Reply to Hot-mic moment captures how some educators really feel

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Hot-mic moment captures how some educators really feel"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dear teacher who refers to students as "Hispanic," let me explain to you why you should refer to us as Latino/a. I'm about to do some emotional labor here, which I'm 99% sure you're going to ignore because you think your familiarity with us gives you some kind of authority.

Hispanic and Latino are often conflated. They are not the same. Hispanic refers to the language and Latino refers to the culture. If you have indigenous students in your classes (and if you have any from central America, you almost certainly do), these are Latinos, not Hispanics. Some of them may even speak Spanish, as is common in Guatemala, but that's the language of the colonizers. Brazilians are Latinos, not Hispanics. I can go on. This is just like how we don't call all Alaska Natives "Inuit" anymore.

Aside from mislabeling people with a moniker that refers to a particular language, "Hispanic" also refers to the colonizing culture. Many Latinos find it offensive for this reason.

I'm not going to get into Latinx. I don't understand it.[/quote]

You didn't have to do that ... but thank you. You were gracious and kind, unlike that teacher.[/quote]

DP. I really didn’t know this. Thank you. [/quote]

+2.  Me neither.  And yes, I should know if and you shouldn’t have to correct everyone.  But, it’s hard to correct a mistake you don’t know you’re making.   It’s a mistake I won’t make going forward though.

I do get the Latinx phenomena, although I’m not sure I agree with it.  It’s an inability of native English speakers to deal with gendered languages because we don’t have a corollary.   So, referring to Latinos feels like it leaves out all the women. And Latinos and Latinas is clunky.  And now we are dealing with gender non-binary and preferred pronouns and so what do you do with a trans woman?  So people give up and use Latinx.   Which may not be right, but we’re all grappling with gender and language.

For example, I write in English for my job about identifiable people whose gender or gender identity I might not know.  For example, they correspond with us and have a first name that is gender neutral.  So, he doesn’t work. She doesn’t work.  I hate S/he and them can get mixed up with plurals. English needs non-gendered pronouns. Latinx is a reflection of the same frustration with clunky language.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics