Hispanic Democrats in a historically blue state are fed up with their party’s woke attempts to change terms that relate to their heritage and identity, particularly “Latinx” — which is supposed to denote ‘gender neutrality.’
As such, Hispanic Dems in Connecticut have introduced legislation to ban the use of the word in official state communications, the Daily Wire reports.
The five members of the state House of Representatives, all of whom are of Hispanic descent, wrote the bill that inspired, in part, by a Republican governor — Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who moved first thing after she took office last month to ban the term from official Arkansas state communications and literature. The term is not at all accepted by the vast majority of Latinos.
Text of the legislation says:
[T]he general statutes [shall] be amended to prohibit any state agency, or state employee on behalf of a state agency, from using the term “Latinx” on any official communications or forms of the state agency.
State Reps. Reps. Geraldo C. Reyes, Christopher Rosario, Juan R. Candelaria, Robert Sanchez, and Minnie Gonzalez introduced the measure, the Daily Wire reports.
Reyes ripped the term as being ‘woke’ and offensive to the Constitution State’s growing Hispanic population of around 17.7 percent, according to the Census Bureau.
“I’m of Puerto Rican descent and I find it offensive,” Reyes told the Associated Press. “The Spanish language, which is centuries old, defaults to Latino for everybody. It’s all-inclusive. They didn’t need to create a word; it already exists.”
“This has been offensive and derogatory to all Puerto Ricans, and it’s something that hasn’t sat well with a lot of people here for a while.” Reyes told CT Insider. “When I found out that Arkansas Gov. [Sanders] banned it on her first day in the office, I saw that as an opportunity for me to do the same thing.”
CT Insider added:
A 2019 survey of Hispanic adults by Pew Research found that just 3 percent reported using Latinx themselves while more than three-quarters had never heard of the term. Among those who were familiar with the term, a majority said they preferred other general terms such as Hispanic and Latino to describe the population. The survey did not ask respondents about other terms, such as Latine.
That same year, the League of United Latin American Citizens, which bills itself as the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, dropped the use of Latinx, citing its unpopularity. Other advocacy groups, including UnidosUS, continue to use the term.
According to the outlet Blavity, Sanders signed an order on her first day in office that “banned the word Latinx from all government documents in one of seven executive orders issued within hours of beginning her term,” a decision that “represents the latest move in a series of ‘culture war’ policies adopted by Republicans in many states nationwide.”
“Sanders also banned the popular TikTok social media app from government devices, citing concerns that Chinese operatives could access Americans’ information through the app,” Blavity noted further.
