“Changing our language is the opposite of empowering” – The term Latinx as the language of the oppressor

December 5, 2019 Kathryn DePietro
12 Comments
Race News

A colleague of mine in TESOL shared a fascinating and powerful article that debunked a thought in my head about the word “latinx” So, I will be quite honest – I hadn’t heard the term Latinx until coming to this class. I had always gone back and forth with this term in my head – while I acknowledge that Spanish is a gendered language and inherently masculine [which some people see as problematic] – I agree with this author who is latino himself. While it may be an opinion piece, the author makes quite a strong argument about “wokesplaining” and how the use of this anglicized term is the “bulldozing” of Spanish language. What I appreciated about the piece is that the author humbly comments “Gender-nonconforming Americans should be treated with compassion and respect. If someone wants to be called Latinx, that is fine, but the label should not be forced upon all Latinos.” I have to say I’m a bit convinced by his article – but if a person wants to be called Latinx then I would call them that, but this article changed my perspective of the term completely.

I’m curious to read more about how the term Latinx is perceived by others in the Spanish Speaking communities across the world. The author references other article writers, a Stanford university student, and the Real Academia Española.  This article in particular, and the quote (which I made the title of this posting) “changing our language is the opposite of empowering” made me think of Ann’s recent post about empowering people of color/people from historically oppressed populations rather than speaking on behalf of them. In this case, and from the author’s point of view, “latinx” is doing exactly that – imposing what may have been a well intentioned argument (but nonetheless, the argument of white people – the author references Elizabeth Warren) is actually imposing english and the anglo language onto the Spanish language – and the language of the oppressor. Again, this is an opinion piece, not a scholarly article with hard data backing it. So I’m up for other interpretations and hearing more – and I’m all about the fight for LGBTQI+ identities – so I myself am having a bit of a word battle in my mind.  I found this other article – which I really liked because it embraces the idea of “calling people what they want to be called”.

What do you all think?

Kathryn DePietro

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