Israel’s Version of the Latinx Question

There’s much ado about Latinx among a certain subset of political and media commentators today. The rest of you, though, are probably already confused. Let me quickly explain. As my colleague Christian Paz recently detailed, the term Latinx was originally popularized by academics and activists to serve as a gender-neutral replacement for Latino/a. In recent years, the label has ballooned in popularity, and is now deployed constantly by mainstream media outlets from NPR to the New York Times, and by Democratic politicians from Elizabeth Warren to Joe Biden.

There’s just one tiny problem: A series of surveys have shown that most Latinos have never even heard of the word Latinx—and that many who have are actively opposed to it.

In August 2020, Pew that only a quarter of Hispanics were familiar with , and just 3 percent of them used it. Fast forward to November 2021, and a new nationwide survey conducted by Latino pollster Fernand Amandi—who. At the same time, 40 percent said that the term bothered or offended them, while 30 percent said they’d be less likely to back a politician or organization that employed it.