In the past few years, the
word Latinx has become more popular.
But there's a lot of strong opinions
about this word.
Too many cultures have used the masculine
to refer to all people.
That's messed up,
which is why the right word is Latinx.
Look, you can't just make up a word
and force people to use it.
I'm a proud Latinx.
What the hell is a Latinx?
Is it a Cuban Kleenex?
If so, then it is the best Kleenex.
Maybe you've heard this debate among
friends and family
or seen it talked about
all over social media.
Words like this, meant to represent
a huge, diverse population of people,
always have a big job to do.
And there are many words that people use
to define themselves
based on ethnic background
or cultural heritage.
So, for example,
I might call myself
Chicana at certain points
and then call myself Latina
and then use Latinx. Right?
We create preferences
and we still understand each other.
This is Cristina Mora.
She's a professor
of sociology at UC Berkeley.
And her research is focused
on how categories like Latino,
Hispanic and Latinx
emerged in places
like the United States.
So where did the term Latinx come from?
And should we use it to describe
such a large group of people?
When I was born on my birth
certificate, there was only two options
to describe what I was.
I was either Afro American or Caucasian.
Now, clearly, I wasn't Afro American,
so I was white by default.
In the 1960s, if you just looked
at Census Bureau reports,
you'd probably not know
that there was a pretty significant
and sizable and growing Latinx community.
That's because back then
there weren't a lot of
categories on the census.
It was like the government
didn't see these communities.
This was a problem
for organizers across the country.
Communities in the Southwest
that were Mexican American
were pushing for issues
like bilingual job
training and equal access
to education, much like Puerto Rican
and Cuban communities on the East Coast.
But politicians like Lyndon
Johnson said these were regional issues,
not the job of an administration
focused on national constituencies.
These communities were seen as existing
in their own bubbles,
despite having to fight similar battles
against discrimination
and for more rights and resources.
So organizers decided to unite
to create a national identity.
But finding a name that would communicate
a shared cultural identity
and help in this fight
for recognition in
the United States was not easy.
One of the first terms
proposed was Brown,
because the census already thought
in terms of black and white,
quite literally.
But other ethnic and racial groups
like Southeast Asian
and Filipino communities
might use this term, too.
Latin American was another idea,
but for many, this sounded too foreign.
An important part of this struggle
was to sort of argue
that Latinos belonged here,
that Latinos were part and parcel of U.S.
history, and so many feared
that Latin American
would refer to an outsider,
a permanent sort of foreign status
and not inherently American.
The term La Raza,
meaning the people
or the race, was in wide use,
but conservative Latinos worried
it would be seen as too radical
and too specific
to political movements in Mexico.
So in the end, the Nixon administration
settled on an imperfect solution.
"Hispanic", meaning
someone having an historic
or cultural link to Spain.
But then in the 1990s,
the connection to Spain
was being reexamined.
After all, many of these communities
didn't really think of themselves
as European or Spanish.
As sort of Latino was being
sort of much more used in vogue,
that we are connected to each other
by our history of being colonized versus
our connection to Spain,
which is what Hispanic tends
to sort of conjure
up in politics and in history.
However, Latino and Latina
are different from something
like African American
or Italian American.
They're not gender neutral.
So today, a new word has emerged.
Latinx comes with a new generation
that is thinking about gender politics
in ways that question
whether we should have a binary,
in ways that see this
as being in solidarity
with transgender
or with non-binary populations.
So everyone who doesn't identify
as male feels included.
You can say it,
You know, the 'x' was important.
The 'x' was meant to be noticed,
to make you pause,
to really think about
intersectional politics
and intersectional identities.
Is it even proper Spanish or English?
I bet you can't even tell me
a word that ends in 'nx'
'jinx lynx minx.'
However, Spanish
speakers might still find that
the 'x' doesn't work for them.
It's not an easy
letter to say in Spanish.
Spanish usually uses an 'a' for female
or 'o' for male at the end of words.
But some Spanish speakers
are starting to use an 'e'
at the ends of words
to make them more gender neutral.
So a term like Latine
escapes the binary of Latino or Latina.
On the one hand,
some argue it's just a way
of being able to say
a non-binary form in Spanish.
But others have argued
that is a way of creating this trans-
national solidarity movements
with much more progressive
gender politics in Latin America
that tend to use
Latine, and not Latinx.
OK, so this is a lot of words and terms
whether you're part
of the community or not.
People may ask
what's the correct word to use?
And the reality is
there isn't just one word.
Gallup recently asked Hispanic adults
what they prefer,
and 57 percent said
it really doesn't matter.
You know, I think it is nuts to think
that they would always and forever
hold true to just one category
that would last the test of time.
I think this is just
a reflection of the dynamism
that continues to happen
and the ways that groups
come to see themselves
as their sort of
socio-political environment evolves.
While there might be
a different experience
within each region,
having a unified national identity
makes everyone more visible.
There is something called, for example,
a "Latino Covid Death Crisis."
It is actually happening.
Latinx people are more likely
to be essential workers
on the front lines.
Members from the community died
at a much younger age from COVID-19.
It is happening in
Mexican American communities,
It is happening in Central
American communities.
And that's incredibly
important to acknowledge
and that we acknowledge
only when we can see data patterns
that desegregate
these communities from whites.
These communities
can point to clear data
and ask for things like better job
protections and better access
to health services.
So while it's very important
to have a conversation
about what words to use,
we need to be acting
in more meaningful ways, too.
The point is that
this is connected
to a much larger conversation
about culture,
about creating a shared
sense of belonging
and being visible as a community.