Latinx or Latino?

 There has been a discussion among our class and readings of whether of not the term Latinx is acceptable to describe those of Hispanic/Latin American decent. Its a tough question and in my opinion, there is not one solid answer. Over the past several years, we have seen a large shift in American culture on how we view gender/sexuality and have tried being more inclusive.

We have seen an increase in people become more accepting of calling people by preferred pronouns and a lot of people also be more open about their gender. Changing the term Latino to Latinx I feel is an attempt to become more diverse and inclusive at the same time. It was intended to allow Americans to shift our focus from not just being gender accepting in our country, but also among people from other countries. I truly feel that those who came up with the term Latinx had the best intentions in mind. They developed the term with the purpose of being more inclusive while talking about people from Hispanic origin.

There is some criticism to the term though and a question we must ask ourselves. Why must we, as Americans decide what to call this group of people? Afterall, its not us, so why should we be in the discussion of pushing this new term onto a group of people? I believe it is not my decision to decide this. I believe that the term should be used when it is requested to be used by that community as a whole.

Currently, Spanish linguistics are made to where a group of people or objects end in o (latino), making pluralities automatically masculine. May some Americans see this as wrong? Yes. We may look at it as males being dominant in the culture. To some Spanish speaking people, however, this may be a part of their culture. They may not see it the same way we do. Therefore, I believe each person should decide how they want to be identified, until it makes in impact on the Spanish speaking group as a whole. One of my Spanish speaking friends for example told me they had not even heard the term Latinx and their personal opinion is it should be kept as Latino, unless there is stronger consensus on it being changed to Latinx. This article, for example, shows that Latinx is only used by 3% of the U.S Hispanics.

We should ask each individual person we speak to how they want to be identified. In my opinion, I believe we should let Spanish people develop their language and make this decision on their own. And if the consensus of Spanish speaking people is to change their term, then we should respect that. We as Americans should not make that decision for them.

If it is used in America, in classrooms to promote inclusivity, in a positive way, this is okay. That's because our culture has shifted to being more inclusive. I just believe that each individual person has that right of choosing how they want to be identified, i.e a Hispanic person who grew up with the idea of Latino being an appropriate term to identify as, should be able to continue identifying themselves that way. While the history of the development for the Spanish language or languages in general, may be flawed, we must accept that there are many people who have used the language for years and adapted to it through generations.

(non-copyright image, athree28, Pixabay)


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