KTLA5 by Russell Falcon 9/2/2023
National Hispanic Heritage Month officially kicks off Sept. 15, marking the 35th year of the celebration of Hispanic cultures and their contributions to the U.S. As Hispanic people continue being one of the U.S.’ most visible communities, many questions about terminology arise.
The current most common ways Hispanic populations refer to themselves are “Hispanic,” “Latino/Latina” and “Chicano,” but the newer gender-neutral term “Latinx” attempts to be more inclusive to non-binary members of the population.
“Non-binary” means those who don’t identify as male or female: These are people who have a gender that blends elements of either, or people have a gender that is neither male or female. Additionally, as the National Center for Transgender Equality says, some people don’t identify with any gender and some people’s gender identity changes over time.
But although it may have good intentions, the term has yet to be integrated by most Hispanic people, data shows. And while some people’s reasonings for disliking the term may well be rooted in transphobia, for others, the issue is the word itself.
Naysayers call the term a form of “neocolonialism,” or a way for non-Hispanic progressives to control what Latin people call themselves — in other words, a “white people thing.”
“This is a blatant form of linguistic imperialism — the forcing of U.S. ideals upon a language in a way that does not grammatically or orally correspond with it,” say authors of a notable Swarthmore College essay titled “The argument against the use of the term ‘Latinx.'”
Authors Gilbert Guerra and Gilbert Orbea — who are not opposed to non-binary language, they say — continue: “It seems that U.S. English speakers came upon Spanish, deemed it too backwards compared to their own progressive leanings, and rather than working within the language to address any of their concerns, ‘fixed’ it from a foreign perspective that has already had too much influence on Latino and Latin American culture.”
More:
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/latinx-why-do-many-hispanics-hate-the-term/
