Title: What is Latinx — Latinx Activists
Headings: Why Is the Term "Latinx" So Important?
Why Is the Term "Latinx" So Important?
Four Latinx activists talk about community, identity, pain, and unity.
What does Latinx mean to you?
I define Latinx, broadly, as anyone with a familial, cultural connection to Latin America.
What conversations are being had among the Latinx community?
What topics need to be addressed and dealt with among Latinxs?
The shooting at Pulse placed the Latinx community at the center of current affairs conversations. How did you feel about the shooting?
How do we strengthen solidarity between black people and Latinxs?
We also need to realize that black and Latinx aren't mutually exclusive categories.
Lighter-skinned Latinos get treated differently than dark-skinned Latinos, by non-Latinos and Latinos ourselves. We've seen this colorism affect Afro-Latinos the most. What are your views on colorism within the Latinx community?
How do we as Latin Americans continue to unify?

Content: I think there's also a lot of hurt within the Latinx community, because we don't often see our own stories reflected in the news. So there's a tendency to ask, angrily and with pain, why stories like police shootings of Latinx go unreported. There's a tendency to compare. And I understand that pain, but it sets up a false dichotomy, and it places the onus on forces outside of us. We have yet to harness social media to create a truly widespread, organized group of people with a clear mission statement—which the voices behind Black Lives Matter have done very successfully—possibly because we're such a broad group that it's hard to coalesce around a common goal. Still, we shouldn't ask others, "What about our lives?" It's up to us to continue to take on the work—many of us already are—and inspire more Latinx to stand up, and to understand that when black protesters and activists are fighting against issues like police brutality, it doesn't take away from our efforts to do the same, and it doesn't mean we can't stand alongside them and fight for a common cause. We also need to realize that black and Latinx aren't mutually exclusive categories. There are plenty of black Latinx whose safety and well-being we need to fight for, too. We also need to realize that black and Latinx aren't mutually exclusive categories.