-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Progressive Latino pollster: 98% of Latinos do not identify with “Latinx” label (ThinkNow Research)
- Thread starter Senor Spielbergo
- Start date
- Status
The word itself may have been invented by a person of spanish speaking heritage, but most of the people that vehemently defend it dont understand how the spanish language works. Or are willing to bend the rules of the language far more than the average speaker. The reason it's being rejected so much by native speakers it's because it doesnt fit the language.
A lot of the people are getting annoyed when the lack of support or dislike of the word gets linked to bigotry, especially when some have presented alternatives to the word such as Latin or Latine but mostly english speakers insist they are wrong or that Latinx is more inclusive.
I live in Puerto Rico and no one says Latinx in daily conversations. Because it's incompatible to us. In fact if you were to try to duplicate the rule of x replacing a/o to indicate gender neutralness in a word, the words would become unpronounceable to the average speaker. Language does evolve, as some posters have suggested in the thread, but to the majority of native spanish speaking people, this particular instance feels forced by people who dont use spanish on a daily basis.
A lot of the people are getting annoyed when the lack of support or dislike of the word gets linked to bigotry, especially when some have presented alternatives to the word such as Latin or Latine but mostly english speakers insist they are wrong or that Latinx is more inclusive.
I live in Puerto Rico and no one says Latinx in daily conversations. Because it's incompatible to us. In fact if you were to try to duplicate the rule of x replacing a/o to indicate gender neutralness in a word, the words would become unpronounceable to the average speaker. Language does evolve, as some posters have suggested in the thread, but to the majority of native spanish speaking people, this particular instance feels forced by people who dont use spanish on a daily basis.
Yeah, just read back and saw someone who did in fact self-identify as non-binary and Latinx; one counter-example is enough, so I'll retract what I said.
Thanks
Latinx is nomenclature that was most likely introduced by english-speaking people.
Latinx, as a word meant to refer to Latin people, doesn't work in Spanish, funnily enough. This is another instance of a foreign community deciding how Latin Americans should speak. First the Spaniards when they conquered my ancestors land, deciding we should learn and speak spanish.
Latinx, as a word meant to refer to Latin people, doesn't work in Spanish, funnily enough. This is another instance of a foreign community deciding how Latin Americans should speak. First the Spaniards when they conquered my ancestors land, deciding we should learn and speak spanish.
What? I was responding to Tranq and then summed it up from the wikipedia entry. I'm genuinely appreciative of both of your replies for helping me become slightly more informed on the subject.
Missed this post, you make a good point. You're correct, no one from spanish speaking countries really refer to themselves as "latinos" in general. Instead they obviously call themselves based on their nationality (Mexican, Dominican, Chilean, Peruvian, etc etc). However, it is derived from the word "latinoamericano" so it's still used in many cases but it serves the purpose in america to lump all the browns together as you suggested.
Kinda off-topic of me here. I'm assuming you're talking about gendered pronouns (which are the issue at hand), because I can't even fathom how to de-genderize top-down for the entire Spanish language.
Like how on earth would you de-genderize: "El carro" (The car) and "La silla" (The chair)... as examples.
I get that certain aspects of languages need to change (like gender specific pronouns), but what about the examples above? Is it necessary to change terminology for non-living nouns as well?
I've heard people use Latinx before and it just sounds so weird to me. It's not a thing in most Latin American countries and it sounds wrong/corny saying it in Spanish. I told my Dominican parents about Latinx and they laughed for a bit and then went back to watching primer impacto. Spanish is a heavily gendered language, that won't be changing anytime soon.
Well, you don't have to go through the trouble if you simply accept that grammatical gender is a purely grammatical quirk of the language. Nobody thinks of cars as male, or chairs as female. I don't get why this is so difficult for English speakers to understand. If you say "la persona", nobody will know if you're referring to male, female, or non-binary, EVEN THOUGH THE ARTICLE "LA" IS FEMALE. Likewise, if you say "latino"...
I don't know about natural but theoretically you'd have to apply the same thing when referring to groups of non latin folks in Spanish.
When referring to yourself, there's usually a/o, when a broad group it's usually o, in conversation or groups, you'll hear tu, usted, yo, mi, su, and etcetera. Plus kids with stuff like nino, nina or terms of endearment like ito/ita.
English is definitely easier to navigate with gender neutral terms as Spanish is rooted in gendered language.
I apologise that I misread your comment. I thought you were being dismissive of the term because it started in American colleges. Some in this thread have used that as shorthand to mean that it doesn't exists anywhere else or that it was created by white people.
