There is an underrated trolling opportunity in switching from “Romance languages”, the term preferred by the French, to “Latina languages”, the term preferred in Italy and Spain (language being, of course, feminine).
From Jeff Maurer's piece earlier this morning that I find appropriate for this Latinx nonsense:
"Leftists come from the tradition of acting out one's daddy issues in the public square while claiming to speak for “the people”, even though “the people” would kind of like to see them crushed by a boulder (according to liberals)"
I still cannot understand why Biden did not and does not make an issue of allowing in people seeking asylum from "socialist" regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua. And policy at the border ought to be and be explained as (the very tough job) of separating people seeking politicly asylum from "economic" migrants. I don't blame economic migrants from trying (I know of a family that got into Canada with a bogus "political" asylum claim. I'm happy for them and Canada is better off for their success, but I fear such success undermines support for asylum.) and in practice most "asylum seekers" would make productive ($$$) contributions to the US, but that's not the way our unfortunately benighted laws say they should enter. We need to be seen (domestically and in origin countries) as competently, humanely, and efficiently (no "Wall") enforcing the law. [The "efficiently" part also means, of course, we shouldn't spend resources hunting down long established migrants just because the once entered illegality.]
I think it implies a certain degree of condescension on the part of activists to refer to Hispanic people as 'latinx'. Latinx people are People of Color, who are allied with other People of Color and with LGBTQ+ people as well. It reduces all the differences of opinion that exist amongst Hispanic people to a small subset of opinion. It makes life easier to believe that Hispanic people are latinx people, just as it makes life easier to think other groups of people are allied in all ways.
I am blessed to not only have a decent amount of Hispanic friends from growing up in Los Angeles, the military and in Idaho, but I spend 3-4 months a year working in Latin America side by side with Mexicans, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Colombians, Brazilians, and Argentinians. I've basically spent the last three months working in Salta, Argentina.
I viscerally hate the term Latinx. Mainly because it's primarily used by a certain type of pandering progressive type. The stereotypical liberal, in which there is rarely any useful debate to be held. Even worse is when it's used by politicians or business leaders who associate with this crowd, and clearly have no close associations with the Hispanic community in the United States.
First, for the rest of my rant, I am going to use the term Hispanic, because it covers everyone except Brazilians.
Observations:
Even though I prefer the term Hispanic for the United States, in the rest of Latin American, it's not commonly used. Generally, the people are more likely to refer to themselves by their nationality first. They are Colombians or Argentinians. This national identity is much stronger than any allegiance to any group. If pressed, or when talking about people from multiple countries, Latin Americans is the term used most (which is gender neutral... thus my annoyance at coming up with another term). Latino or Latina is popular though it's more popular the further north you go and fades as you move down south.
The whole gender neutral latinx (latine') is used by the progressive college crowd, though only in that very small subset of population, and is never used by media or in the mainstream.
My favorite story is working with a Mexican engineer (recently immigrated) in the United States one time at a job site, and discussing the term Latinx. His reply "pinche gringos"
On to what I observe among Hispanic-Americans and politics in the United States.
For the longest time, it seemed to me that Hispanic representation in politics seemed to be dominated by the East Coast. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, etc... which never really translated to the issues of the mostly Mexican and Central American heritage Americans that I grew up with in Los Angeles and who I worked with in the Military.
This is slowly changing as more Americans with Mexican Heritage enter politics. I fully expect this influence to increase exponentially.
If you ask me, our countries focus on Black White issues almost seems to exclude Hispanic Americans from discussions.
Even in the media and entertainment, I am constantly annoyed at how poor representation is of Hispanic Americans. And even when it does happen, it's rarely reflects reality. It focuses on recent immigrants (there are a whole lot of 2nd and 3rd generation) Americans.
These days TV sitcoms routinely have both white or black characters (unlike Friends), but it's a lot rarer for them to have a Hispanic character, even though at least in my life... it's fairly impossible to live your life without Hispanic friends/co-workers.
My observation is that my Hispanic friends tend to range from very conservative to moderate. With the vast majority sort of in the middle. Liberal Hispanics are rarer than white liberals, and if they do exist, they are going to come from the highly educated college crowd.
The Hispanic vote is never going to be as monolithic as the black vote, but to win these voters, it seems to me that it's bread and butter issues that are going to win the day. The sort of social support programs that benefit working people, allow them to get ahead.
