Democrats fall flat with ‘Latinx’ language | Hacker News Reader

Democrats fall flat with ‘Latinx’ language

politico.com

20 pointsTomte8 comments

The subtitle gives away the whole story: “Why are we using a word that is preferred by only 2 percent, but offends as many as 40 percent of those voters we want to win?” said one pollster."

.....

Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.

More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.

No one cares what they call themselves. The elites have their own language and will continue to use it even if the subjects detest or resent it. Only if the elites feel there is a price to pay or a give will they change their language. NGO leaders, social justice activists and liberal digital writers clearly know better for them than they know for themselves. They will keep calling them Latinx because their superiors know it's best for them. The mindset of the elite nagging nannies.

On the other hand, we have Hispanic Democratic Congressman literally saying the opposite and endorsing the views of the article.

https://twitter.com/RubenGallego/status/1467920180135276554

The 2nd stupidest thing about the term Latinx is how it is spelled.

No other word in English operates this way. If you want the 'x' to be pronouced as 'ex' you should spell it that way. Latinex. Or hyphenate it like we do with x-ray. Lantin-x.

But of course the 1st stupidest thing is that no other word in Spanish operates remotely like this either. It shows a lack of understanding or care for the Spanish language. Not too different than the attitude of colonists they despise.

> No other word in English operates this way.

Its not an English word, except by adoption (and accompanying anglicization of the pronunciation); it is one of many forms emerging from the Spanish-speaking LGBTQIA+ community for self-identity without gender specification (others include latin@ and latine).

> But of course the 1st stupidest thing is that no other word in Spanish operates remotely like this either.

The whole point of the word is that the construction of Spanish words (specifically, nouns of personal identity) is broken from the perspective of the (Spanish-speaking) people adopting the term. It is deliberately linguistically transgressive.

I posit that this is off-topic, per HN's Guidelines.

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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> Those embracing Latinx have explained that the word — and the trend of making Spanish words gender-inclusive by ending them in an X — is not a product of the U.S. left or white elites, but instead, can be traced back to Latin America and Latinos.

It might not be a product of the U.S. left or white elites, but it comes off that way.

Its imposition of it as an external description of people who do not self-identify with the term is a product of the US white, Democratic center-right, elites.

The term itself is a product of the Spanish-speaking LGBTQIA+ community.

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