Have you seen this term floating around? Latinx is supposed to be a gender-neutral version of Latino/Latina. It’s supposedly more inclusive because it doesn’t separate people into the now forbidden binary categories of men or women, so it has been championed by the woke left. But it turns out Latinos/Hispanics don’t really like it very much. A survey carried out by progressive data analysts found that only 2 percent of Hispanic people actually prefer that term:

While my colleagues and I are progressive on social issues, as researchers, we have to put aside our personal biases and render advice based on the best available empirical evidence. To examine the acceptance of “Latinx” our firm conducted a nationwide poll of Latinos using a 508-person sample that is demographically representative of Census figures, yielding a ± 5% margin of error with a 95% confidence interval.

We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. When it came to “Latinx,” there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos.

The analysts also looked at whether younger people were more accepting of this term than older ones. They were but not by much. People between the ages of 18-34 gave the term 3 percent support compared to the 2 percent given by older Hispanics. This graphic shows the results:

What’s interesting is the clear divide between a narrow segment of woke, college-educated people in America and the rest of the world. Apparently this term is not in use outside the U.S. What’s even more interesting is why. Earlier this week USA Today published an opinion piece that offered some answers to that question:

When Yale professor Cydney Dupree and her colleague analyzed more than two decades worth of political speeches and conducted experiments searching for bias when communicating with racial minorities, they were surprised by what they discovered. According to their report, published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, conservatives generally addressed whites and minorities similarly, but liberals were likelier to modify their speech and “patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent.”…

One of the most notable examples of corporate America and politicians changing how they speak to ingratiate themselves with minorities is the growing use of “Latinx” as a descriptor for Latinos. What began in the 2000s among activists has now gained currency among marketers, media personalities and progressives. The intentions behind “Latinx” may be benign, but as the son of immigrants who grew up in a community with “English-only” ordinances, I am among the many Americans who consider it an absurd Anglicization of a language that generations struggled to conserve…

Ultimately, what Hispanic Americans who take pride in our heritage see in “Latinx” is progressive preening attempting to solve a nonexistent problem at the expense of a beautiful language that Chicanos and other Latinos endured corporal punishment and bigotry to defend. Liberals should also realize it is impossible to reconcile their professed values — like multiculturalism, education and pronoun autonomy — with the peculiar strain of 2019 progressivism that seeks to radically change our language, disregards linguistic practices, and disavows our right to determine how we are described.

Gender-nonconforming Americans should be treated with compassion and respect. If someone wants to be called Latinx, that is fine, but the label should not be forced upon all Latinos. Hispanic Americans face plenty of challenges. The last thing we need are progressives “wokesplaining” how to speak Spanish.

So the additional question this raises is whether the woke left will be allowed to continue patronizing people with their made-up words or if they will back off and respect the people they claim to support. My money is on the former. Shhhh…don’t tell her.

We still don’t know why ICE destroyed footage surrounding the death of Roxsana Hernández, a transgender Latinx woman who died in their custody.

That's why I'm calling for a special counsel to investigate. Her family and the American people deserve answers. https://t.co/JuGlBRVgNl

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2019