The Racist Failure of the word “Latinx.”
“Though Latinx is becoming common in social media and in academic writing,” a recent Merriam-Webster “words we’re watching” entry noted, “it is unclear whether it will catch on in mainstream use.” And last week a progressive pollster ran the numbers and found that it hasn’t caught on at all: “Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98 percent of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2 percent of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos.”
Beyond its novelty, there are obvious reasons for that stark unpopularity: When spoken, “Latinx” sounds like neither normal English nor conversational Spanish, and it looks like what it is, a word designed for ideological purposes rather than for felicity in speech. If you are deep inside progressive discourse, you will immediately understand those purposes — “dismantling the default masculine” of romance languages, centering gender neutrality or nonbinariness in place of a cisgender heteronormativity. If you are outside that discourse, politicians who use it will sound like they don’t know how to say “Latino,” or like they’re talking to an audience that doesn’t really include you.
The Left has immense desire of apply Zero Year to everything they touch. Nothing from the past seems to be good enough and needs to be erased/transformed/rebuilt. And they are truly surprised when its intended target does not prostrate immediate at their White Feet, thanking them and pledging eternal allegiance at their obvious superiority.
“Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98 percent of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity.
You Libs have an issue: The “Influencers” are not so much and there is one academy in charge of the Spanish Language already: La Real Academia de le Lengua Española. (Royal Spanish Academy) some 300 years old and very much appreciated from anybody who went to school and learned the language.
In a world where Hispanics suffer fast unexpected changes and not all of them good, Spanish is the one constant we have that unites us all. Spanish, no matter where in the world, will have the same almost immutable grammar and spelling that allow us for easier communication and faster settlement. It is a warm safe spot in a confusing world. One of those immutable things is “genero” or genre which does not come from some political orientation but by simple observation of the reality of life: There are males and females in almost every aspect of observable Nature and our language reflects that.
But the Spanish language has this little interesting quirk: Neutro (Neutral). Neutro are words in the language that are to be used in general terms to encompass both sexes. Some are specific and some to be taken as neutral depending how they are used. Example: The pronoun “Nosotros” (We) has its female counterpart with “Nosotras” when the groups of people are either male or female. But when we have a group of mixed sex, then “Nosotros” becomes a neutral term and nobody gets their intellectual “calzones” in a bunch becuase it should have been Nosotrix or some stupid shit like that.
So there are Hipanos (males) and Hispanas (females) and when we are all conglomerated in one group, the several hundred years of true scholarly academy work has accepted that Hispanos is more than enough and well settled to understand when boys and girls from our culture across the world get together and need to be identified.
“Latinx” sounds like neither normal English nor conversational Spanish, and it looks like what it is, a word designed for ideological purposes rather than for felicity in speech.
It does not “look like,” it is an ideological tool that has achieved zero resonance among the Latino/Hispanic community. And the “felicity in speech” threw me for a loop. Are the creators and user of Latinex implying we are not happy with the Spanish language? Other than being an elementary school kid having to learn all the Reglas Gramaticales (Grammar rules) the rest of the Spanish-Speaking world seems to be rather happy about the language.
If you are outside that discourse, politicians who use it will sound like they don’t know how to say “Latino,” or like they’re talking to an audience that doesn’t really include you.
We cherish the constancy of our language. In a universe of so divergent people as Latinos, it is the unifying center of our world and not just our politics. The book Don Quijote de la Mancha was written in the XV Century and the above mentioned elementary school kid can actually read and understand over 95% of it because the Spanish language is not subjected to a popularity contest every year to see what new words will be added because of “fun” or other irrelevant crap. I still remember the uproar that caused the acceptance by the academy of the works “whisky” (whiskey) in the dictionary and how some academics said it marked the beginning of the end of the language.
So when we have some Liberal politician who has not been raised in Spanish but is but a secondary thought in his/her race for elective position, trying to tell me I have to be defined by a made-up political term, we do tend to ignore it and even the less sophisticated among us (me included) will reply with a rather less than refined comment: “Anda que te den por el culo.”
