Although much of the mainstream media over the past few years has attempted to shove the term "Latinx" down our throats and the fact that the word is very unpopular in the Hispanic community, Washington Post Reporter Jose A. Del Real might have sounded what ultimately might be the death knell on 'Latinx.' And it's not because the left has necessarily become less woke. No, the real reason 'Latinx' might finally, mercifully be ditched is because Democrats believe that use of that word could have cost it votes in the 2020 election in Texas and Florida.
Del Real revealed the strong antipathy towards the term as well as its political liability for Democrats on Friday in "Latinx’ hasn’t even caught on among Latinos. It never will."
The term “Latinx,” modifying “Latino” and “Latina” to describe people in a gender-inclusive way, has become commonplace — in some quarters. Opponents of transphobia and sexism leaven their social media posts, academic papers and workplace Slack chats with the term. Liberal politicians use it. Civil rights litigators use it. Social scientists use it. Public health experts like Anthony Fauci use it. Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary in 2018. But the label has not won wide adoption among the 61 million people of Latin American descent living in the United States. Only about 1 in 4 Latinos in the United States are familiar with the term, according to an August Pew Research Center survey. Just 3 percent identify themselves that way. Even politically liberal Latinos aligned with the broad cultural goals of the left are often reluctant to use it.
This disjunction is the subject of intense, often confused, debate. Users of “Latinx” are accused of being out of touch with working-class Latino communities and of practicing linguistic imperialism on the Spanish language, which, like French and Italian, is grammatically gendered. And the term’s opponents are often called transphobic, anti-LGBT and “machista” — chauvinist.
The opposition to “Latinx” is often quotidian: The -x is hard to say in Spanish. Its plural derivatives, like “latinxs” and “amigxs” and “tixs,” are impossible to pronounce. For Spanish speakers navigating nonbinary gender in their day-to-day lives, the -x modification does not provide a road map for dealing with pronouns (el/ella) or gendered articles (el/la, un/una) in spoken Spanish. This English-language modification to Spanish-language grammar does not achieve linguistically what it hopes to achieve culturally: an expansive recognition of autonomy and difference that people can use in everyday life.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense as why there is so much opposition to "Latinx" and yet a lot of the liberal media continues to use and hype the term. What will finally put the nail in the coffin of "Latinx?"
...some strategists and journalists argue that progressives’ embrace of “Latinx” lost some votes among Latino communities in Florida and Texas by imposing a label on people who do not use it to describe themselves. (The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its members appear to rarely use the term in statements to their constituents.)
And there is the answer. Electoral considerations definitely supercede any SJW woke concerns. It will be interesting to see what happens when the next use of "Latinx" in the MSM is met with strong objections by the Democrats that the term is poison for them at the ballot box.