Hopefully my last post will inspire more nuanced discussion than "nobody in Spanish speaking countries ever uses Latinx."
Before I learned English, I remember thinking it was a little unfair that many group terms (particularly the ones used to refer to me at that age so niños, hijos, nietos, primos, etc.) defaulted to the male endings. Not surprising that many men don't consider it a big deal or think about it too much, but I definitely did as a child. Although I was a weird kid in general. :P
Ok, first of all I'm not "speaking for nb folk." The word was made to be lgbt friendly. NB people haved used and do use it as such. I don't need to scrub through 17 pages of a likely majority cis thread to verify your claim for that to be true.
It was an organic development in American universities. A place not everyone has access to, which would of course limit it's spread since it's mainly used in academia. It's a term like mysogynoir or intersectionalism, words that don't come up in everyday converation but tend to appear in discussions about social justice. As for "there are already other words/ways with the same meaning," that's never stopped synonyms from being made. Clearly latinx comes from a speciifc background, so I can see how it can be criticized because of that. It's defintely more of a written word than a spoken one. What I don't like is people saying it has no value when it clearly does in a way most people in this thread will never have to worry about.
I'm only speaking for myself when I say 1) I don't see the harm this word is allegedly causing and 2) it sucks that a word specifically meant to include nb people has so much hatred. Feel free to hate me for that, I guess.
Im Mexican. It's whatever , I don't care. If people want to use Latinx or Latino or Latina, whatever makes them happy. It's important to someone else, I respect that.
Younger generations are more open in the DR. There was a video around San Valentine's day were a men showed up in a School with a Gift for his boyfriend and you could see the kids cheering when they kissed. That of course is not representative of the entire population but is nice to see.
That is weird at all. I remember in my school people joke a lot because most words in plural have male endings in Spanish. Most girls thought it was unfair and I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of people that think the same now.
What made you think Latino was an unsafe way of saying Latino?
Hell, since google brings up 114,000,000 hits and probably only one of them is me, I'll just tell you, it's Miguel Martinez.
yolo etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I use Latinx. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Although I will also use Chicano to describe myself, because I think Chicanx sounds dumb. I've had the debate in person plenty of times and no one really cares that much at the end of the day after some light poking.
Although I will also use Chicano to describe myself, because I think Chicanx sounds dumb. I've had the debate in person plenty of times and no one really cares that much at the end of the day after some light poking.
Makes no difference where it originated; it is being amplified and popularized by American media, to the point where a term that sounds foreign to us and that we don't identify with is becoming the default, go-to label for our people. And if you'll recall, the poll in the OP was about whether marketing departments should refrain from using the term to refer to all Latin Americans.
So as much as anyone would like to make it about bigotry or trans-erasure, the fact of the matter is that the push-back stems from Latin Americans *naturally* being upset that a label very few of us use, is being applied to all of us in favor of what we usually call ourselves.
I've never liked it but I'm Mexican not Chicano.
Latin@ is what I've always been used to.
People could label themselves whatever they want though.
Latin@ is what I've always been used to.
People could label themselves whatever they want though.
Is it okay for American marketing departments, journalists, and politicians to unilaterally refer to all of us by a term that 98% don't identify with? Remember, that's the reason this poll was conducted in the first place. I and any reasonable person would be fine if they used something like latino/latina/latinx, but to instead use latinx as a catch-all label when so few of us identify with it, or have even heard it before... Is that okay?
I was genuinely curious to see how they were using the word Latinx and I didn't find that. I feel like you posted that article to prove Spanish speaking countries use "Latinx", but you misread the article. Re-read the first sentence of the quote of the article you posted. It says " scholars that use Latinxs and/or use "x" in other gendered articles and pronouns instead of "a/o" or even "@ "". This is extremely misleading, they make it sound like the authors are using latinx when that's not the case. Instead, that they use latinx OR other non-gendered terms... which is true lxs/l@s in their articles.
They use lxs or l@s (something not mentioned in the article is the word "les" is also used) as pronouns instead of the traditional gendered "Los/Las". Not that they specifically use the word "latinx", because I haven't seen it.... thus far on google.
Think I'm talking out of my ass? Hop on a non-US Google with that region's results. Tell me how many results you get that aren't Telemundo, Univision, BBC, and other American/English based companies. I looked for the authors listed and none of them used the word latinx in the few articles I found, but they did include a lot of friendly non-gender pronouns that your article mentions.
