After Arkansas banned the term "Latinx" from official government documents, the deeply blue state of Connecticut may be following suit. Connecticut has a large Puerto Rican population, and a group of Hispanic lawmakers are the ones proposing the ban. All five of them are Democrats.

State Representative Geraldo Reyes Jr. of Waterbury is the chief sponsor of the bill and said that the term Latinx is not a Spanish word but is more of a "woke" term that he finds offensive to the large Puerto Rican community in the state. "I'm of Puerto Rican descent and I find it offensive," he explained.

According to the Associated Press, Reyes stated that the motivations of this ban are different from Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but he believes that her decision to ban the term "was the right one."

Reyes says he expects his bill will be heard before a deeply Democrat-controlled State House's Government Administration and Elections Committee, Governor Ned Lamont, another Democrat, stated that he and his office will be following the debate as it moves across the state Legislature.

The Debate on the Term Latinx

The debate on the usage of Latinx has been going on in various circles, with many Latino groups rejecting it. This includes the League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights group in the U.S. They previously announced that they will no longer use the term back in 2021.

Many, including Reyes who proposed the Connecticut bill, argue as the default for the Spanish language is already "Latino" so there is actually no need to create a new word for it as it encompasses men and women.

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However, others, such as Maia Gil'Adi, an assistant professor of "Latinx and Multiethnic Literature" at Boston University, stated that the term actually dates back to the 1990s, and stated that the "x" is actually a nod to many people's indigenous roots. It was used by Latino and Latina youth in queer culture, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Gil'Adi argued that the word Latino is "incredibly exclusionary," not just for women, but also on-gender conforming people. She added that the term Latinx is "really useful because of the way it challenges those conceptions."

The Arkansas Ban on Latinx

A month before Democrats proposed banning the term for government documents, Arkansas' Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, already banned it.

While the motivations of the Hispanic Democrats are more because they find the term offensive to them, Sanders and the Republicans in Arkansas made the ban on Latinx more like a culture war issue.

She signed an executive order that not only banned critical race theory from being taught in Arkansas schools but also the use of the term Latinx from government documents.

According to the Washington Post, the state is one of many Republican-held states that have introduced initiatives or signed laws that have targeted transgender rights. These include banning drag shows and introducing a different way of how race is taught in school.

Analysts believe this is to galvanize their conservative base and push back against the "woke agenda."

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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