Out-of-Touch Americans Use ‘Latinx’ to Advance Radical Politics
No, not those out-of-touch Americans. We’re talking about conservatives!
by Evan Urquhart
It’s become a go-to rhetorical move in Twitter replies and comments sections across the internet: Griping about the word Latinx as a stand-in for “woke” excess. Often removed from any actual use of the word itself, the standard complaint goes something like this: Out-of-touch progressives, in their mania for imposing linguistic change, are attempting to force the word Latinx on the community of Americans with Latin American heritage, thus proving that progressives are the real racists. Meanwhile, true supporters of people with Latin American roots, like the speaker (usually a white male Trump voter), are standing up against the placement of an “x” at the end of a word commonly used to describe a group of people Trumpists want to kick out of the country.
George Will got in on this anti-Latinx racket. So did the Washington Examiner, the New York Post, and, probably, your Uncle Bob. Now, conservatives are moving to ban the use of the word Latinx, and even the New York Times is uncritically reflecting the right’s rhetoric in their coverage of the attempts.
A much better attempt to understand the issue was made by the Washington Post, which quoted young people of Latin American heritage explaining why they like Latinx. The Post piece attributes the movement to introduce Latinx to people of marginalized backgrounds within the community, originally coming from gender minorities, but also having special meaning for Black and indigenous folks.
screenshot from the Washington Post
The Washington Post’s coverage is good, as far as it goes. But it does not delve deeply into the way the controversy over Latinx is being used—as a culture war distraction that conservatives are leveraging to further their pre-existing narratives about the excesses of political correctness (or “wokeness” in their most recent parlance). This narrative, which has come to dominate our politics, exists at the expense of conversations about immigration reform, humane refugee policies, discrimination against Spanish-speakers, and many other real issues which have nothing to do with the words we use.
Like other communities, Americans of Latin heritage are not a monolith. Their community contains brash young people and cautious elders, conservatives and radicals, gender minorities, and historically marginalized groups. The backlash against the use of “Latinx” within this community is best understood as a backlash against marginalized voices speaking out. The backlash against “Latinx” in American conservatism, in contrast, is a cynical attempt to exploit divisions within a community conservatives have long targeted for scapegoating and removal, all to make it easier for their broader backlash to continue on unchecked.