I'll say this so we're not getting things twisted.
It's fine that american Latinx (or any non-American) that wants to identify themselves as Latinx. How about we let the native Spanish speaking NBs pick their own term... Can we agree on that?
Last edited:
As a Chilean my experience is that most people asking for non-gendered words use "Latine" (I haven't actualy read anyone use that since people in Chile don't usually refer themselves as latino though, but still). As many have said, the "x" is just unnatural to speak as a vowel so it makes more sense to replace with another vowel that isn't linked to a gender.
Latinx feels the same as POC. The first place I saw the term POC was here and I feel the same about it as I do about Latinx. Those are words meant to homogenize groups of people for the convenience of others that can't be bothered to know the difference.
People from Latin America and other counties around the region are very particular of the words used to describe themselves and will often correct you when you use a word that they don't identify with. In my own culture (My parents are Mexican, but I was born in the US) there is a variety of terms and labels that people feel comfortable using. Those same terms and labels are not acceptable to others for a variety of reasons that I wont get into here. It's clear from reading the posts in this thread that many of you are not part of our culture, but are very vocal about the words we should or should not use to identify ourselves.
People can use whatever terms and labels they like to identify themselves in the culture, but don't tell us what we can or cannot use. Don't tell us what we should or should not use. Look at history and you'll see we've already had enough of that.
People from Latin America and other counties around the region are very particular of the words used to describe themselves and will often correct you when you use a word that they don't identify with. In my own culture (My parents are Mexican, but I was born in the US) there is a variety of terms and labels that people feel comfortable using. Those same terms and labels are not acceptable to others for a variety of reasons that I wont get into here. It's clear from reading the posts in this thread that many of you are not part of our culture, but are very vocal about the words we should or should not use to identify ourselves.
People can use whatever terms and labels they like to identify themselves in the culture, but don't tell us what we can or cannot use. Don't tell us what we should or should not use. Look at history and you'll see we've already had enough of that.
I am not opposed to a gender-neutral term for Latin@ people, my issue is that if I try to say it in my native accent, it feels foreign. If I said it to another Puerto Rican here, they'd look at me weird because I'm speaking an "English sounding word" to them and not something local sounding.
If a stranger dropped it in a conversation, yea I would totally look them weird. If a friend of mine came to me and in a convo dropped the "latinx", I would immediately reply "Te crees cool cabron?"
Sure, but that's not what the poll is actually polling for nor what people are generally arguing in favour of in the thread. You keep asking for posts in the thread of people that self-identity as latinx in some bizarre "yeh but do they really tho" piece while barely anyone (anyone?) is in here saying anything in support of forcing everyone to use latinx or referring to them by it. The same has been said for most of the thread.
The poll itself, regardless of what prompted it, just asked individuals how they would best describe their own ethnicity.
2% of people selected Latinx. Which isn't really mind-blowing if you consider that the non-binary population -- the people most likely to identify with it -- is likely an equally small number.
If you asked people in the UK who used they/them over he/his and she/her and you would find an equally small result.
Which isn't the fault of the people like yourself that are taking it from the perspective of "would you want to be called latinx" rather than "what, of everything, would you refer to your ethnicity as" as that's how the article has poorly reframed the data to push that narrative. When all the data shows is that 2% of the population polled use latinx and that shouldn't be surprising.
People like Warren are misplaced in their use of it to cover everyone, despite the intent not being to enforce something upon others it evidently has a negative impact when used to refer to the wider Latin American population. Which is more than valid, and again something I've not seen [m]any in here argue in favour of (the suggestion, not Warren).
The issue is with the framing of the piece and the pretty benign data to push the notion that it's about something being taken from someone else, instead of using a term that's inclusive in places to acknowledge that a % of the population do identify that way. Because as we've seen it prompts a pretty poor reaction that overextends in the other direction and has people mocking the notion of anyone using the term themselves as white, dumb or worse.
Last edited:
I'll tag Kyuuji, since they mentioned wanting to know, but I asked my wife (who is, for the record, cis binary) about this at dinner.
She rather strongly dislikes "hispanic" because of its broadness, for the same way that some people are criticizing the use of latinx here -- it just means anyone who speaks Spanish, which could in theory include people from Spain, i.e., the colonizers, and just flattens everyone south of the US border into a single group based on a small piece of shared culture, and a lot of which is not even that strongly shared sometimes. Asked what she preferred she said "of Mexican origin". She also mentioned actually being a bit frustrated about the way that hispanic ethnicity is done on the US census, and that in the visa advisement group (for emigrants to the US seeking fiancee visas) she's in, people who would count as hispanic aren't sure what they should put down for their choice of race -- white doesn't seem correct, nor does american indian / native american, and any other single-race choices are even worse.
