Page 166 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

children. For them, Latino or Latinx makes more make sense of Latino voting patterns. According
4
sense than Mexican-Guatemalan-Chicano- to one national exit poll, the shift in the Latino
American. . . . As with this country’s other major vote was modest: 31 percent of us voted for
ethnic and racial labels, its true definition was Donald Trump, three percentage points more
Identity
born not of biology or geography but of a com- than in 2016. But in Florida and southern Texas,
mon experience relative to white identity. Latino Trump gained ten to twenty points or more
was coined to describe something a white per- among Latino voters, and those dramatic swings
son wasn’t. Today, a certain kind of white person dominated the postelection conversation. In the
attaches a sense of foreignness to us; we, in turn, days after the election, whenever I opened a web
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
continue to resist the cultural erasure that browser, I could hear the annoyance, feel the
accompanies assimilation. condescension. . . . Following the election,
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential several outlets sent reporters to interview
election, a cast of mostly white commentators Latino voters. After listening to our conflicting
You might ask students to explain the struggled to define the term in an attempt to points of view, journalists threw up their hands
references to “annoyance” and “conde-
scension” in paragraph 4. How do these
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references apply to what Tobar hears in the
e
the
te
xt
xtending
beyond
“postelection conversation,” and what is extending beyond the text
his attitude toward those election analysts?
In 2020, the Pew Resear ch Center published a study in which Luis Noe-Bustamante, Laur en
In 2020, the Pew Research Center published a study in which Luis Noe-Bustamante, Lauren
Mora, and Mark Hugo Lopez surveyed 3,030 Hispanic adults regarding their awareness and
opinions of the term Latinx . In this text, the authors provide a brief history of how the terms
Hispanic , Latino , and Latinx emerged. Carefully read the following excerpt from the study
results and examine the graph that represents some of the data they gathered.

from About One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics
CLOSE READING Have Heard of Latinx, but Just 3% Use It
It could be interesting to have your stu- Luis Noe-Bustamante, Lauren Mora, and Mark Hugo Lopez
dents examine the title of the article “About
One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics Have Heard Throughout the last half-century in the U.S., all people who identified having roots from
of Latinx, but Just 3% Use It” to consider different pan-ethnic terms have arisen to these countries. The term Hispanic was first
the use of the word “Hispanics.” Does the describe Americans who trace their roots to used in a full census in 1980.
article support that choice? Does the data Latin America and Spain. The 1990s brought resistance to the term
in the graph on page 273 support it? You The term Hispanic was first used by the Hispanic, as it embraced a strong connec-
could ask students to propose alternative U.S. government in the 1970s after Mexican tion with Spain, and an alternative term
titles, too. American and other Hispanic organizations emerged: Latino. By 1997, the U.S. Office of
lobbied the federal government to collect data Management and Budget issued a directive
on the population. Subsequently, the U.S adding the term Latino to government pub-
Congress passed Public Law 94-311 in 1976, lications. The two terms are used inter-
mandating the collection of information changeably, with Latino first appearing on
about U.S. residents of Mexican, Puerto Rican, the U.S. census in 2000, alongside Hispanic.
Cuban, Central American, South American More recently, Latinx has emerged as an
and other Spanish-speaking country origins. alternative to Hispanic and Latino. Online
The law called for the U.S. Census Bureau to searches for the term among the general U.S.
create a broader category that encompassed population appeared online in the early 2000s.
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272 chapter 4 / Identity

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