October 14, 2020 • 12 mins
We love to keep up with the current terminology for groups of people. Learn about the origin of Latinx today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you know, welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and we are the short Stuffers who are
going to talk to you about a new term for
the Latino community. Latino community. See, here's the reason for
a new term. Yeah. So I remember when we did
our episode on zoot suits, Uh, there was you know,
(00:29):
we always try to keep up with the latest correct
terminology that people want to be called, because people get
to decide themselves what they want to 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
(00:51):
the time. And here's the thing. Depending on who you are,
where you are, and when you are, these terms have
been uh, sort of interchangeable to some people. Some of
these terms have been um in fashion and then out
of fashion, perhaps maybe offensive or not offensive, or maybe
(01:13):
pride wrapped around a term that other people might think
might be offensive. Yeah. And what's interesting is some of
those terms of transition through all those things over time
and geography too. And to know all that, Chuck is
to really remember, be reminded that, Um. You know, when
you consider entire racial groups, we tend to think of
(01:34):
them as like one collective whole that share all the
same similarities and and have zero differences. And this, this
is a very important reminder that no different people consider
themselves different things, even within certain racial groups. And then
take it eat one step even further and say, oh, well,
that would suggest that racial groups are actually a social
(01:57):
and cultural construct, not a biological construct. Then you finally
arrived at the right frame of mind to be a
human being. That's right. I mean, technically, if you really,
um always want to honor a person and do the
right thing, you call someone Mexican or Colombian or Honduran
or Guatemalan and get very or Spanish and get very
(02:17):
specific with the country that they come from. But we
as humans like to um put a collective name on
groups of people. That's just what we've always done. Uh.
In the fifties and a lot of this stuff comes
from this house too works article and a historian named
Paul Ortiz, who is a professor at the University of Florida,
(02:39):
which we won't hold against him, um, but he points
out that in the fifties and and even Before that, Uh,
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
(03:01):
know what, Chicano was a term of pride, term of
self respect, and he likened it to um 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 to um, deflate
(03:23):
the power out of a word that's used against you
than to take it on yourself and use it as
a as a name of pride. I mean, that's that's
podcasters right, right, which has always been a term of
scorn for the outside world, but that's right, we're taking
it on with pride. So yeah, so um a lot.
When we were growing up, chuck um, Hispanic was always
(03:45):
the term, I mean, virtually until just a few years ago, Hispanic.
But as time we're 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
(04:07):
because Hispanic has been the longstanding term for the U. S.
Census Bureau UM to describe people who are who um
claim an origin or an identity that's associated typically with
either Spain or Latin America, Spanish speaking countries, UM or
the or the Caribbean, something along those lines. Um. And
(04:30):
when you really start to dig into it, and you're like,
wait a minute, this is the Census bureaus kind of
jumble definition. Yes it is, which again reinforces the idea
that racial groups are not homogeneous 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 claimed this kind of um, this the
same uh cultural identity. Yeah, And Professor Ortiz points out
(04:54):
with Hispanic, he said where he lived, Uh, he was
raised in California and Washington Stay. He said Hispanic wasn't
a popular term because of that, because he said the
elder and his elders in his community would say, you know,
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
(05:18):
the very beginning, it depends on kind of who you
are and where you are, um 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 to Chuck m okay, Chuck, what's the mystery name?
(05:57):
This is basically like an episode of the Masks 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 adds right, yeah, so and
announced the short stuff. But quickly there's a new one
that um I can't remember what it's called, but it's
basically judging whether or not you think a person can sing,
(06:20):
just by looking at them and how they carry themselves.
That's good, that's great, that's a 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.
It's like, are they do they sing crappy or not?
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 uh.
(06:43):
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 latin x or latin X. It
seems like and I think Webster Marriam Webster says ten x, right,
so you're either basically saying it as one word or
(07:03):
two words. Paul Ortiz says it as two words like
latin and then the letter X latin X. That's how. Yeah,
that's how what I've always said too. And then somebody
I don't know who pointed out that it was that, no,
you what other people pronounce it like latin x or
something like that rather than latino or latina latin X.
And yeah, I mean the whole point of all this
(07:26):
is that, um, it's meant to be a gender neutral,
totally inclusive word for people who identify as Latino, Latina, um, Hispanic, uh, Chicano,
even um. However you identify that this is this big
encompassing word UM. There was a few uh survey that
(07:49):
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, um, wherever you're from.
That that that your nation of origin is your you know,
that's that's how you identify with. But there is a
growing group, especially younger American born English speaking people who
(08:13):
identify UM as what the Census Bureau would call Hispanic UM,
that are adopting this term latin X or latin x
to be to make it more inclusive, which I think
is cool. Yeah, And as Ortisz puts it, he said,
he kind of sees it as a bridge building term
to kind of unite people. Uh. And you know, it's
(08:34):
up to the individual what they prefer to be called.
