I'll give you an example.... the backlash during COVID whenever Anthony Fauci said "Latin-X." I heard such BACKLASH from the Latino community who were just angered by it.
Replies
OK, that was like 5 years ago and was extensively discussed at the time. And I haven't seen anyone say "Latinx" much at all since. Anything recent? Fauci was also a civil servent and not an elected official.
aug 23, 2025, 7:46 pm • 36 0 • view
But he was using the term because he was afraid of being attacked? Trying to make sense ir, I feel like, while it's not most of the Democrat pols using the terms, it the closest activists to them calling for their use? There's a reason I could guess most for the words on the list before I saw it.
aug 23, 2025, 8:09 pm • 4 0 • view
Latinx was coined by individuals who wanted a way to be referred to without gendered adjectives in their own language.
aug 24, 2025, 4:26 am • 15 0 • view
It is not used in Mexico.
aug 24, 2025, 5:09 am • 2 0 • view
Latin was right there.
aug 24, 2025, 5:23 am • 4 0 • view
Like the use of “ə” in Italian to un-gender the plurals “i” and “e”? I think it won’t survive, Italian language is too much gendered. But I say: let the nature of languages work. In the meantime, I ask the preferred pronouns and talk and write accordingly. Or keep a vague approach, it can be done.
aug 24, 2025, 10:57 am • 0 0 • view
We used Latinx in my Episcopal Church for a while until the Latino members asked us to stop using it. It may be a generational thing. The point I remember them saying is, x is not even a letter in our alphabet. What they really dislike is "Hispanic"
aug 24, 2025, 4:31 am • 19 0 • view
It’s great that there was this conversation so that people could make their views heard
aug 24, 2025, 4:32 am • 1 0 • view
Yes, I work around a lot of Indigenous people, and 1) I learned to ask them; and 2) they don't always say the same thing!! Some of them think about stuff like his harder than others. Also there are the things that they say but that we should not. It's so much more satisfying to wonder and ask.
aug 24, 2025, 4:37 am • 5 0 • view
Honestly, avoiding referring to all people from Latin and South America and of Hispanic descent with one word is probably best.
aug 24, 2025, 4:52 am • 2 0 • view
Yup. Or like, oh you speak Spanish, let's get a mariachi band.
aug 24, 2025, 6:41 am • 0 0 • view
I was aware that it shows up in some of the place names I've been to in Mexico. I'm just telling you what I was told. I have studied Spanish, but I didn't think about it hard, cause I was talking to a native speaker.
aug 24, 2025, 9:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Mexico
aug 24, 2025, 12:24 pm • 0 0 • view
Right, I guess he meant in common parlance? I have been to Ixtapa too. This is what he told me, he was a native speaker.
aug 24, 2025, 9:52 pm • 0 0 • view
In Spanish X is pronounced like an H, maybe that’s what they meant.
aug 25, 2025, 1:51 am • 1 0 • view
That's it I bet, meaning when I say Latino, I am pronouncing it like they do. But when I say Latinx I am pronouncing it like *I* do.
aug 25, 2025, 2:42 am • 0 0 • view
Lah-tinks?
aug 25, 2025, 12:27 pm • 1 0 • view
How do you even pronounce “Latinx” in Spanish?
aug 24, 2025, 12:19 pm • 1 0 • view
I have never met a person who wanted to be referred to in this way. It screams "made up by white people"
aug 24, 2025, 6:08 am • 2 0 • view
I thought “Latine” was the preferred term, though?
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 3 0 • view
There’s different preferences in every community. This article lays out some of the nuance and different opinions and perspectives around any word that purports to describe so many people at once in case it helps. www.motherjones.com/media/2019/0...
aug 24, 2025, 4:47 am • 5 1 • view
So to me it seems like the actual best practice is “just refer to people the way they like on a case by case basis, be humble if they tell you something different, and try to not be dogmatic or prescriptive” or, put even more simply, “let’s just not be assholes”
aug 24, 2025, 4:54 am • 7 0 • view
The hilarious thing is that you could be serious.
aug 24, 2025, 4:42 am • 0 0 • view
Hilarious in what sense? I personally don’t care, but I just remember a lot of the backlash to “latinx” being from Latin people who were like, “um, we didn’t pick that”
aug 24, 2025, 4:44 am • 2 0 • view
I live in Portland where latine is real. Add any letter but o or a and they fall into orgasmic bliss. They being almost entirely white progressives.
aug 24, 2025, 4:48 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah see that’s why I was rebutting the “x”, i know a lot of latin folks in like, theatre, and most of them use the “e” if they use anything at all, which is where we agree, it’s a largely extrapolated “solution” that didn’t really originate from the group itself.
aug 24, 2025, 4:52 am • 3 0 • view
I live in a heavily Latino area and every Latino I asked about it found it offensive because it felt to them like a bunch of white college kids was criticizing their language and telling them it was wrong. That is a direct quote from a friend, but others I’ve talked to about said similar things. 1/2
aug 24, 2025, 4:45 am • 10 1 • view
Mike Madrid and Chuck Rocha have spoken on this extensively over the years. After asking my friends and getting their opinions, I quit using the term.
aug 24, 2025, 4:47 am • 3 0 • view
That sounds like the right way to incorporate the views of the people directly impacted.
aug 24, 2025, 4:49 am • 2 0 • view
I really hadn’t considered it as an affront to their culture by criticizing their language until I discussed with so many. Similar discussion years ago on the term African-American vs. Black. I was surprised at those answers, too. But I get that now. I’ll never assume things like that again.
aug 24, 2025, 4:55 am • 2 0 • view
Accepted terminology also changes over time, which is why Tom’s list is ridiculous.
aug 24, 2025, 5:08 am • 2 0 • view
That list didn’t come from Tom at all. He just shared it. But that same thing has also been reflected in focus groups. As one commenter put it, many of those words are good in a grant proposal or an academic setting, but often come off as cold or removed. Sometimes simpler words are better.
aug 24, 2025, 5:12 am • 6 0 • view
Actually "cold and removed" is the best argument against theses words I've heard! Even if you know what they mean, or kind of know the term, they don't have much visceral resonance. I argued that "food insecurity" is a pretty normal phrase but it doesn't pack much of a punch.
aug 24, 2025, 4:21 pm • 3 0 • view
Exactly. They are good and useful terms for some audiences. But politics is a game of moving hearts and minds, so cold and removed is the exact opposite of what is needed when motivating voters.
aug 24, 2025, 4:25 pm • 1 0 • view
What percentage of Latino/Latina/etc people use LatinX to refer to their selves? And what percentage of people who use LatinX are non-Latin versus Latin?
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 2 0 • view
My point is it’s not an academic term being foisted on the population. If people decide to use it or not over time that is all part of how living language works.
aug 24, 2025, 4:41 am • 4 0 • view
Yeah, because academics also knew that it was a stupid, paternalistic term that didn’t even bother to engage with the language it was attempting to “fix”
aug 24, 2025, 3:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Bullshit. I work in education and I've been instructed by county administrators to use that term, which has been a point of contention.
aug 24, 2025, 11:51 am • 0 0 • view
Okay fine. I remember seeing a "Latinx Employee Appreciation Month" sign on a Macy's in Portland in 2019. The large majority of actual Latino people in actual America in 2019 didn't use the term and didn't like it. It *WAS* foisted on a population who did not want it.
aug 24, 2025, 5:02 am • 2 0 • view
I think what’s being missed here is that I was refuting Tom’s claim that these terms originate in academic ivory towers. I have no interest in maintaining the use of latinx in unless someone tells me that’s what they prefer.
aug 24, 2025, 5:06 am • 2 0 • view
In the late 2010s, many people and institutions with power in the US decided that they WOULD use this term all over the place, with seemingly total ignorance and incuriosity about whether the people it referred to liked the term. I'm glad you don't do that, but MANY others did.
aug 24, 2025, 5:24 am • 0 0 • view
I remember hearing a presentation by an MD. It was clear that she knew basically nothing about Latino culture in the US; she mispronounced a few very basic Spanish words. But she used "Latinx" a bunch of times, in a way that suggested she was confident that it was the RIGHT word to use.
aug 24, 2025, 5:29 am • 0 0 • view
Where I live "Latinx" is considered insulting, paternalistic at best. Where is it I live? Mexico City
aug 24, 2025, 6:07 pm • 1 0 • view
…by affluent white kids in private colleges who promise they have Tejano friends and it’s ok.
aug 24, 2025, 6:54 am • 1 0 • view
... in a language that is gendered. Really - this was coined by a *few* activists, and the Hispanic community at large roundly rejected it.
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 16 0 • view
It feels like your issue is more about the consequences of saying something and being perceived to be a bigot, which is about how we build community and maintain relationships even when we don’t agree with each other 100%. I think that’s an important thing to think about.
aug 24, 2025, 4:36 am • 1 0 • view
I can’t make any sense of you. Nothing in her reply indicated that anyone was viewed as a bigot. It seems like some used “Latinx” and a most Latino/Hispanic people in the group discouraged it. Your circular, rambling reply with the “bigot” buzzword is an example of what Dems should not be doing.
aug 24, 2025, 4:57 am • 1 0 • view
Not really (though I'm all for building community ..) It's about terms that originate with a small group of people, pushed out to to communities (and the wider public) that don't want to take up the term for any number of valid reasons. Like the very un-Spanish "Latinx".
aug 24, 2025, 4:54 am • 2 0 • view
Yes. Latino people I know and talk to overwhelmingly despise the term, and see it as insulting that outsiders with no knowledge of the Spanish language adopted it. (I'd be pissed too if American society decided something was problematic about the word "Jew" and we need to be called "Jxws" instead.)
aug 24, 2025, 4:58 am • 9 0 • view
Yeah, this 👇
aug 24, 2025, 5:16 am • 7 0 • view
Twelve of them?
aug 24, 2025, 4:40 am • 1 0 • view
Not a Democrat.
aug 24, 2025, 4:37 am • 1 0 • view