With Leftists adding words to the English language more often than Cher announcing retirement tour dates, it can be hard to keep up with their approved terms for people, places, and ideas. During the heyday of political correctness, you could go from being PC to a right wing evil meanie-head if you didn’t use the preferred term of the nanosecond. And, really, nothing’s changed.
Enter one of the latest terms, Latinx. What sounds like a new prescription drug from Mexico is actually the latest way to describe people of Latin origins. And it’s catching on like…well, the opposite of wildfire. But not from a lack of trying! It’s because of this trying to make Latinx a thing that warrants a closer look.
Latinx
What the Left thinks it means – an inclusive term for all people of Latin American origins
What it really means – a term that tested well with white Leftists, but not with the people it’s designed to describe
It wasn’t that long ago that terms like Latino and Latina were the preference, including with a certain Supreme Court Justice who described herself as a “wise Latina.” (Her rulings call that self-labeling into question, but that’s a blog post for another time.) Then, Leftists decided the terms weren’t inclusive enough because…they didn’t take non-binary people into consideration. So, instead of telling the non-binary people to pick a gender and stick with it for longer than a TikTok video, Leftists created Latinx to remove the gender designation.
To better understand the impact this change has, we have to take a slight side trip into the world of languages. I promise I won’t take too long and soon you can go back to being bored out of your minds by my usual insights.
Latin languages, especially Spanish, have distinct word forms depending on whether the person, place, or idea is considered to be masculine or feminine. Granted, this isn’t unique to Spanish, but it is essential to understanding the situation. For example, the word “baƱo” (Spanish for bathroom) is maculine, while “biblioteca” (Spanish for library) is feminine. The way you can tell which gender is being used is by looking at the last letter. Thus, any word ending with an O is masculine and any word ending with an A is feminine.
But it goes beyond just a word or two in a blog post, kids. Spanish even has specific terms to be used with the gendered words, mainly the word for “the.” For masculine words, the corresponding word for “the” is “el,” while “la” is used for feminine words. Put simply, the entirety of the Spanish language relies on gender.
Which would pose a problem for people who want us to believe there are 948,236 genders (as of the writing of this sentence). If Leftists were to accept the linguistic rules Spanish has, they couldn’t turn around and then say there were more than 2 genders. Okay, they could, but they’d look like hypocritical morons, or worse yet…the non-woke! Thus, they dropped the O and A and replaced it with an X and everybody was happy.
Not so much.
According to polling done by the Pew Research Center, only 23% of Hispanic Americans surveyed have heard of the term, with only 3% using it. Now, if we were to use global climate change logic, that would mean the science is settled, but using normal people logic, that means it’s not that popular. Just from the linguistic part alone as documented above, I can understand why.
Beyond that, though, there is a cultural element to consider. Once you dilute or strip a culture of anything that makes it unique or special, you drive a dagger into that culture’s heart. Now I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think that might piss off a few people in that culture. Normally, this might cause a political rift between Leftist voting blocs were it not for a trend that even Stevie Wonder could have seen coming.
For a long time, Leftists have counted on immigration to court Hispanic-American voters, mainly because they’re more willing to support extending every public service under the sun in exchange for votes. For the most part, it’s worked, but at a cost. When you look at what Hispanic-Americans believe and the other issues they feel passionately about, they tend to lean more Right than Left. At some point, there isn’t enough money to make someone sell his or her soul and that person walk away. Just ask freshly minted Representative Mayra Flores.
Flores is one of an increasing number of Hispanic-Americans who are leaving the Left because of actions like trying to make Latinx a thing. Sure, there is still a significant number of people willing to vote with the Left on the basis of immigration alone, but with the shift to the right comes political consequences. California will still be safe for Leftists to try out bad ideas, but what about states like Florida and Texas, and to a lesser extent states like Arizona and New Mexico? They all have significant Hispanic populations and they tend to vote. Try turning Texas blue and keeping Arizona bluish when you piss off enough people by erasing their cultural identity.
But here’s the really funny part. There is a potential for Leftists to lose more Hispanic voters over this Latinx shit than they gain from non-binary voters. According to a study done by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, 16.6 million Latinos voted in the 2020 election. A separate study done by the Williams Institute stated 1.2 million Americans identify as non-binary. Now, I’m no math wizard, but last time I checked 16.6 million was a lot more than 1.2 million. Even if the Right manages to get 10% of the Hispanic vote from 2020 in 2024, that’s still more than the potential non-binary voters if they voted 100% for Leftists.
Now, consider Donald Trump got more Latino votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 and one of the potential candidates is the current Governor of Florida, which has a significant Latino population and remains pretty popular in spite of the Left’s attempts to make him look like Donald Trump with larger hands.
That’s a recipe for a fuck-up, kids. On top of the other fuck-ups in America right now, Leftists have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
The fact Leftists thought Latinx was a suitable alternative to Latino/Latina shows how tone-deaf they are when it comes to people who aren’t white Leftists. In spite of the fact the Left has cobbled together a patchwork coalition of voting blocs, these blocs constantly have to jockey for position to gain power, money, and representation with white Leftists. And right now, white Leftists care more about pleasing people who can’t pick a gender from a list of a whole 2 than they do about making sure a significant voting bloc’s concerns are heard and respected.
And remember, kids, Leftists are smarter than we are. Just ask them.
Leftists are known for making bad decisions, but pushing for Latinx is up there with letting two people not known for being able to string together coherent sentences be President and Vice President. Whether it will be a serious blow to the Left has yet to be seen, but if there’s anyone who could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s the Left.