Finally, one of the key mistakes Democrats make when trying to attract the Hispanic vote is assuming that an openish border policy is going to be the main issue. First, Hispanic voters are American citizens, and by definition they were either born here, or followed the process and rules. Secondary, even undocumented migrants can understand supply and demand as far as wages go. They have no real economic reason to want even more undocumented migrants vying for the same jobs that they are performing. However, providing a path to citizenship and allowing family to migrate as well are key issues.
If politicians really want to win the Hispanic vote, then they need to do the same things that are going to win the white working class vote and the same things the black working class want as well. Material over identity.
Equating natural and grammatical gender in language leads one to ridiculous conclusions. In Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language," he points out that according to German grammar, turnips are female, but young women aren't.
Random question that I don’t want to bother googling - does gendered language convey any information? Does el boligrafo impart some inflation vs la boligrafo? What value does it add?
Isn't this just part of this never-ending far left belief that if we are just purer or more left on the economy or culture, we will have a tsunami of young voters and non-voters turn out?
It is like the Great Pumpkin of Charlie Brown...next time I am sure it will happen.
“But it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people.”
But the chart shows more Hispanics believe we should talk about racism against Asian people than Hispanic people. Doesn’t seem very selfish to me!
The biggest problem is that the Democratic Party is run by affluent progressives who cling to their own privilege. California is a cautionary tale. The rent is too high, the power bill is too high, the roads are too congested, there is mass poverty yet zoning laws and green policies are largely sacrosanct.
This is not what working stiffs want, but it’s what policies favored by affluent liberals produce.
"it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people."
It seems unfair to characterise Hispanics as "selfish" given that the graph clearly shows them expressing slighly more support for talking about racism against Asians than support for talking about racism against Hispanics.
"like the defund-the-police conversation, it reeks of fighting the last war, arguing about tactical missteps during the 2020 campaign that don’t have that much to do with present-day problems for Joe Biden and congressional Democrats"
This sounds like an excuse for symbolically downplaying the issue, rather than an actual reason. I see little reason to think this is going to be less of an issue in the next campaign than the last. And to the extent that we think of this as reflecting a failure to engage with what voters actually think, rather than as something that is itself driving votes, this seems like as much as an issue now as it did in 2020.
"Latinx" is a symptom, not the problem
There is an underrated trolling opportunity in switching from “Romance languages”, the term preferred by the French, to “Latina languages”, the term preferred in Italy and Spain (language being, of course, feminine).
From Jeff Maurer's piece earlier this morning that I find appropriate for this Latinx nonsense:
"Leftists come from the tradition of acting out one's daddy issues in the public square while claiming to speak for “the people”, even though “the people” would kind of like to see them crushed by a boulder (according to liberals)"
I still cannot understand why Biden did not and does not make an issue of allowing in people seeking asylum from "socialist" regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua. And policy at the border ought to be and be explained as (the very tough job) of separating people seeking politicly asylum from "economic" migrants. I don't blame economic migrants from trying (I know of a family that got into Canada with a bogus "political" asylum claim. I'm happy for them and Canada is better off for their success, but I fear such success undermines support for asylum.) and in practice most "asylum seekers" would make productive ($$$) contributions to the US, but that's not the way our unfortunately benighted laws say they should enter. We need to be seen (domestically and in origin countries) as competently, humanely, and efficiently (no "Wall") enforcing the law. [The "efficiently" part also means, of course, we shouldn't spend resources hunting down long established migrants just because the once entered illegality.]
I think it implies a certain degree of condescension on the part of activists to refer to Hispanic people as 'latinx'. Latinx people are People of Color, who are allied with other People of Color and with LGBTQ+ people as well. It reduces all the differences of opinion that exist amongst Hispanic people to a small subset of opinion. It makes life easier to believe that Hispanic people are latinx people, just as it makes life easier to think other groups of people are allied in all ways.
I am blessed to not only have a decent amount of Hispanic friends from growing up in Los Angeles, the military and in Idaho, but I spend 3-4 months a year working in Latin America side by side with Mexicans, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Colombians, Brazilians, and Argentinians. I've basically spent the last three months working in Salta, Argentina.
I viscerally hate the term Latinx. Mainly because it's primarily used by a certain type of pandering progressive type. The stereotypical liberal, in which there is rarely any useful debate to be held. Even worse is when it's used by politicians or business leaders who associate with this crowd, and clearly have no close associations with the Hispanic community in the United States.
