To celebrate Latinx Heritage Month, Noble’s Chief College Officer Dr. Aidé Acosta invited her colleagues Dr. Francisco Galarte, Assistant Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality at the University of New Mexico, and Dr. Rachel Gonzalez, Associate Professor of Latinx Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, to join in a discussion – un diálogo – about the shifting meaning of ethnic labels among people of Latin American origin, living in the U.S. Dr. Acosta and her colleagues explore the origin of the term Latinx and how it has become an inclusive category to represent people of Latin American origin; and how the terms continue to shift over time to represent lived experiences.
“As our organization is also making a claim to becoming an antiracist organization, to do the hard work to getting us there means that we have to have a critical discussion on what these categories mean; what they have meaning for our populations, but how also we use them,” stated Dr. Acosta.
Join in the discussion, take our poll below and let us know how you identify yourself – as a person of Latin American origin living in the U.S.
“Latinx and the turn towards that inclusivity of the terms, I think the usage of the X magnifies how at this particular moment, this generation is calling towards us to grapple with gender and sexuality in ways that it hasn’t previously,” stated Dr. Galarte.
“The conversation on Latinx is complicated because there are so many layers to our identity, historically, regionally, age-wise, gender-wise, all manner of layers of identity get put upon us,” stated Dr. Gonzalez. “It is telling that even at this point in our American experience, we are still debating terms.”
