"The first time I remember seeing it was back in 2018. And whatever latent Latin pride I had inside me came out.
What the fuck did you call me? I thought, staring down my inbox.
Latinx?
Was this a typo? A prank? Just an NYU thing?
Because when I hear "Latinx," I think of a Latino who is incapable of seducing your wife.
Sir, you don't have to worry about your pretty wife when hiring these landscapers. They're Latinx.
At the time I didn't know any Latinos who identified as Latinx —I still don't know any. Something like 97 percent (on the low end) don't see themselves that way. And more than most have never even heard the word.
I bet more Latinos and Hispanics identity with "spic" than with Latinx. Personally, I find the ethnic slur preferable.
I recently learned that "Hispanic"—which I've always used interchangeably with Latin—was concocted not too long ago.
That's according to G. Cristina Mora in Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. And thank you, University of Chicago Press, for putting the book's summary on your website:
During the 1960 census, reports classified Latin American immigrants as “white,” grouping them with European Americans. Not only was this decision controversial, but also Latino activists claimed that this classification hindered their ability to portray their constituents as underrepresented minorities. Therefore, they called for a separate classification: Hispanic.
For me, one difference between "Hispanic" and "Latinx" is that Hispanic feels like it came from within the group (and it did), whereas Latinx feels like it came from outside the group (even though, technically, it came from a very small minority within it).
Since 2018, I've been seeing Latinx forced into headlines, think pieces, and minds. What's clear from its ongoing marketing campaign is that it is easier to coerce progressive white people into using Latinx than it is to persuade Latinos to use it.
According to the abstract of a study titled Who Identifies as "Latinx"? The Generational Politics ofEthnoracial Labels, Mora and her coauthors conclude that "our findings show that ‘Latinx' is largely understood as complementary to, not mutually exclusive of, other panethnic [sic] labels like ‘Hispanic' and ‘Latino."' But that is among the Hispanics and Latinos they surveyed.
When it comes to the way non-Hispanic and non-Latinos use the word, Latinx has become mutually exclusive to the other labels. That's why every time "Latinx" is uttered, a woke angel gets its NPR tote bag.
But the term is still problematic. As Giancarlo Sopo put it in an op-ed for USA Today, "as the son of immigrants who grew up in a community with ‘English-only' ordinances, I am among the many Americans who consider it an absurd Anglicization of a language that generations struggled to conserve."
Later in the same piece, Sopo goes on to write:
Liberals should also realize it is impossible to reconcile their professed values—like multiculturalism, education and pronoun autonomy —with the peculiar strain of 2019 progressivism that seeks to radically change our language, disregards linguistic practices, and disavows our right to determine how we are described (emphasis mine).
There is an irony to the current warping of the English language, where supposedly inclusive words like Latinx— nonbinary plus Latin—end up being both exclusionary and nonconsensual.
The strain of 2019 progressivism Sopo describes has continued. There are more variants now—each one as annoying and hilarious as the others.
I remember a Vice headline from 2019: "What Happens When Latinx People Gentrify Latinx Communities."
At the time I thought a more appropriate headline would have been "What Happens When Latinx People Gentrify Latino Communities."
Because with only 3 percent of Latinos and Hispanics identifying as Latinx, what community are they even talking about? Is three Latinx roommates living in an apartment considered a "community" or the premise to a shitty dramedy?
If any gentrification is happening it is within the borders of Vice's style guide, which dictates that the article be littered with Latin-equis.
The article deals with Boyle Heights in Los Angeles specifically, where residents make life miserable for any outsider looking to develop a business or even an art center in the Chicano neighborhood.
Boyle Heights xenophobes are fantastic! They are all about open borders when it comes to the United States—"Make America Mexico Again!"—but they go all in on "Build the Wall" around their 6.5 square miles of turf to keep out would-be settlers.
"Typically, the progenitors of gentrification are white," the article reads, "but what about when they're not?"
When America sends its people to Boyle Heights, they are... sending their best.
And Boyle Heights doesn't want them—whether they be white gentrifiers or los gentefiers—you know, the kinds of college- educated Latinos who have heard the word Latinx before and love improv comedy.
Thankfully I didn't have to take on student-loan debt to learn the word. And I can unsubscribe from my Latinx alumni newsletter at any time. Like nearly all Latinos and Hispanics, I never subscribed to it in the first place."
--- That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy / Lou Perez