Respect for Hispanic Americans Act: GOP wants to ban use of ‘latinx’ in federal agencies

Are the days of "Latinx" numbered? The term to refer to Hispanics in a gender-neutral way already had poor popularity ratings among the Hispanic community and among Americans in general.

The term has also been banned in official documents in some states such as Arkansas. Now the federal government's time may have come: the Respect for Hispanic Americans Act bill, introduced late last week, seeks to ban “Latinx” from official federal communications or forms.

"Hispanic Americans don’t need fabricated woke terminology imposed on us," said Senator Marco Rubio, the bill's sponsor along with Ted Cruz. "The term 'Latinx' has no place in our federal agency’s official communication as it’s a degradation tossed around by progressive elites."

"Hispanic Americans overwhelmingly oppose the term 'Latinx,'" recalled Cruz, who also pledged to make sure the "government does not bow to woke activists."

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"'Latinx' is a woke invention of the neo-Marxist left and as such should never be used to refer to someone of Latin American or Hispanic ancestry," argued Florida Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar's office.

Salazar presented her own bill to veto the use of the floor by the federal administration. Introduced in April, the Reject Latinx Act is still pending in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

But Republicans are not the only ones to take legislative action to ban "Latinx." A group of five Democratic legislators introduced a bill that would have banned its use in official Connecticut.

Geraldo Reyes Jr., the main promoter of the initiative, asserted that "Latinx" was not a Spanish word, but a woke term, as reported by ABC News. According to the same media outlet, the invented term was "offensive" to members of the Puerto Rican community, such as himself.

Three months later, however, Reyes himself abandoned the first initiative and co-sponsored another legislative proposal which, instead of banning "Latinx," compelled public agencies to "attempt to solicit feedback from the members or representatives of such community regarding whether the use of such term is appropriate."

The second proposal became law last June, while the first one did not pass the first legislative instance.