She was a bit more against the notion of being labelled at all, and implied she found the categorization a bit dehumanizing -- given that right now, here in the US, such racial/ethnic categorization is being used as a pretext for detention without trial and multiple forms of abuse, I don't entirely blame her; it's hard to separate genuine curiosity about American ethnic makeup right now from categorization meant to serve fascist purposes, and the people doing it don't care at all about citizenship of those they're taking captive.
She rather strongly dislikes "hispanic" because of its broadness, for the same way that some people are criticizing the use of latinx here -- it just means anyone who speaks Spanish, which could in theory include people from Spain, i.e., the colonizers, and just flattens everyone south of the US border into a single group based on a small piece of shared culture, and a lot of which is not even that strongly shared sometimes. Asked what she preferred she said "of Mexican origin". She also mentioned actually being a bit frustrated about the way that hispanic ethnicity is done on the US census, and that in the visa advisement group (for emigrants to the US seeking fiancee visas) she's in, people who would count as hispanic aren't sure what they should put down for their choice of race -- white doesn't seem correct, nor does american indian / native american, and any other single-race choices are even worse.
She was a bit more against the notion of being labelled at all, and implied she found the categorization a bit dehumanizing -- given that right now, here in the US, such racial/ethnic categorization is being used as a pretext for detention without trial and multiple forms of abuse, I don't entirely blame her; it's hard to separate genuine curiosity about American ethnic makeup right now from categorization meant to serve fascist purposes, and the people doing it don't care at all about citizenship of those they're taking captive.
Sure, but that's not what the poll is actually polling for nor what people are generally arguing in favour of in the thread. You keep asking for posts in the thread of people that self-identity as latinx in some bizarre "yeh but do they really tho" piece while barely anyone (anyone?) is in here saying anything in support of forcing everyone to use latinx or referring to them by it. The same has been said for most of the thread.
The poll itself, regardless of what prompted it, just asked individuals how they would best describe their own ethnicity.
2% of people selected Latinx. Which isn't really mind-blowing if you consider that the non-binary population -- the people most likely to identify with it -- is likely an equally small number.
If you asked people in the UK who used they/them over he/his and she/her and you would find an equally small result.
Which isn't the fault of the people like yourself that are taking it from the perspective of "would you want to be called latinx" rather than "what, of everything, would you refer to your ethnicity as" as that's how the article has poorly reframed the data to push that narrative. When all the data shows is that 2% of the population polled use latinx and that shouldn't be surprising.
People like Warren are misplaced in their use of it to cover everyone, despite the intent not being to enforce something upon others it evidently has a negative impact when used to refer to the wider Latin American population. Which is more than valid, and again something I've not seen [m]any in here argue in favour of (the suggestion, not Warren).
The issue is with the framing of the piece and the pretty benign data to keep pushing the notion that it's about something being taken from someone else, instead of using a term that's inclusive in places to acknowledge that a % of the population do identify that way. Because as we've seen it prompts a pretty poor reaction that overextends in the other direction and has people mocking the notion of anyone using the term themselves as white, dumb or worse.
The issue here is that this article/thread had nothing to do with NBs other than the author of the article (and his entire marketing team) using/describing "Latinx" incorrectly.
Regardless of what the poll asked, the article is framed as: "What do the browns prefer to call themselves these days?"
This isn't some anti-nb movement, the article itself is misinformed so you can't blame people's reaction to it... The article itself is saying that LatinX is a new label for "Latinos", when we all know that's not true. Those who are informed know it's a label mainly used by Latin NB (in America).
Read some of these misinformed quotes:
"Over the past few months and years, several of our clients have noticed the term "Latinx" trending as a new ethnic label to describe Latinos. It has been used by academics, activists, and major companies, including NBC and Marvel, as well as politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren. We were curious about the appeal of "Latinx" among the country's 52 million people of Latin American ancestry and decided to test its popularity."
"We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. When it came to "Latinx," there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos."
They're the ones framing Latinx as an alternative to labeling people Latino/Latina NOT as an addition.
I posted that article for a few reasons.
