Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: What is Latinx anyway?

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

We love to keep up with the current terminology for groups of people. Learn about the origin of Latinx today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And we are the short stuffers who are gonna talk to you

about a new term for the Latina community. Latino community, see? Here's the reason for a new term. Yeah, so I remember when we did our episode on Zoot Suits. Yeah. There was, you know, we always try to keep up with the latest correct terminology that people want to be called.

Sure. Because people get to decide themselves what they wanna be called. And I think at the time, there were references to a word, Chicano. Is that right? Did we do that? Did we say that?

Well, we did, but we also said it in context of that's what they were called at the time. Okay, okay. And here's the thing, depending on who you are, where you are, and when you are, these terms have been sort of interchangeable to some people. Some of these terms have been in fashion

and then out of fashion, perhaps maybe offensive or not offensive, or maybe pride wrapped around a term that other people might think might be offensive. Yeah, and what's interesting is some of those terms have transitioned through all those things over time and geography too. And to know all that, Chuck, is to really remember, be reminded that when you consider entire racial groups,

we tend to think of them as like one collective whole that share all the same similarities and have zero differences. And this is a very important reminder that no, different people consider themselves different things, even within certain racial groups. And then take it one step even further and say, oh, well, that would suggest that racial groups

are actually a social and cultural construct, not a biological construct. And then you finally arrived at the right frame of mind to be a human being. That's right. I mean, technically, if you really always wanna honor a person and do the right thing, you call someone Mexican or Colombian or Honduran

or Guatemalan or Spanish and get very specific with the country that they come from. But we as humans like to put a collective name on groups of people. That's just what we've always done in the 50s. And a lot of this stuff comes from this House of Works article and a historian named Paul Ortiz, who is a professor at the University of Florida,

which we won't hold against him. But he points out that in the 50s, and even before that, Chicano was a term of derision. But then it was kind of adopted and became a term of pride with the rise of a few things, the Mexican student movement in California, the farm workers movement. And people said, you know what,

Chicano is a term of pride, term of self-respect. And he likened it to African American and the term black, how the term black or blacks wasn't very favored for a long time. And then in the civil rights movement, they said, no, black is beautiful. That's who we are and that's what we are. Yeah, I mean, like what better way to deflate the power

out of a word that's used against you than to take it on yourself and use it as a name of pride? I mean, that's just how it's done. Like we're podcasters. Right, right. Which has always been a term of scorn for the outside world, but we're taking it on with pride. So yeah, so when we were growing up, Chuck, Hispanic

was always the term. I mean, virtually until just a few years ago, Hispanic, but as time wore on, it went from, you know, those are Hispanic people to those are Hispanic people. And you just kind of got this idea that the term Hispanic had fallen out of favor among Hispanic, the Hispanic community. I knew that, I didn't understand why.

And apparently it's because Hispanic has been the longstanding term for the US Census Bureau to describe people who claim a origin or an identity that's associated typically with either Spain or Latin America, Spanish speaking countries or the Caribbean, something along those lines. And when you really start to dig into it and you're like, wait a minute,

this is the Census Bureau's kind of jumbled definition? Yes, it is. Which again reinforces the idea that racial groups are not homogenous groups. They're made of a bunch of different people. It just so happens that there's a bunch of different people from a bunch of different backgrounds who claim this kind of the same cultural identity.

Yeah, and Professor Ortiz points out with Hispanic. He said where he lived, he was raised in California in Washington state. He said Hispanic wasn't a popular term because of that because he said the elders in his community would say, no, this is the government putting this name on us. But he said in Florida, he said Hispanic as a term was embraced by Floridians.

So like I said earlier at the very beginning, it depends on kind of who you are and where you are as to kind of what you prefer. And that brings us to a break and we'll reveal the new mystery name that really isn't a mystery because everyone already knows it by now, right after this. Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug,

chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Okay, Chuck, what's the mystery name? This is basically like an episode of the Mask Singer. Oh my gosh. Do you watch any of those? No, I'm just aware of it. Okay, they get really silly. They play those during football games. That's the only reason I know about them, the ads.

Oh, right, yeah, yeah. So, and I know it's a short stuff, but quickly there's a new one that, I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically judging whether or not you think a person can sing just by looking at them and how they carry themselves. That's good, that's great.

That's a good lesson to teach people that you can judge a book by its cover. Right, and then they hand them a microphone and it's like, do they sing crappy or not? Right, and then when they sing crappy, it suddenly turns into the gong show, I'm sure. Right. Great idea, great idea.