First, for the rest of my rant, I am going to use the term Hispanic, because it covers everyone except Brazilians.
Observations:
Even though I prefer the term Hispanic for the United States, in the rest of Latin American, it's not commonly used. Generally, the people are more likely to refer to themselves by their nationality first. They are Colombians or Argentinians. This national identity is much stronger than any allegiance to any group. If pressed, or when talking about people from multiple countries, Latin Americans is the term used most (which is gender neutral... thus my annoyance at coming up with another term). Latino or Latina is popular though it's more popular the further north you go and fades as you move down south.
The whole gender neutral latinx (latine') is used by the progressive college crowd, though only in that very small subset of population, and is never used by media or in the mainstream.
My favorite story is working with a Mexican engineer (recently immigrated) in the United States one time at a job site, and discussing the term Latinx. His reply "pinche gringos"
On to what I observe among Hispanic-Americans and politics in the United States.
For the longest time, it seemed to me that Hispanic representation in politics seemed to be dominated by the East Coast. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, etc... which never really translated to the issues of the mostly Mexican and Central American heritage Americans that I grew up with in Los Angeles and who I worked with in the Military.
This is slowly changing as more Americans with Mexican Heritage enter politics. I fully expect this influence to increase exponentially.
If you ask me, our countries focus on Black White issues almost seems to exclude Hispanic Americans from discussions.
Even in the media and entertainment, I am constantly annoyed at how poor representation is of Hispanic Americans. And even when it does happen, it's rarely reflects reality. It focuses on recent immigrants (there are a whole lot of 2nd and 3rd generation) Americans.
These days TV sitcoms routinely have both white or black characters (unlike Friends), but it's a lot rarer for them to have a Hispanic character, even though at least in my life... it's fairly impossible to live your life without Hispanic friends/co-workers.
My observation is that my Hispanic friends tend to range from very conservative to moderate. With the vast majority sort of in the middle. Liberal Hispanics are rarer than white liberals, and if they do exist, they are going to come from the highly educated college crowd.
The Hispanic vote is never going to be as monolithic as the black vote, but to win these voters, it seems to me that it's bread and butter issues that are going to win the day. The sort of social support programs that benefit working people, allow them to get ahead.
Finally, one of the key mistakes Democrats make when trying to attract the Hispanic vote is assuming that an openish border policy is going to be the main issue. First, Hispanic voters are American citizens, and by definition they were either born here, or followed the process and rules. Secondary, even undocumented migrants can understand supply and demand as far as wages go. They have no real economic reason to want even more undocumented migrants vying for the same jobs that they are performing. However, providing a path to citizenship and allowing family to migrate as well are key issues.
If politicians really want to win the Hispanic vote, then they need to do the same things that are going to win the white working class vote and the same things the black working class want as well. Material over identity.
Equating natural and grammatical gender in language leads one to ridiculous conclusions. In Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language," he points out that according to German grammar, turnips are female, but young women aren't.
Random question that I don’t want to bother googling - does gendered language convey any information? Does el boligrafo impart some inflation vs la boligrafo? What value does it add?
Isn't this just part of this never-ending far left belief that if we are just purer or more left on the economy or culture, we will have a tsunami of young voters and non-voters turn out?
It is like the Great Pumpkin of Charlie Brown...next time I am sure it will happen.
“But it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people.”
But the chart shows more Hispanics believe we should talk about racism against Asian people than Hispanic people. Doesn’t seem very selfish to me!
The biggest problem is that the Democratic Party is run by affluent progressives who cling to their own privilege. California is a cautionary tale. The rent is too high, the power bill is too high, the roads are too congested, there is mass poverty yet zoning laws and green policies are largely sacrosanct.
This is not what working stiffs want, but it’s what policies favored by affluent liberals produce.
"it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people."
It seems unfair to characterise Hispanics as "selfish" given that the graph clearly shows them expressing slighly more support for talking about racism against Asians than support for talking about racism against Hispanics.
"like the defund-the-police conversation, it reeks of fighting the last war, arguing about tactical missteps during the 2020 campaign that don’t have that much to do with present-day problems for Joe Biden and congressional Democrats"
This sounds like an excuse for symbolically downplaying the issue, rather than an actual reason. I see little reason to think this is going to be less of an issue in the next campaign than the last. And to the extent that we think of this as reflecting a failure to engage with what voters actually think, rather than as something that is itself driving votes, this seems like as much as an issue now as it did in 2020.