Recommended: Can Latinx and Latino coexist?
Cindy Hernandez hadn’t heard of the word Latinx until a school class last Thursday, the day after Democratic lawmakers in her home state of Connecticut sought to ban it .
After hearing pros and cons, she didn’t change her mind about identifying as Latina, but she saw how the nongendered word Latinx could be useful.
“I feel like it’s a perfect way to kind of include other people,” Hernandez, 17, told NBC News.
A group of Latino lawmakers in Connecticut are trying to ban the word from the state’s government documents because they say it is offensive to Spanish speakers.
Debate over Latinx has intensified as its use has increased, with some saying the word has been imposed on Latinos. Polling by Pew Research Center in 2020 found that more than three-quarters of Hispanics and Latinos surveyed had never heard of the word.
Hernandez is a senior at Henry Abbott Technical High School in Danbury, Connecticut. She said she and the majority of her peers learned about the term for the first time in their African American/Black & Puerto Rican/Latino studies class, an elective every school district in the state must offer. The discussions were kept civil, said Hernandez, who has Mexican and Salvadoran […]
