The use of Latinx as the term for a gender-neutral person of Latin American origin has been controversial for many reasons. Firstly, it is believed to mainly apply to English speakers, specifically American, because it does not use the Spanish speaking rule when a word is gender-neutral to use the letter “e” instead of “o” or “a”. This can be seen as controversial because of its use in Latin American countries, where they may find it a lot more difficult to say because Latinx does not correlate well to the Spanish language. On the other hand, progressives have embraced this word because of its easy use of identifying a gender-neutral person, as well as the use of opting out of the gender binary by speakers easily. These reasons have helped keep Latinx afloat while many people on the other side of this issue try to take it down and replace it with a more optimal alternative. In my opinion, Latine is a better alternative to this problem, and the word should be changed to this. However, I would want people to use either one that they want and have that help them understand which word they like to use better so that they can make an educated decision.
“Latinx Unidos” is being held up at Amberose college as a sign to show their inclusivity.
To get a better perspective, I asked a classmate in my philosophy class about the issue, asking “what do you see as the best solution to the problem regarding the word Latinx?” He stated, “Any word can work as long as enough people use it and say it’s cool, so we just need enough people to do that and Latinx can work as the word.” I found this point to be very interesting because it changed my perspective on this issue. I started to wonder if it truly was that simple, and we could just make the word latinx cool. If you think about it, we have made other words cool before and started to use them, such as “yo.” The word yo “came from a Neapolitan word for “boy”: guaglione, pronounced “gwahl-YO-nay” which often got shortened to yo.” After this, the word gradually evolved into what it is today, as a common phrase to greet someone or just shout in general. If we could evolve the word Latinx like we evolved yo, we can solve this issue for good. The only problem with this solution is the fact that we must first depoliticize the word Latinx to insure there is not still an argument against it that is political in any way, as that will probably take the word down for good.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/yo-word-history#