The Word "Latinx" Backfired with Latino Voters (And It Should Be No Surprise)

Although I am glad it is almost Election Day, I also think about election dynamics and how voting patterns change over time. The Latino population in particular comes to mind because of how much the Latino population has grown in recent years. As the Pew Research data indicate, the Hispanic population grew from 9.7 million in 1970 to 62.1 million in 2020. With a U.S. total population of 331.4 million in 2020, that would make the Hispanic population 18.7 percent of the U.S. population, a percentage that is anticipated to grow. 

While U.S. Latinos have a history of disproportionately voting Democrat (a lot of that having to do with immigration), those trends have shifted more Republican in the 21st century, as the data from Cornell University's Roper Center show. Why are Hispanic voters leaning more Republican? According to a new research paper from professors at Harvard and Georgetown Universities (d'Urso and Roman, 2024), one such explanation on why Latinos are more likely to vote Republican has to do with the term "Latinx."

For those who are unaware, "Latinx" is a gender-neutral alternative to the words "Latino" and "Latina" that was invented by activists in 2004 to describe those of Latin American descent. While it has existed since 2004, it started to gain traction among the political Left, celebrities, and activists in the mid-2010s. So-called "progressives" thought "Latinx" was to be this wonderful, inclusive term. It turns out that the term had the opposite effect on the vast majority of the Latino community, as the aforementioned study found.

Why was "Latinx" such a turn-off for Latinos that it made them more likely to vote Republican? The authors of the study believe it is "Identity-Expansion-Backlash Theory." The authors created the term to describe a theory in which Latinos are against the term "Latinx" because it is conservative and/or religious Latinos driving the trend. In other words, they believe that anti-LGBT bigotry in the Latino community is responsible for the backlash. More on that in a moment, but I want to ask something first.

Is every Latino on the planet going to embrace LGBT individuals with open, loving arms? Of course not! There is still machismo that is prevalent in Latino culture and homophobia is very much a real phenomenon in Latin America. But if it were truly that bad, there would not be multiple Latin American countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, including Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and parts of Mexico. I am not here to say that views of LGBT individuals in Latin America are ideal. Latin American countries have not quite made the progress of the Western world, but it is miles ahead of Muslim-majority countries. Remember that a) there is not a Muslim-majority country that has legalized same-sex marriage, and b) there are multiple Muslim-majority countries that legally punish gay and lesbian individuals with jail time and/or execution. 

But I digress. Let us get back to why so many Latinos take issue with the term "Latinx." I first wrote on this topic in 2019 and again in 2022. Let me tell you there are multiple reasons to dislike the word "Latinx" that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anti-LGBT bigotry:

• The use of the letter "x" to denote a gender is foreign to the Spanish language.
• The suffix "-x" does not grammatically or orally correspond with the Spanish language. 
• This inoperability in the Spanish language excludes millions of Spanish speakers, not only working-class and everyday Spanish speakers, but also the nonbinary and gender-neutral Hispanics the term was purportedly meant to help. 
• Not only is it inoperable in Spanish, but it is clunky in English. Language is meant to be clear when communicated. "Latinx" fails at that endeavor spectacularly.
• "Latinx" is a term mainly used by Left-leaning, college educated individuals, Hispanic or otherwise. Not only does it come off as elitist and virtue-signaling, but it is not reflective or inclusive of the vast majority of the community it is supposed to represent. 
• It is condescending to have a group of people (predominantly white "progressives") to complain about colonialists having imposed cultural norms in the past all the while trying to come in and tell Hispanics, many of whom are working-class, how to speak Spanish and impose an Anglophone norm of "-x" in the process.  
• If proponents of "Latinx" had any cultural comprehension or awareness, they would know that there are such pan-ethnic terms as Hispanic and Latino, not to mention the fact that it is quite common for Latinos to self-identity by the country of origin rather than a pan-ethnic term. 

I wish that the authors of the paper, who both have PhDs, could be better with critical thinking and come up with a list of all possibilities for a given phenomenon instead of the one that supposedly confirmes their preconceived notions. But on the Far Left, everything is due to racism and bigotry. There cannot be any other possibility than bigotry. This explanation by the authors is both ideologically driven and unfalsifiable, not to mention a false and simplified view of a world that has complexity. I do not have a PhD, and yet I was able to come up with a solid list of reasons why "Latinx" is such a turnoff to the Spanish-speaking community in the United States without having to resort to the argument of bigotry.

“Latinx” has been around for two decades and it should be no mystery as to why most Latinos are not using it and why many dislike it. It is foreign to the Spanish language. It is downright weird to many Spanish-speakers to use a word like "Latinx" in the Spanish-speaking world, as polling from Pew Research in September indicates. It is the beginning of linguistic imperialism to impose such an Anglophone change on Spanish speakers, a classical instance of the pot calling the kettle black coming from the woke Far Left. 

Aside from my strong objections with the term "Latinx," I find it compelling that the word is reprehensible to a statistically significant number of Hispanics in the United States where they change their voting patterns in response to it. I can see why they would change their votes. "Latinx" is not about inclusion. It is telling Latinos that their culture, norms, language, and values are wrong, as the tone of the authors in this study convey. "Latinx" is not about one word. It is an attack on a way of life and a way of speaking an entire language. 

I am not saying that "Latinx" is the single most important issue in U.S. politics. Looking at Gallup polling, there are issues such as the economy (inflation in particular), immigration, crime, the federal budget, poverty, and housing affordability that make that list. What the findings with politicians' usage of the term "Latinx" does show is how disconnected the political Left is with the Latino community. It is emblematic of how the Far Left has taken a grip of the mainstream Left, particularly when it comes to language. If the mainstream Left does not want to be off-putting to Latino voters, it should abandon this linguistic locura to not come off as so extreme and instead find a way to speak to what is important to the vast majority of Latino citizens.