Debate over ‘Latinx’ highlights broader problem for Dems
Yet another poll has been released showing that the term “Latinx” is unpopular among Hispanic voters — only 2 percent preferred to use it, while 40 percent found it off-putting and 30 percent said they’d be less likely to vote for a politician who deployed it.
The term has been growing in popularity lately, often used by white politicians or columnists like myself who want to politely defer to another group’s preferences. But it appears that Latinx is not, in fact, what that group wants to be called; a majority say they prefer the already genderneutral “Hispanic.”
This seems particularly relevant as Hispanics have begun deserting Democrats for the GOP. One potential culprit is the kind of progressivism that Latinx represents — hyperfocused on language policing and divisive identity issues rather than breadand-butter policy. But one can also argue that the critics are the ones displaying a professional wordsmith’s fixation on minor word choices, rather than the substantive issues that actually decide elections.
Yet this in turn invites an obvious retort: If word choice is such a minor matter, why does this graceless and unbeloved neologism keep showing up in newspaper headlines and stump speeches? And the obvious answer — to keep peace with other parts of the progressive coalition — in fact points us toward a growing problem for Democrats and the left.
Over the years, elite American institutions have grown more and more scrupulous about achieving certain kinds of demographic representation — particularly those that lean left. That’s something for which they should be applauded because America’s elites need to look like America.
But whatever rainbow hues of race and sexual orientation are visible in the group photos, American elites across the political spectrum are actually becoming less representative in one way: Most of them hold college degrees, and many also have advanced degrees, often from highly selective institutions. The college educated are only about a third of the population, so they cannot build a durable majority without wooing other voters into the fold. With educational polarization rising, the left cannot afford to forget just how different educated people are from whatever demographic group they are supposed to represent.
On average, the interests, values and concerns of collegeeducated women differ significantly from those who aren’t — and the more exclusive their education, the bigger the gap. The same is likely to be true of basically any major demographic category you’d care to name: race, immigration status, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Of course there are commonalities that the college educated can still speak to — women with doctorate degrees worry about unwanted pregnancies and sexual assault, as do working-class women. But that doesn’t mean women with college degrees can effectively represent the broader voices of “women” when issues arise in the boardroom, editorial meeting or campaign strategy session.
Educated voices often focus on aspects of common problems that are unique to themselves — witness how much coverage of sexual assault focuses on college campuses, even though college women do not appear to be at higher risk than their noncollege peers. Or consider how much pro-choice rhetoric concentrates on disruptions to education or career, which may not be the top concerns of a high school dropout.
Consider, too, that the dropout is actually less likely to support liberal abortion laws than the graduate — something you wouldn’t necessarily glean from listening to her educated counterparts talking about what “women” think.
And so too with “Latinx.” College-educated people of any ethnicity are noticeably further left on social issues, better able to keep abreast of constantly shifting language norms and more likely to work and socialize with the professionals who use such language. So college-educated Hispanics are probably quite a bit more comfortable with “Latinx” than are working-class Hispanics. They’re also the ones likely to be sitting at the table when an institution or a politician decides to use it.
By itself, that’s relatively harmless. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed that fewer than 1 in 4 Hispanics had even heard the term. But these sorts of problems also show up in policy — which might be how both political parties decided that ultraliberal immigration policy was the key to the Hispanic vote.
Turns out Hispanics’ views on immigration are complicated, and relatively few of them rank the issue as their biggest worry. That might have been clear had the educated people consulted working-class Hispanic voters rather than their college-educated peers or their imaginations. While it may not matter what bespoke terms the left invents to please this or that constituency, it matters a great deal to whom they are talking — and to whom they listen before they start to speak.