Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed fellow Democrats who won’t use the umbrella term “Latinx” to refer to Hispanic people and Latin Americans.
The New York Democrat said those in and out of her party who question the validity of the term are making other peoples’ self-identification about themselves.
“There are some politicians, including Democratic politicians, who rail against the term Latinx, and they’re like ‘this is so bad,’ ‘this is so bad for the party,’ and like blah, blah, blah, and it’s almost as though it has not struck some of these folks that another person’s identity is not about your reelection prospects,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said in an Instagram video.
The liberal firebrand went on to say those who are critical of the term should concentrate more on worrying about mitigating health care costs, raising wages and other economic issues.
Left-leaning Democrats have adopted the term “Latinx” in recent years to use a gender-neutral alternative to the terms “Latino” and “Latina,” which refer to people of Latin American heritage.
However, polls indicate that the majority of people who fall under that description don’t identify themselves with the term “Latinx.”
A November poll by Democratic firm Bendixen and Amandi International found that just 2% of people responded to that term, compared to 68% who preferred “Hispanic” and 21% who identified as “Latina” or “Latino.”
The same poll also found that 40% of 800 Hispanic respondents found the term “Latinx” offensive. The survey had an error margin of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.
