Me for the WSJ: With my Peruvian mother, I’m as Latina as Rachel Zegler–and I say hey gringos, quit calling us Hispanics “Latinx”
From my latest for the Wall Street Journal:
I can’t even figure out how “Latinx” is supposed to be pronounced. Does it rhyme with “sphinx” (how it looks on the printed page) or “Kleenex”? Sen. Elizabeth Warren says “Latin-ex,” as if referring to a Cuban man she once dumped. A word with a consonant followed by an x makes no sense in Spanish.
Actual Latinos shun the word “Latinx.” According to a November 2021 poll by Bendixen & Amandi International, only 2% of Americans of Latin descent refer to themselves that way. Some 68% prefer “Hispanic” to “Latino” and “Latina.” And 40% are offended by “Latinx,” which means it’s a mistake for a politician to use the word, at least around Latino constituents.
But woke journalists love “Latinx.” It’s everywhere, even in Cook’s Country magazine, which recently promised to feature more “Latinx” recipes. As you’ve undoubtedly guessed, the word originated in academia. During the mid-2000s, professors were casting about for a gender-neutral substitute for the clunky “Latina/o” and preposterous “Latin@” that they were already using. Someone suggested “Latinx,” and it caught on in journals with names like Feministas Unidas and Cultural Dynamics. Soon enough, articles were appearing in the mainstream press with titles like this one from the Washington Post: “A Latinx New Yorker feels at home in a Latinx Community Searching for its identity in London.”…
Read the whole thing here.
Posted by Charlotte Allen
Stupid Girl 