Title: Is 'Latinx' elitist? Some push back at the word's growing use
Headings: Is 'Latinx' elitist? Some push back at the word's growing use
Is 'Latinx' elitist? Some push back at the word's growing use
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Content: Some see Latinx as an elitist attempt to erase a history of more traditional gender roles, or as a distraction from other pressing issues facing Latinos in the United States. "I am just a few miles from the Mexican border. If I were going down to the local taquería, they wouldn’t know what you are saying if you used the term,” said David Bowles, an author and assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Though he is a proponent of using "Latinx," Bowles said it's mainly used among his Mexican-American and Chicano studies colleagues, LGBTQ activists and authors of color. Motecuzoma Sanchez, a political activist in Stockton, CA who works in community advocacy, police and government accountability, and is the founder of a local organization that focuses on literacy called Semillas (seeds), views Latinx as a “fashionable identity” adopted by elite Latinos to address an issue he doesn't see as crucial in his community. Latinos "still struggle with educational advancement, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, police brutality, predatory bank practices, discrimination, crime and violence, low literacy, immigration and labor exploitation, diabetes, etc., but suddenly gender nouns are the priority,” Sanchez said. Sanchez,43, is also concerned that Latinx erases Hispanic history by suggesting that the use of traditional gendered Spanish terms is exclusionary. He sees "Latino" and "Latina" as describing the different roles men and women have historically adopted. To discard those terms "is to disrespect the entire culture as well as our brothers, fathers who have fought hard to be respected as men," Sanchez said.