Latinx hypocrisy

On her first day in office, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued several executive orders which she apparently hopes will place her solidly in the “anti-woke” camp of the Republican Party.

In addition to an executive order prohibiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, she has prohibited use of the term “Latinx” in official state government. The latter order purports to “respect the Latino community by eliminating culturally insensitive words,” but it dismisses the existence of a vulnerable segment of the Latinx community: trans and nonbinary members of our state.

I must confess that the first time I heard the term Latinx I winced a little, but attribute this to my being of the older LULAC generation, who already feels confident in my identity as a Tejano, the ethnic descriptor I have used for decades because it speaks to the more than 500 years of Spanish/Mexican/American imperial history in Texas and to the multiple generations of my family who called Texas their home.

As my late grandmother used to say, “We did not cross the border; the border crossed us.” I now understand that the term Latinx emerged from LGBTQ+ online communities who have advocated for a descriptor of their Latin American ethnicity that includes people like them.

We all retain the right to describe our ethnicity with whatever descriptor(s) we see fit. At the same time, governments have a responsibility to count and identify their populations and to represent all the people who live in their jurisdiction.

As a result, we have already seen multiple iterations used by governments and demographers to describe multiracial, sometimes multilingual people who also share the same Latin culture. Some descriptors are broadly intercontinental, such as Hispanic, or Latino (male) and Latina (female) while some are nationalistic or racially specific, such as Mexican American, Chicano/ Chicana, Afro Latino, or Asian Latino.

We can infer from this proliferation of identifiers that the English language, as influenced by the Spanish language, has been searching for a viable, pan-ethnic alternative that encompasses all the intersectional identities a Latin person might claim, including gender.

Governor Sanders’ executive order claims that Latinx is a “culturally insensitive and pejorative” word and that, according to Pew Research, “only three percent of American Latinos and Hispanics use the word ‘Latinx’ to describe themselves,” so therefore it must be banned from state government official use.

Her office also cites Real Academia Española, a Madrid-based institution which governs the Spanish language to insist that “x” has been “officially” rejected as an alternative to “o” or “a” in Spanish. Yet why is the governor consulting a language academy in Spain to dictate government policy in Arkansas? Is the governor not aware that languages, both English and Spanish, continue to evolve and influence one another?

Latinx is a uniquely American-coined term and does not require Spain’s approval for our usage, and some Spanish-speakers in Latin America who seek to make their language more inclusive have adopted the term Latine as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino/Latina.

Those who object to the term Latinx do not have to adopt it for themselves, but if governmental service agencies choose to adopt this term to demonstrate their intention to serve all their constituents, this inclusive choice should not be prohibited.

Governor Sanders claims that her office heard from “Hispanic leaders in the state” before issuing this executive order, but I doubt she consulted members of the Latinx community who are most affected by its callous dismissal of their intersectional identities. Julissa Garza, reporter for KTHV, Channel 11 in Little Rock, did ask some in the community to “define what the word means to them.” Immigrant activist Rosa Velasquez of Little Rock says, “I identify 100% as Mexican, I identify 100% as a woman. But I also identify as Latinx.”

Velasquez goes on to say that for her, Latinx means inclusivity. For others like Rumba Yumba, they explained that the word means being who they are. “I identify as a trans-Latinx immigrant,” said Yumba. “It’s something that encompasses all of who I am. Being trans, being an immigrant, and being undocumented at the time, it was just very challenging to have all those identities at once.”

Though these voices make up a small percentage of the total Latino community in Arkansas, they deserve to be heard and represented by our state government.

Sanders knows that she will face few political costs for prohibiting the use of Latinx in state official business, but this does not diminish her hypocrisy in claiming that the word is “culturally insensitive.” It isn’t. Arkansans are still free to adopt whatever word best suits their identity and origin. This executive order will not diminish the word’s power or purpose.