First, it shows that there are people in Spanish speaking countries that do in fact use Latinx in their writings. They list some of those people. Secondly, it was to dispute the whole "x" thing that people are arguing makes no sense in Spanish and thus Latinx is too complicated or whatever to use. There are people in Spanish speaking countries who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?
As for your last point. That is literally what this thread is about. 2% of people polled by the people in the OP are choosing Latinx for themselves. We immediately got people who came in and shat on their preferred term for self-identification. As I've mentioned before, that isn't really surprising, people are stubborn and the Latin community has countless issues with the LGBT community anyway. So yes, I completely agree that anyone should use whatever term best suits them, and I will argue with those who feel the need to sling insults at those who choose to use something they feel best describes them.
And what is wrong with using "persona latina" in Spanish and "Latin American (person)" in English?
Both are gender neutral terms that do not assume anyone's gender and do not require to invent any new words.
Both are gender neutral terms that do not assume anyone's gender and do not require to invent any new words.
As a latino, the main reason I hate it is because Latinx tells you absolutely nothing about how the word is supposed to be pronounced. There's a similar movement in Spanish about making nouns and articles non-gendered (lenguaje inclusivo), and it makes more sense there because they choose to replace the "o" and the "a" with "e". That would be much more intuitive to say than Latin ecks.
And time and time again, Latinos here said is corny. I'm tired of people trying to change are language. Latino and Latina means everyone in spanish. Depending on the sentence. In an english speaking board say "Latin or Hispanic *insert gender* and go from there.
Who is telling you to change *your* language when someone like me uses "folx"? It's just a personal choice that causes you no harm.
A lot of cisnormative privilege all over this thread, yikes.
I looked up a few of those people and didn't find that they do use Latinx in their writings, I told you that in previous post. You're using evidence that's not there just to prove your point, when you didn't even really fact check it (it even has the pronunciation wrong for latinx very first sentence).
Without looking this up, please tell me how to pronounce lxs/l@s in Spanish... is it open to interpretation cause that arrangement of letters just doesn't make sense in Spanish?
Here is a post from someone (2016) regarding this topic (I can post the link if you're genuinely curious):
"Si se está propagando, es porque hace falta. O mejor dicho, algo hace falta, y esas son propuestas. Ya aparecerá lo necesario. A no desesperar.
(Por favor, el argumento de que la @ o la X no sirven porque no se pueden pronunciar, parece olvidar que todas las letras escritas son simples símbolos). Hay mucha cosa que se escribe pero no se pronuncia, como las comas, los puntos finales, los signos de interrog/admir, las diéresis y las/los tildes). "
So lxs/l@s are actually pronounced as los/las... and some people might debate they are actually pronounced... so maybe it is actually pretty more complex than you're making it out to be?
Except that is not what the OP presented and the original article are about, re-read the original article.
The article is literally market research to figure out what the browns (as a monolith) are calling themselves these days, and seeing where this "new buzzword" stacks up against the favorites Hispanic (1st) & Latino/Latina (2nd).
The article is framed as: "What is the brown people favorite word to call themselves nowadays, we will see where this new buzzword "Latinx" stands in the rankings."
If you don't want to bother to read the article, here is a quote that clearly sums it up in one paragraph:
"Over the past few months and years, several of our clients have noticed the term "Latinx" trending as a new ethnic label to describe Latinos. It has been used by academics, activists, and major companies, including NBC and Marvel, as well as politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren. We were curious about the appeal of "Latinx" among the country's 52 million people of Latin American ancestry and decided to test its popularity. "
I agree with that, call people out when they're genuinely being asses. But you are wasting your energy attacking those specifically who are replying to the OP/Article because they might actually replying to the OP directly because they're replying to the articles conclusion: Latinx is not the new label Latinos (as a monolith) prefer.
Nothing is wrong if you want to do that.
Nothing is wrong with having a term that means everything, and that works for non-binary people to use when referring to themselves.
Someone doing a thing always makes people lose their minds. Someone wanting to show inclusivity to a group that gets left behind at best, and literally hurt at worst is seen as this huge blow against the people who have never had to consider their own privileges.
We have enbies in here saying they like the term and use it for themselves, and 18 pages deep we're still questioning why the word exists. We have people still asking the same questions on page 18 that were asked on page 1, yet we have to assume they are acting in good faith or they get offended.
I doubt you've scoured all of those people's writings. I'm taking the word of people who claim to have read their writings and say they use it. I'm not claiming to be an expert, just pointing to information I've seen online.