All right, so that brings us to the mystery word, which is, and there's a few ways you can pronounce it depending on who you are. Latin X is what I've always said. You can also say Latinx or Latinx, it seems like. And I think Webster, Merriam-Webster says Latinx. Right, so you're either basically saying it as one word or two words.

Paulo Ortiz says it as two words, like Latin and then the letter X, Latin X. That's what I've always said. Yeah, that's how what I've always said too, and then somebody, I don't know who pointed it out that it was, that no, you, while other people pronounce it like Latinx or something like that rather than Latino or Latina,

Latinx, and the whole point. And that's the explanation. Yeah, I mean, the whole point of all of this is that it's meant to be a gender neutral, totally inclusive word for people who identify as Latino, Latina, Hispanic, Chicano even, however you identify, that this is this big encompassing word. There was a Pew survey that was done

that said traditionally, or at least now, most people, like you were saying, prefer to be identified as Guatemalan or as Brazilian or as Haitian wherever you're from, that your nation of origin is your, that's how you identify with. But there is a growing group, especially younger, American-born,

English-speaking people who identify as what the Census Bureau would call Hispanic, that are adopting this term, Latinx or Latinx, to make it more inclusive, which I think is cool. Yeah, and as Ortiz puts it, he said he kind of sees it as a bridge building term to kind of unite people. And you know, it's up to the individual what they prefer to be called, if you ask me.

I definitely see how referring to someone's country of origin can be a nice specificity, but I also see the value in people coming together as a whole and saying, you know, we're a big worldwide community and we are Latinx. Right, and that's meant to, apparently, Latino was also, that was very widely used, Hispanic, Latino, that was like a transition word for sure

from Hispanic to Latinx or Latinx. Latino definitely made that, that kind of bridged those two together, but apparently Latino came to be widely associated specifically with people whose country of origin is Mexico. Right, and there's plenty of people from other parts of Central and South America who say, well, I'm not from Mexico,

so that one doesn't really apply to me, which is why Latinx is that bridge building term for a lot of people. For the time being, though, it's got a lot of ground to cover before it becomes widely used, again, according to Pew, right? Yeah, I think they did a survey just this year, actually just this August, so very recently.

Is it still 2020, actually? Who knows, I think 2020 is now eternal damnation year, so it will be going on forever. All right. So yes, the answer is yes. Yeah, it's been 2020 for seven years now, and this survey said that about 23% of Hispanics have even heard the term.

That surprised me, and only 3% use it. That kind of surprised me, too. Maybe it's the circles I run in, but I've heard it a lot more than that. Well, I think one of the reasons why it seems like there's more people who adopt it is because the people who do use it tend to be the most vocal on social media,

the most present, the most... Yeah, they're younger. Like, they're out there a lot more than say their parents or grandparents or even older siblings. Yeah, they're out there, for sure. So they have a much larger voice. They have a disproportionately large voice.

How about that? What I've seen is some people are like, well, no, I prefer Latino, or I prefer Latina. Some people say, well, no, I'm totally down with the gender-neutral thing, but Latinx just kind of flies in the face of Spanish as a tongue. So why don't we go with Latina and E with the accent?

Is it... What's the accent called? Yeah, I don't know. But with an accent over it. You know, you've seen it before. I have. So Latina is gender-neutral, but it's also much more Spanish sounding

or it's from the Spanish tongue. So maybe go with that. And I think everybody who's already on board Latinx has just to be quiet. We're going with Latinx. X is cool. Yeah, it's totally cool for sure. It's definitely got a cool term.

But I remember also when we did our Keyneson Year episode, we were exclusively saying Latinx, I believe. And some people wrote in and said, hey, you know, not everybody is down with that in the Latino community or Latina community. And it was good to be reminded of that. But yes, when you're talking about entire groups of people, just remember,

they don't all agree on everything. No matter whether they're white, black, Latinx, Hispanic, Asian, it doesn't matter. They're all very different people and we're all different when it comes down to it. We're all individuals. And maybe that means we can all get along a little better. Yes, and at the very least,

we can defer to them for goodness sakes. Yeah, when you meet somebody who you would say, oh, this person is of Latinx heritage, you could leave it to them by saying, it's really great to meet someone of, yeah, and then let them fill in the box. Exactly. So there you go.

Go forth and think about things a little more and stop pigeonholing everybody. Okay, okay, short stuff then is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen

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