San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Arkansas ban on term Latinx misses mark on inclusion
There’s an air of insincerity around one of the early executive orders from new Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. On her first day in office, she issued an order banning the use of Latinx, a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina meant to be inclusive of nonbinary, gender nonconforming and transgender members of the community, in all official state documents.
“My initial thoughts were that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trying to be politically relevant, in some sort of way, on a national level,” said Nathian Shae Rodriguez, associate professor and associate director for the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. “There’s really not a rationale for one of her first acts in that particular state — with so many issues happening with infrastructure and poverty and all of the other things they have going on — to ban the term Latinx in government documents. So, my first reaction was ‘Why?’ It’s a way for you to stay relevant.”
Rodriguez’s research focuses on identity negotiation of traditionally excluded and marginalized populations in the media, primarily with Latinx and Latine (another gender-neutral version of the term considered to better adhere to Spanish language rules) populations and LGBTQ populations, by looking at how they use media to negotiate their identity and how their identities are represented, misrepresented or altogether absent in media representations. He talked about this recent Arkansas ban and what his research has revealed about these debates regarding this specific identifier in Spanish-speaking communities. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/sdutlisa-deaderick-staff.html.)
Q:
In defending this ban, Sanders cites a Pew Research Center study from 2020 noting that 76 percent of those surveyed hadn’t heard of the term, and that of the 23 percent who had, only 3 percent used Latinx. Also, among those surveyed, 61 percent preferred to use Hispanic, while 29 percent preferred Latino. What is the difference? Are the descriptors of Hispanic and Latino interchangeable?
A:
I don’t think that the terms are interchangeable for some individuals. Identity is something that is not monolithic, and it’s something that is fluid. People kind of identify with different facets of their identity; it’s very intersectional. For individuals, especially those from Latin American heritage, their ethnicity, their race, their country of origin, or their parents or grandparents’ country of origin, might be something that is very salient to them. For others, maybe another facet of their identity may take more precedence, so they may not care to partake in surveys or even engage in a conversation of what these identity labels are. For the term “Latinx” because it was created in the United States and really started as a gender-neutral identity marker, it was first in these kinds of digital spaces and spilled over into physical spaces in universities and colleges. Then, we started seeing it be used across the board. Yes, primarily, it is the kind of identifier for gender identity; however, since its inception and in the early 2010s, we’ve seen it now include a lot more of an inclusive type of identity. It’s also talking about being inclusive for people in different generations, people who come from different nationalities, people with different statuses in terms of citizenship in the United States, too. So, it’s a more inclusive identity marker that transcends just this traditional binary of gender, yes, but also transcends all of these other intersectional identities, as well.
Q:
In other reporting, some community organizers call these debates around the use of Latinx unimportant to most people in the community; that the majority of folks aren’t focused on this topic and aren’t talking about this. Does this strike you as an unnecessary conversation?
A:
I think, for some people, it might be unnecessary. I think that for individuals who are traditionally marginalized and excluded, people who are Black and Brown, people who are Indigenous, there are a lot of other things that are more pressing. Civil rights are being taken away, women’s rights are being taken away, so this conversation just seems to distract from those sorts of issues that are more important.
I think it is important for individuals who are LGBTQ, individuals who are gender nonconforming and nonbinary, and trans individuals who hear this type of language, who hear pronouns being used, they feel included. We use it here at San Diego State University, so I think it’s important that that conversation happens, in some capacity. For it to be elevated to a status that this is the most pressing event and the first act of business I have to do as a new governor in office, I think that becomes ridiculous and distracting.
Q:
How do you prefer to identify? Hispanic, Latino, Latinx?
A:
I use the term Latinx, I use the pronouns he/him/él, and when I speak to my students I say that at the beginning of every class and usually at the beginning of every public lecture or professional talk that I give. Then, I do let students know that I go by Latinx and I give them the rationale for why I use the moniker Latinx. In two of my classes that I’m teaching this semester — the undergraduate class about Selena and Latinx representation, and the graduate course on Bad Bunny and cultural representation in media — in both of those courses, I use the term Latinx/e so that students in the courses see themselves represented and throughout the course they learn about it and they make their own decision about how they want to identify. As I mentioned before, identity is fluid. We’re always learning, we’re always changing, and that’s something that students can either come to terms with in regard to identifying with, or say that that’s not how they identify and that they want to identify with something different. That’s just the way that identity is — it’s fluid and it evolves as people start to learn and grow.