Connecticut Latino lawmakers propose banning 'Latinx’
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The word is used as a gender-neutral alternative to “Latino” and “Latina” and is helpful in supporting people who do not identify as either male or female, according to the word’s backers.
But state Rep. Geraldo Reyes Jr. of Waterbury, the bill’s chief sponsor and one of five Hispanic Democrats who put their names on the legislation, said "Latinx" is not a Spanish word but rather a “woke” term that is offensive to Connecticut’s large Puerto Rican population.
“I’m of Puerto Rican descent and I find it offensive,” he said.
Last month, Arkansas banned government officials from using “Latinx” on formal documents as part of several orders Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued within hours of taking office.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights group in the U.S., announced in 2021 that it would no longer use the term “Latinx.”
“The Spanish language, which is centuries old, defaults to 'Latino' for everybody,” Reyes said. “It’s all-inclusive. They didn’t need to create a word, it already exists.”
But Maia Gil’Adi, an assistant professor of Latinx and Multiethnic Literature at Boston University, said the word actually dates back to Latino and Latina youth and queer culture in the 1990s, with the “x” being a nod to many people’s indigenous roots.
“The word ‘Latino’ is incredibly exclusionary, both for women and for non-gender-conforming people,” she said. “And the term ‘Latinx’ is really useful because of the way it challenges those conceptions.”
David Pharies, a Spanish language professor at the University of Florida, said another movement would replace the “o” and “a” in many Spanish nouns referring to people with an “e.” He said that is something that would be easier for Spanish speakers to pronounce than the word “Latinx.”
“‘Latinx’ was clearly a solution that was proposed outside the Spanish-speaking world,” he said.
Reyes said he expects the bill to get a hearing before the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee during the current session.
Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont’s spokesman, Adam Joseph, said the governor’s office will follow the debate as the bill moves through the Legislature.
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No, the term "LatinX" does NOT have its origins in "anglicized ethnocentricism." As the above-quoted article says:
“The word ‘Latino’ is incredibly exclusionary, both for women and for non-gender-conforming people,” she said. “And the term ‘Latinx’ is really useful because of the way it challenges those conceptions.”
Let's leave it up to the Latino/a/x/ community itself to battle this one out and hopefully arrive at a consensus -- maybe "Latine"? It's not up to the rest of us to decide.
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They have come to a consensus.
Democrats fall flat with ‘Latinx’ language
But that very effort could be counterproductive in courting those of Latin American descent, according to a new nationwide poll of Hispanic voters.
Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.
More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.
“The numbers suggest that using Latinx is a violation of the political Hippocratic Oath, which is to first do no electoral harm,” said Amandi, whose firm advised Barack Obama’s successful Hispanic outreach nationwide in his two presidential campaigns. “Why are we using a word that is preferred by only 2 percent, but offends as many as 40 percent of those voters we want to win?”
Virginia Republican Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares — who is of Cuban descent and will be the first Hispanic to hold the office in the state — said the word Latinx turns off Latinos.
“By insisting on using the incorrect term Latinx, progressives are engaging in a type of cultural Marxism, a recast of societal norms,” he told POLITICO. “Latinos don’t use the term — only upper-educated white liberals who hardly interact with the Latino community. I believe that every time they use the term Latinx, they lose another Latino vote.”
One of the founders of Univision, Joaquin Blaya, said they built the network around the concept of using the words Latino and, especially, Hispanic, because it reflected the Spanish language and united Spanish speakers from across Latin America. He said his objection to Latinx is that it’s “too weird. It’s dumb. It’s foreign. It’s not Spanish.”
“Democrats are helping Republicans make them look out of touch,” said Blaya, a registered Democrat. “We built a network around our Spanish language and we have a shared culture around it. Why are we trying to change this? It’s offensive to a lot of people.”
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As quoted above:
Looks like the majority prefers neither "Latino" nor "Latinx," but "Hispanic."
The only possible problem I see here is, "Hispanic" doesn't include Brazilians, who speak Portuguese rather than Spanish.
But do we need a term that includes Brazilians, other than maybe just "South Americans"?
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People who claim to be "against labels" are usually apolitical.
Political activists of all stripes usually recognize that labels -- of one kind or another -- are necessary, that every word in every language is a label, so the only question is WHICH labels are best.
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Number one
All European languages, except English, arbitrarily divide the universe up into 'masculine and feminine' with some also throwing in a "neuter" category.
As Mark Twain observed "In German a young woman has no sex. But a turnip DOES have a sex."
English abandoned gender endings for everything except the given names of babies a thousand years ago.
So it doesnt make sense to force the square peg of any nonEnglish European language (Russian, German, Spanish, Irish, whatever) into the round hole of English in order to fit American wokeness.
Number Two
Isnt "Latin/Latino/Latina" passe' anyway? At least on U.S. government forms?
I thought that word that the govt. beauracracy uses now is "Hispanic".
"Hispanic" means pretty much the same thing as "Latin" or "Latino/Latina". And it has no gender ending. No Oh and no Aye on its end. Both terms mean "a person whose origin is in the nations south of the USA that were colonized by either Portugal (the one giant country of Brazil), or by Spain (all of the other 'Latin American countries' stretching from Argentina and Chile up to and including Mexico".
Not exactly the most unbiased person to ask
Looks like the majority prefers neither "Latino" nor "Latinx," but "Hispanic."
The only possible problem I see here is, "Hispanic" doesn't include Brazilians, who speak Portuguese rather than Spanish.
But do we need a term that includes Brazilians, other than maybe just "South Americans"?
I would just say Latin American, unless I know their nationality. And with South America, there's also Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
Also, many in the Andean region speak Quechua, Aymara, or other indigenous languages.
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Looks like the majority prefers neither "Latino" nor "Latinx," but "Hispanic."
The only possible problem I see here is, "Hispanic" doesn't include Brazilians, who speak Portuguese rather than Spanish.
But do we need a term that includes Brazilians, other than maybe just "South Americans"?
"Hispanic" derives from the word "Hispania" which was the ancient Roman word for the entire Iberian Peninsula: both modern Spain, and modern Portugal. Ergo both Portuguese speaking Brazilians and Spanish speaking folks from the rest of South America, Central America, Mexico, and certain Caribbean islands, are all "Hispanic".
The only question is whether most Portuguese-speaking Brazilians are fine with this. If so, then "Hispanic" is indeed the best term to use for all people of Latin American heritage.
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Here is a relevant serious scholarly dissertation on the topic.
The beat and the eye candy had nothing to do with my urge to post it!
https://youtu.be/jcjHEbALkAc
Looks like the majority prefers neither "Latino" nor "Latinx," but "Hispanic."
The only possible problem I see here is, "Hispanic" doesn't include Brazilians, who speak Portuguese rather than Spanish.
But do we need a term that includes Brazilians, other than maybe just "South Americans"?
"Hispanic" derives from the word "Hispania" which was the ancient Roman word for the entire Iberian Peninsula: both modern Spain, and modern Portugal. Ergo both Portuguese speaking Brazilians and Spanish speaking folks from the rest of South America, Central America, Mexico, and certain Caribbean islands, are all "Hispanic".
Ibero-Americans?
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