
Why I embrace the term Latinx
When I first saw the word Latinx – best described as a gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent – in print it seemed strange, alien, and unfit for proper pronunciation. But rather than perceiving it as my enemy, I came to embrace its enticing, futurist charms.
The term Latinx arises from a perceived inadequacies of the labels ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’, which emerged in the civil rights era, around the same time that the term ‘Negro’ gave way to ‘black’, and then ‘African-American’.
Although Hispano was used earlier, particularly in New York in the early to mid-20th century by migrants from Latin American as a vehicle for advocacy and political organizing, Hispanic was adopted in the 1970s by government bureaucracies, the business community and advertisers and marketers as a way to promote American assimilation while retaining ethnic pride.… Seguir leyendo »