Messy messaging: Despite its proliferation among political types, ‘Latinx’ is not effective with Hispanic voters
Democrats have recently lost electoral ground with Hispanic voters for a variety of reasons, chief among them the belief that voters with dozens of distinct ethnic and cultural backgrounds are a monolith that will pull the lever for their party with little effort and no specifically tailored messaging.
The least they could do is not shoot themselves further in the foot by using language that is ineffective at best or downright damaging at worst when they do develop particular platforms for Hispanic voters. The biggest culprit here is the most straightforward: the term “Latinx.”
Language obviously changes over time, and there’s nothing wrong with having a public conversation about the right term to use for a growing segment of the U.S. population. Still, that conversation isn’t over, and despite what some academic circles and political staffers might think, it certainly hasn’t landed on “Latinx” as a consensus term among this population.
A nationwide poll of Hispanic voters by respected firm Bendixen & Amandi International recently found that a whopping 40% of them had some discomfort with the word, with a full 19% of registered Democrats claiming the term “Latinx” bothered or offended them “a lot.” More actionably, pluralities of both Democrats and Republicans said they would be less likely to support a politician or political organization that used the term when discussing them.
It is a valid point that the standard terms “Latino” and “Latina” are gendered, which leaves some in the community feeling left out, but there are other options than one which is hard to pronounce in both English and Spanish and has seen no widespread adoption in the community despite having circulated for about 20 years. The same poll found that 68% of voters preferred the term “Hispanic,” including majorities of both the U.S.-born and the foreign-born. It may not be a perfect descriptor — it arguably leaves out Brazilians and includes people from Spain — but it’s what most of the community identifies with now. That may change, but it hasn’t yet.