If you ask me, UM, I definitely see UM. How
referring to someone's country of origin can be a nice specificity,
But I also see the value and people coming together
as as a whole and saying, you know, we're a
big worldwide community and we are latin X, right, and
(08:55):
that's meant to Apparently Latino was also, um, it was
very widely used Hispanic Latino. Um. That was like a
transition word for sure, from from Hispanic to Latin X
or Latin X. Latino definitely made that that kind of
bridge those two together. But apparently Latino came to be
(09:16):
widely associated specifically with people who, um, whose country of
origin is Mexico. Right, And there's plenty of people from
other parts of Central and South America, UM who say, well,
I'm not from Mexico, so that one doesn't really apply
to me, which is why latin x is um is
that bridge building term for a lot of people for
(09:37):
the time being, though it's 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. UM actually just says August very recently
that is it still actually who knows? I think is
now Eternal Damnation year, so it will be going on forever,
(09:58):
so yes the answers, Yeah, yeah, it's been for seven
years now. And this survey said that about of Hispanics
have even heard the term. That surprised me. Um, and
only three percent 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
(10:19):
who adopted is because the people who do use it
tend to be the most vocal on like social media,
the most present, the most. Um. Yeah, they're younger, Like,
they're out there a lot more than say, like their
parents or grandparents or even older siblings. Um. Yeah, they're
out there for sure, so it would they have a
much larger voice proportions. They have a disproportionately large voice.
(10:40):
How about that. Um. What I've seen is, uh, 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 latina X that like
X is kind of flies in the face of UM,
Spanish as a tongue, So why don't we go with latina?
And with the accent? Is it? What's the accent called?
(11:04):
But with an accent over it? You know you've seen
it before. Um, So latina is gender neutral, but it's
also much more Spanish sounding where it's from the Spanish tongue.
So maybe go with that. And I think everybody who's
already on board latin X has just just be quiet.
We're going with Latin X. Yeah, it's totally cool, for sure,
(11:27):
It's definitely got a cool term. But I remember also
when we did Our Kings in europ episode, we were
exclusively saying Latin X, I believe, and some people wrote
in and said, hey, you know, not everybody is down
with that in the Latino community or Latino community, and
it was good to be reminded of that that. Yes,
when you're talking about entire groups of people, just remember
(11:50):
they don't all agree on everything, no matter whether they're white, Black,
Latin X, Hispanic, Asian, 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 uh, maybe that means we can
all get along a little better, yes, and at the
very least we can defer to them for goodness sake. Yeah,
(12:12):
when you meet somebody who you would say, oh, this
person is of uh Latin next 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
in the blacks exactly. So there you go go forth
and think about things a little more and stop pigeonholing everybody. Okay, okay.
(12:35):
Short stuff then is out. Stuff you should know is
a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more
podcasts my heart Radio? Is that the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, you know, welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and we are the short Stuffers who are
going to talk to you about a new term for
the Latino community. Latino community. See, here's the reason for
a new term. Yeah. So I remember when we did
our episode on zoot suits, Uh, there was you know,
(00:29):
we always try to keep up with the latest correct
terminology that people want to be called, because people get
to decide themselves what they want to 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
(00:51):
the time. And here's the thing. Depending on who you are,
where you are, and when you are, these terms have
been uh, sort of interchangeable to some people. Some of
these terms have been um in fashion and then out
of fashion, perhaps maybe offensive or not offensive, or maybe
(01:13):
pride wrapped around a term that other people might think
might be offensive. Yeah. And what's interesting is some of
those terms of transition through all those things over time
and geography too. And to know all that, Chuck is
to really remember, be reminded that, Um. You know, when
you consider entire racial groups, we tend to think of
(01:34):
them as like one collective whole that share all the
same similarities and and have zero differences. And this, this
is a very important reminder that no different people consider
themselves different things, even within certain racial groups. And then
take it eat one step even further and say, oh, well,
that would suggest that racial groups are actually a social
(01:57):
and cultural construct, not a biological construct. Then you finally
arrived at the right frame of mind to be a
human being. That's right. I mean, technically, if you really,
um always want to honor a person and do the
right thing, you call someone Mexican or Colombian or Honduran
or Guatemalan and get very or Spanish and get very
(02:17):
specific with the country that they come from. But we
as humans like to um put a collective name on
groups of people. That's just what we've always done. Uh.
In the fifties and a lot of this stuff comes
from this house too works article and a historian named
Paul Ortiz, who is a professor at the University of Florida,
(02:39):
which we won't hold against him, um, but he points
out that in the fifties and and even Before that, Uh,
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
(03:01):
know what, Chicano was a term of pride, term of
self respect, and he likened it to um 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 to um, deflate
(03:23):
the power out of a word that's used against you
than to take it on yourself and use it as
a as a name of pride. I mean, that's that's
podcasters right, right, which has always been a term of
scorn for the outside world, but that's right, we're taking
it on with pride. So yeah, so um a lot.
When we were growing up, chuck um, Hispanic was always
(03:45):
the term, I mean, virtually until just a few years ago, Hispanic.
But as time we're 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
(04:07):
because Hispanic has been the longstanding term for the U. S.
