LITT: Latine

Thank you to everyone who attended our last LITT: Latine chat on New Terms and Pronunciations. You may notice we are now calling these LITT: Latine and if you scroll down to the “Latine” section I explain more as to why we will be moving forward with this new term. Here are some highlights as well as resources from our discussion.

We discussed the importance of one self-identifying however we want to because at the end of the day no one has the right to do that for somebody else. Our Spanish speaking patrons are greatly affected by this due to all the set terms the U.S. Government has set to Identify this community. I encourage you all to have these conversations with your patrons/coworkers as well as using the term they best seem fit for themselves! As for your programming and events, if you think one of these terms best catches your Spanish speaking community, then I highly encourage you all to use that term!

A little about the word Hispanic and my own journey with this.

• Hispanic was the first word I identified with, it wasn’t until I realized the connection of the term to colonization because of how the Nixon administration created it to identify all those from a Spanish speaking countries. My personal issue with the term is also that in Spanish “Hispanic” translates to “Hispano” which is defined as, “a person descended from Spanish settlers in the Southwest before it was annexed to the US.” This definition stuck with me because it seems to only represent a portion of the Latinx community which is why I decided to not use the term so much. I went from Although the term didn’t fit with me, I know there are plenty of people that still identify with the term.
• That last sentence is very important because for some people the word, “Hispanic” was the first word they were able to feel recognized with. I just want to make it clear that in no way am I saying you should completely refrain from using the word, if you believe your community answers better to this term, then by all means I encourage you to use it!

Latino/Latina/Latinx

• The terms Latino and Latina focuses on where a person or group comes from, especially if they are from Latin America or the Caribbean, whereas Hispanic focuses more on the language aspect of the individual. This helped me identify as Latino for a time and appreciate that term the best. As for the reasoning as to why I use Latinx, it is because it is used to identify those who identify as Latino/a but it removes the gendered aspect that exists with it.

Latine

• The term Latine serves the same purpose as Latinx. The difference between the two is that Latinx was created more to roll better off our English tongues, creating almost a linguistic imperialism to those that have Spanish as their first language. Even though it may not have been the goal the word Latine is still easier to say in Spanish, and the language already uses “e” as a gender-neutral ending to worlds like “estudiante” (student). This is what made us decide to change the name of our LITT: Latinx to LITT: Latine.

Links for Terms:

• https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/hispanic-latino-latinx-latine/
• https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/388532/controversy-term-latinx-public-opinion-context.aspx
• https://www.teenvogue.com/story/latine-vs-latinx-what-young-people-think
• https://mednews.uw.edu/news/say-my-name

Pronunciations

• During this part of our LITT we discussed the importance of saying names correctly. No matter if you think it’s right or may be too embarrassed, it’s always better to ask for clarification to ensure you are pronouncing our patrons/co-workers names correctly.

Links for Pronunciation:

• https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/why-pronouncing-students-names-correctly-so-important
• https://mednews.uw.edu/news/say-my-name