Plurality of Hispanic Voters Offended by New Gender-Neutral Term ‘Latinx’

Indy residents were invited to participate in a unique conversation model to discuss the changing demographics of our community and specifically how Latino Hoosiers are playing a vital role in the future of Indiana education, business, arts and culture, and our shared civic life. On Feb. 9, Indiana Humanities will hosted simultaneous dinner conversations from 6-7:30 p.m. across the city called “Chew on This: Latinos & The Next Indiana” at seven locally-owned restaurants featuring Latin American cuisine.
by Eric Lendrum

 

Recent polling data has found that Hispanic voters may not be nearly as receptive to the new gender-neutral term “Latinx” as Democrats may have originally imagined, as reported by the New York Post.

The word, which first began being used just a few years ago, is meant to address the rising left-wing notion that gender is simply a “social construct,” as well as the scientifically-debunked claim that there are more than two genders. In the Spanish language, many words are “gendered,” with adjectives often ending with a letter that signifies whether they are addressing a male or a female; words meant to address men end with an “o,” while words addressing women end with an “a.” As such, in the case of the widely-used words “Latino” and “Latina,” the far-left sought to eliminate the inclusion of the gendered letter by replacing both with “Latinx.”

However, a new poll conducted by the Democratic firm Bendixen & Amandi International finds that 40 percent of registered Hispanic, Latino, and Latina voters are offended by the use of the word. Another 30 percent said they are “less likely to support” any political candidate or party that seriously uses the word.

By contrast, just 2 percent of respondents said they support the new word.

“The numbers suggest that using Latinx is a violation of the political Hippocratic Oath, which is to first do no electoral harm,” said Fernand Amandi, spokesman for the firm that conducted the poll. “Why are we using a word that is preferred by only 2 percent, but offends as many as 40 percent of those voters we want to win?”

In addition to being perceived as an insult to the Spanish language, critics of the new term have noted that it makes no grammatical sense since no words in the Spanish language end with the letter “X.”

Furthermore, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) pointed out that there are already gender-neutral terms for these voters, including “Hispanic” and “Latin American.” He also said that those who most often use the term are White leftists rather than actual Hispanics.

“So we have already gender-neutral options to describe the Latino community,” said Gallego. “Adding an ‘X’ and creating a new word comes off as performative. When Latino politicos use the term, it is largely to appease White rich progressives who think that is the term we use. It is a vicious circle of confirmation bias.”

Despite the absurdity of the new word, it has come to be used more frequently by prominent left-wing politicians in recent years. It was eventually added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2018, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was the first Democratic candidate for President to use the term, doing so in one of the primary debates in 2019. Most recently, even Joe Biden has seriously used the term, pronouncing it in a different way than most others who use the term.

The poll further showed that the term is not only offensive to Hispanics, but also largely unknown. A total of 76 percent of the voters polled said they had never even heard the word “Latinx” before. Of the remaining 23 percent who had heard it before, only 3 percent said they had ever used it themselves.

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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Photo “group of residents” by Indiana Humanities CC BY 2.0.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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