Census Bureau UM to describe people who are who um
claim an origin or an identity that's associated typically with
either Spain or Latin America, Spanish speaking countries, UM or
the or the Caribbean, something along those lines. Um. And
(04:30):
when you really start to dig into it, and you're like,
wait a minute, this is the Census bureaus kind of
jumble definition. Yes it is, which again reinforces the idea
that racial groups are not homogeneous 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 claimed this kind of um, this the
same uh cultural identity. Yeah, And Professor Ortiz points out
(04:54):
with Hispanic, he said where he lived, Uh, he was
raised in California and Washington Stay. He said Hispanic wasn't
a popular term because of that, because he said the
elder and his elders in his community would say, you know,
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
(05:18):
the very beginning, it depends on kind of who you
are and where you are, um 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 to Chuck m okay, Chuck, what's the mystery name?
(05:57):
This is basically like an episode of the Masks 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 adds right, yeah, so and
announced the short stuff. But quickly there's a new one
that um I can't remember what it's called, but it's
basically judging whether or not you think a person can sing,
(06:20):
just by looking at them and how they carry themselves.
That's good, that's great, that's a 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.
It's like, are they do they sing crappy or not?
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 uh.
(06:43):
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 latin x or latin X. It
seems like and I think Webster Marriam Webster says ten x, right,
so you're either basically saying it as one word or
(07:03):
two words. Paul Ortiz says it as two words like
latin and then the letter X latin X. That's how. Yeah,
that's how what I've always said too. And then somebody
I don't know who pointed out that it was that, no,
you what other people pronounce it like latin x or
something like that rather than latino or latina latin X.
And yeah, I mean the whole point of all this
(07:26):
is that, um, it's meant to be a gender neutral,
totally inclusive word for people who identify as Latino, Latina, um, Hispanic, uh, Chicano,
even um. However you identify that this is this big
encompassing word UM. There was a few uh survey that
(07:49):
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, um, wherever you're from.
That that that your nation of origin is your you know,
that's that's how you identify with. But there is a
growing group, especially younger American born English speaking people who
(08:13):
identify UM as what the Census Bureau would call Hispanic UM,
that are adopting this term latin X or latin x
to be to make it more inclusive, which I think
is cool. Yeah, And as Ortisz puts it, he said,
he kind of sees it as a bridge building term
to kind of unite people. Uh. And you know, it's
(08:34):
up to the individual what they prefer to be called.
If you ask me, UM, I definitely see UM. How
referring to someone's country of origin can be a nice specificity,
But I also see the value and people coming together
as as a whole and saying, you know, we're a
big worldwide community and we are latin X, right, and
(08:55):
that's meant to Apparently Latino was also, um, it was
very widely used Hispanic Latino. Um. That was like a
transition word for sure, from from Hispanic to Latin X
or Latin X. Latino definitely made that that kind of
bridge those two together. But apparently Latino came to be
(09:16):
widely associated specifically with people who, um, whose country of
origin is Mexico. Right, And there's plenty of people from
other parts of Central and South America, UM who say, well,
I'm not from Mexico, so that one doesn't really apply
to me, which is why latin x is um is
that bridge building term for a lot of people for
(09:37):
the time being, though it's 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. UM actually just says August very recently
that is it still actually who knows? I think is
now Eternal Damnation year, so it will be going on forever,
(09:58):
so yes the answers, Yeah, yeah, it's been for seven
years now. And this survey said that about of Hispanics
have even heard the term. That surprised me. Um, and
only three percent 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
(10:19):
who adopted is because the people who do use it
tend to be the most vocal on like social media,
the most present, the most. Um. Yeah, they're younger, Like,
they're out there a lot more than say, like their
parents or grandparents or even older siblings. Um. Yeah, they're
out there for sure, so it would they have a
much larger voice proportions. They have a disproportionately large voice.
(10:40):
How about that. Um. What I've seen is, uh, 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 latina X that like
X is kind of flies in the face of UM,
Spanish as a tongue, So why don't we go with latina?
And with the accent? Is it? What's the accent called?
(11:04):
But with an accent over it? You know you've seen
it before. Um, So latina is gender neutral, but it's
also much more Spanish sounding where it's from the Spanish tongue.
So maybe go with that. And I think everybody who's
already on board latin X has just just be quiet.
We're going with Latin X. Yeah, it's totally cool, for sure,
(11:27):
It's definitely got a cool term. But I remember also
when we did Our Kings in europ episode, we were
exclusively saying Latin X, I believe, and some people wrote
in and said, hey, you know, not everybody is down
with that in the Latino community or Latino community, and
it was good to be reminded of that that. Yes,
when you're talking about entire groups of people, just remember
(11:50):
they don't all agree on everything, no matter whether they're white, Black,
Latin X, Hispanic, Asian, 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 uh, maybe that means we can
all get along a little better, yes, and at the
very least we can defer to them for goodness sake. Yeah,
(12:12):
when you meet somebody who you would say, oh, this
person is of uh Latin next 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
in the blacks exactly. So there you go go forth
and think about things a little more and stop pigeonholing everybody. Okay, okay.
(12:35):
Short stuff then is out. Stuff you should know is
a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more
podcasts my heart Radio? Is that the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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