessica Parker's skanky friends liked so much.

Is it possible the name “La Raza” was deliberately chosen for its intentional ambiguity? And that when used among themselves, it was understood to refer to other Latinos? Let’s see what other Latino activists have to say about the meaning of "La Raza." Here’s an interesting group that calls itself "Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan”:

"La Raza" (The Race) is a broad term which refers to those whose ancestry is indigenous to the area of Mexico (or "Aztlan"). MEChA members refer to themselves as "La Raza" or "Raza," but the term itself is used to indicate camaraderie among those in different organizations with the same objectives.

So what happened to the open-armed inclusion of Europeans within Latino communities? That’s not what Latinos want, according to Mario Obledo, a co-founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the La Raza Lawyers, who once proclaimed,

"California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."

How about another example from a prominent and powerful Latino activist? Art Torres, the former chair of the California Democratic Party, said Proposition 187 “was the last gasp of white America in California."

Funny, but I don’t feel like they’re including me in their new community.