Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) slammed her Democrat colleagues for resisting using the term “Latinx” when talking about the Latino community, even though the term is generally not used by that community.
The far-left lawmaker made the remarks during a “mini-rant” on Sunday night in a video that she posted to Instagram.
“Also in the spirit of pride, I wanted to have a note on gender inclusivity in Spanish language, people sometimes like to make a lot of drama over the term ‘Latinx,’ but even before Latinx, people were trying to do this like use an ‘@’ to have the ‘A’ and the ‘O’ together,” she claimed. “Gender is fluid, language is fluid.”
“I also have a mini-rant about this because there are some politicians, including Democratic politicians, that rail against the term ‘Latinx.’ And they’re like, ‘this is so bad, this is so bad for the party,’ like blah blah blah,” she said. “And it’s almost like it hasn’t struck some of these folks that another person’s identity is not about your reelection prospects. Like this is not about you.”
“Second of all, if putting a little ‘X’ on your campaign literature is what you think is the difference between winning or losing an election, you need to talk about health care more, you need to raise people’s wages, you need to talk about more issues that also matter to people,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez’s claims come despite polling that shows that only 2% of Latinos call themselves “Latinx,” according to Politico, which added, “More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.”
Ocasio-Cortez then claimed that people are now trying to use the term “Latine” over “Latinx” because Latine “could be more inclusive to people.”
“So Latine, you avoid the masculine ‘O’ you avoid the feminine ‘A’,” she claimed. “Latine is a little more neutral, so it could be more inclusive to people.”
“That being said, if you don’t want to use it, no one’s forcing you to, but for people who enjoy trying to figure out language and have it meet the modern age, that’s kind of where it’s at,” she claimed.
.@AOC goes on a rant against Democratic politicians who are afraid to use “Latinx.” pic.twitter.com/xBgnkJ0zcf
— John Gage (@johnrobertgage) June 6, 2022
Some Democrats, like Rep. Ruben Gallego (AZ), who is known for vulgar rants on social media, have lambasted using the term “Latinx,” saying, “To be clear my office is not allowed to use ‘Latinx’ in official communications.”
“When Latino politicos use the term it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use,” he said. “It is a vicious circle of confirmation bias.”
Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-FL), whose district is in south Florida, called Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks about injecting woke terminology into the Spanish language “ridiculous.”
“We’ll stop getting mad at the term ‘Latinx’ when they STOP using it at all,” Gimenez said. “Terms already exist to achieve their goals: Latin Americans, Hispanics, etc. Stop the cultural colonialism. They don’t get to hijack our culture and our language just to push their wokeness.”
Source: Dailywire
