As a Hispanic American, I very regularly tell people I am Latino and that Latinx is incredibly offensive to my heritage. I'm in my 30s and the younger people I know also find it offensive.
maybe instead of arguing about what non-gendered term we should call this group of people we should instead admit that 'latino' is a projection onto a wide variety of people that have different cultural backgrounds but roughly share a language and sometimes a skin tone.
Or maybe we should tell people who started latinx garbage and started the arguing to fuck off and
> we should instead admit that 'latino' is a projection onto a wide variety of people that have different cultural backgrounds but roughly share a language and sometimes a skin tone.
instead of inventing more names to divide people by, just... not ?
I guess I should go back to referring to all people from SE Asia as Chinese since my American friends are just too lazy and dismissive to bother with people's actual nationality and prefer broad and vague terms for the other.
If it's blissful ignorance where someone doesn't know the how gendered pronouns work, that's not a problem.
If it's someone who is intentionally adding an X to the end because of some perceived gender nonsense, then that's offensive.
Our language doesn't need fixing, that's just the way it is. This whole latinx is literal cultural imperialism. It's not about not understanding the meaning of using these terms, it's the fact that it suggests that our entire language should be changed to be more "inclusive".
You clearly don't understand how the language works. Let me give you an example. "The latinx" "La/El latinx", where La(F) -> '-a' and El(M) for '-o', how do you replace that? Everything is gendered and this is not restricted to just Spanish.
Americans can continue to use latinx, fine, but don't impose that onto natives because that just doesn't make sense in their native language. And saying, "we need to educate the older generation" is arrogant and disrespectful, we understand it quite well.
How would you feel if people of another race, especially one that has historically oppressed yours decided they knew better than you and decided to change the rules as to how you were referred and if you objected told you it was for your protection?
Latine and LatinX don't come from “people of a different race” than those it applies to (even without considering the artificial race/ethnicity distinction.)
But why is it so offensive? All I see is knee-jerk reactions giving supposed racist motives to the term, when it's been established that this term originated with native Spanish speakers!
I personally think that choosing 'x' was a poor choice, and it's basically unpronounceable by everyone in both Spanish and English. But making up supposed racist origins is a bit much.
> All I see is knee-jerk reactions giving supposed racist motives to the term, when it's been established that this term originated with native Spanish speakers!
Do you have a credible source for this claim? All I’ve ever seen are vague assertions it originated “organically” in the early 2000s.
Far from it, the term disregards the history and linguistic heritage of my mother tongue for the sensibilities of white people, who for whatever reason have problems accepting feminine and masculine word pronunciations.
Just because white people like rewriting their history and language doesn't mean they have a right to rewrite mine.
If you find that inflammatory or offensive, now you know how I feel.
> Far from it, the term disregards the history and linguistic heritage of my mother tongue for the sensibilities of white people
It was created by native apeakers of your mother tongue, as a conscious rejection of the way they saw it—their mother tongue—as erasing, or at least obstructing communication of, their gender identity.
> I swear you linguistic imperialists are insufferable.
The funny thing is that I haven’t even mentioned my preference for a label the group in question in this discussion.
> Leave your hands off of my language and butcher up your own mother tongue.
While at least some of the labels under discussion originate in your language and its community of speakers, the discussion is about use in English. So unless your mother tongue is English, no one's hands are, metaphorically, on it in this discussion.
So, I guess to be consistent, keep your “linguistic imperialism” to yourself...
[citation needed]
We have no idea where the term originated from. Stop lying and posting this BS because your incessent need to belabor your otherwise incorrect point proves otherwise.
> So, I guess to be consistent, keep your “linguistic imperialism” to yourself...
> Who said these people represented the general Spanish-speaking population?
That's a very good question. Since you appear to be arguing against that strawman, tell us, who said that?
EDIT: My point is, if we can acknowledge that, like Hispanic and Latino and Latino/Latina (each of which are strongly objected to by some in the community, preferred by others, and tolerated but neither preferred nor objected to by others when talking about the broader group inclusively) these are preferred identity labels of part of the community which is being addressed, we can then talk about how to address a community with internal divisions over preferred identity label, when one specifically wants to address the whole group and not just those who favor a particular label. But we can’t even get to that point as long as we pretend that this is just an external imposition unconnected to preferences expressed within the population described.
I'm asking because I genuinely don't know who decided that this group should make the call regarding how the general population is referred to, especially that the general population is disregarded in this matter in favour of the mentioned group?
EDIT: to elaborate: I take issue to the fact that this word is used to describe not just people who wanted to be referred to like that, but the general population.
> I take issue to the fact that this word is used to describe not just people who wanted to be referred to like that, but the general population.
This I agree with. This is a problem. And, in fact, we’ve been through and addressed almost this exact same problem with the inherently gendered nature (and default-male gender) of Spanish-derived demonyms and how that conflicts with some people’s gender identity before – and the problem of conflicts of preferred identity label for reasons other than gender – before. And mostly, what was done when addressing a group of mixed demonym preference with no single mutually-acceptable one was use multiple, joined with a slash (or, sometimes, here they differed only by a suffix, to separate the alternate suffixes with a slash.)
Actual, rather than performative, inclusion means not imposing a shared label just because you view the group as one for your purposes.
From what I've found there is no definite proof of it's origin. Saying whites or Latinos created it has equal validity. Can you provide your source? Not attempting a gotcha here, just curious
