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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>Sure I see a lot of hand waving here about that, but this community is notably not necessarily the most diverse

The communities deciding those terms as "potentially harmful" are even less diverse: mostly white, mostly of the aspirational classes, mostly of a certain ideological bent and demographic, with the token social climber members that don't represent their communities thrown in for good measure...

It's like the white people deciding on "latinx" for latinos, when majority real world latinos consider it idiotic (and don't find the term "latino" or "latin america" insulting).

>But even if more people want to do this, so what? It’s their choice. These documents are about others policing their own language, not them policing yours.

Hardly

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No one ever asked me if I liked being called 'Latinx'. I don't like the sound of it, and I feel I'd be seen as 'difficult' if I were to tell people in my company I don't like it.

How is 'Latin' offensive?

There is a loud minority within the Latin group who wants the term so they can feel powerful, and of course, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

In the end, all society is accomplishing is rewarding outrage.

Latin/Latino itself actually isn't inclusive since it is commonly used to refer to basically anyone from central/South America, even though many people there have no Latin heritage and may not even speak a Latin language(eg descendents of the Mayans)

Is Latinx any better from this point of view?

Not at all, I was just pointing out the irony of trying to make an intrinsically non-inclusive word marginally more inclusive.

Shouldn't matter, words are defined by their use (what we use them to refer to), not their etymology. And of course the Spanish or Portuguese aren't "latin" either (white Argentinians, who many are of Italian origin would be closer to being "latin". That said, modern Italians aren't latins either).

We won't be renaming "Latin America" either, so latin/latino is just that, inhabitant of latin america - or from a place "predominantly speaking a latin-derived language". Note that Latinx has the same exact root anyway - and iirc it was never about the concerns above, just a BS misunderstanding of gendered nouns in other languages (because latino being "male" somehow excluded others).

In any case, it should up to the populations to decide if they wanted another term not "white saviours" and a number of privileged activists in a totally different country.

And if the locals themselves wanted to correct a historical injustice, instead of playing with words, they can give rights to indigenous people, stop killing them and taking their land, or they could even move out of Latin America and back into Europe all together...

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