Sorry “Latinx,” The “X” Isn’t Happening.

A small percentage of people have heard of it. An even smaller percentage use it. The term “Latinx” is fairly new and it’s slowly making its way to every corner of the internet every day. The word was added to the English dictionary in 2018 and its purpose is to attempt to be gender-neutral. Instead of the masculine word “Latino” or the feminine word “Latina,” some have used the letter X to denote a blank space. This is pronounced just like it looks. “Latin X”. But there’s a small problem: Over 90% of Latinos don’t like being called Latinx.

Identity
There’s no question that Latinos are proud of who they are. They have pride in their culture, heritage, and language. You may hear a woman say she’s Latina and proud of it. Or a man may say he’s a proud Latino. When people in government use this term, including the President of the United States, it can be seen as a sense of false progress. Yes, people want to be more inclusive, but when a supermajority doesn’t approve of this term, it’s probably time to stop using it. On June 24th, 2021, President Biden used the term “Latinx” to talk about the effort to get more Americans vaccinated. Biden is right about people of color being hesitant on getting the vaccine due to experiments in the past, such as the Tuskegee Study, or undocumented immigrants who are on a path to citizenship worried they will be vaccinated and deported. I…