Although much of the mainstream media has been trying to get the word “Latinx” down its throat in recent years, and the fact that the word is very unpopular in the Hispanic community, Washington Post reporter Jose A. Del Really, possibly what ultimately sounded like the fatal blow on ‘Latinx’. And not because the left has necessarily woken up less. No, the real reason ‘Latinx’ might eventually be mercifully dropped is because Democrats believe using that word in the 2020 Texas and Florida elections may have cost votes.
Del Real on Friday revealed his strong dislike for the term and his political liability for Democrats in “Latinx ‘hasn’t even caught on with Latinos. It never will.”
The term “Latinx”, which modifies “Latino” and “Latina” to describe people in terms of gender, has become commonplace in some areas. Opponents of transphobia and sexism have soured their social media posts, academic papers and slack chats at work with the term. Liberal politicians use it. Civil rights lawyers use it. Social scientists use it. Public health experts like Anthony Fauci use it. Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary in 2018. However, the label has not found widespread acceptance among the 61 million Latin American people living in the United States. According to a survey by the August Pew Research Center, only about one in four Latinos in the US is familiar with the term. Only 3 percent identify in this way. Even politically liberal Latinos who orient themselves towards the general cultural goals of the left are often reluctant to use them.
This disjunction is the subject of intense, often confused, debate. Latinx users are accused of having no contact with working class Latino communities and of practicing linguistic imperialism in the Spanish language, which, like French and Italian, is grammatically gender-specific. And those who oppose the term are often referred to as transphobic, anti-LGBT and “machista” – chauvinistic.
Opposition to “Latinx” is often quotidian: the -x is difficult to say in Spanish. Its plural derivatives such as “Latinxs” and “Amigxs” and “Tixs” cannot be pronounced. For Spanish-speaking people who navigate non-binary gender in everyday life, the -x modification does not provide a roadmap for dealing with pronouns (el / ella) or gender-specific articles (el / la, un / una) in spoken Spanish. This English-language modification of the Spanish-language grammar does not linguistically achieve what it would like to achieve culturally: a far-reaching recognition of autonomy and differences that people can use in everyday life.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense why there is so much opposition to “Latinx” and yet many liberal media outlets continue to use and exaggerate the term. What will finally put the nail in the coffin of “Latinx”?
…Some strategists and journalists argue that the progressive acceptance of “Latinx” has lost some voices among the Latino communities in Florida and Texas by putting a label on people who do not use it to describe themselves. (The Hispanic Caucus of Congress and its members rarely seem to use the term in statements to their constituents.)
And there is the answer. Election considerations definitely dispel all of SJW’s concerns. It will be interesting to see what happens if the next time the Democrats use Latinx in the MSM, they encounter strong objections that the term on the ballot box is poison for them.
Comments are closed.