I would assume they aren't meant to be pronounced. Like Latinx wasn't mean to originally be pronounced but was made to point out the things they wanted to point out.
When have I said this isn't complex? I'm saying these are terms used. They look strange and may or may not be meant to be pronounced, you know like "latino/as" isn't meant to be pronounced but convey a message. What should be simple is letting people self-identify, which a lot of people have a problem with. They are giddily telling us how they would laugh at people if they said it, or roll their eyes, etc.
I suppose it depends on which reading is accurate. You are reading it as them being asked what the whole group should be called, but they say this: We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. That, to me, reads more personally. You may be right, I don't know. And as a new term, it doesn't surprise me that the % is low, considering the age range.
I identify as Peruvian first. My experience, culture, upbringing, etc. is too different from other latinos for the label to be relevant.
I used to think about this a lot: Why did activists go with Latinx when just Latin could've been used instead? I imagine it would be way easier to get people to use that as well. Latinx looks and sounds very awkward linguistically.
I did specifically say that I can't blame people for taking it that way and that the tactic was shitty on the part of that company.
Some people prefer to identify with the other. Otherwise I don't think there's a problem if you're speaking to general use.
Anecdotally, I've read that when protesting, signs that had something like "cuidadanos" on it had the O physically X'd out, so it read like "cuidadanxs."
Like most things around this topic, it is difficult to find the hard evidence, so take that as you will.
Most places say that it was started in American Universities, but nothing about why or how. When you read stuff from activists they seem to replace a lot of Os and As with Xs, not only with Latino, but other words.
I won't use the word for myself, and probably wouldn't write it when referring to a group of people unless asked to. I have the privilege of being a man in this culture though, which makes me a king, at least according to my mom.
Everything? No, but I looked enough to make my conclusion that the article means lxs/l@s is being used rather than Latinx. I still couldn't find those easy google results that article is talking about, even when I use the keyword "lxs" I still get weird results like for Lexus (car) site. Using keyword "Latinx" all I get are sources from American authors/sites. I was curious to see how those authors are using the word latinx and what their thoughts/feelings are about it, and like I said I found nothing of the sort. I'm not going to keep looking just to prove you wrong, but at some point I will likely stumble across an article organically (probably via FB since this is US focused forum).
Your words:
"Secondly, it was to dispute the whole "x" thing that people are arguing makes no sense in Spanish and thus Latinx is too complicated or whatever to use. There are people in Spanish speaking countries who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?"
You're using the article as proof of Spanish speaking countries that are already using "lxs" to tell people here that it's not complicated/complex. That's what I'm hearing when you say "Spanish speaking countires who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?".
You're cherry picking one sentence without the context around it.
"We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. When it came to "Latinx," there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos."
Here some more quotes:
"Some have speculated that "Latinx" resonates with women and Latino youth. We found no evidence of this in our study. While Latinos' preferences for other labels vary by age, the limited appeal of "Latinx" is consistent across generations and genders. Only 3% of 18–34 year-old respondents in our poll selected the term as their preferred ethnic label. This was roughly the same as the 2% of 35–49 year-olds. No respondents over 50 selected the term."
"Given the very small pool of respondents who indicated a preference for the "Latinx" label, it is difficult to develop a statistically reliable demographic profile of its users. Further research is also needed to ascertain how familiar Latinos are with the term, but in our survey its users tended to be English dominant and US-born. "
All I can tell you is that it happens.
Again, not going to scour the internet looking for examples, because I've already said that it isn't super popular, just that it happens.
The situation we find ourselves in is complicated, but the way to use it is not. Using an X that way seems consistent across the authors mentioned before, even though specifically finding "Latinx" seems difficult to track down.
Edited: It looks like the article I found was about Puerto Rico, but I can't verify that it was written by a Puerto Rican.
If this means that this is predominantly used by Spanish speaking people in the United States, so be it. I don't see a huge difference, since we're still talking about Hispanic/Latin people. Some seem to have a problem with that, though.
Edit2:
Here's a quick one.
Last edited:
I'm not aruging that lxs/l@s isn't used, it's that it's complicated/complex change when applied linguistically with native speakers. Just because some scholars/authors use it doesn't mean it's widely adapted or even known.
Your example what you posted, it makes sense on paper and isn't that complex to figure out in literary works but saying it out loud is a different ball game.
Linguistically, how would you say "La guerra contras todxs lxs puertorriqueñxs"? Is the x silent? Is the x ignored and o/a used verbally instead? Is the x making the english "ecks" sound?
- Status