Wait, why did they say "Latin@"? What does that even mean?
@ has elements of both an 'a' and an 'o' in the way it looks so it's intended to be a (sadly unpronounceable) gender-neutral shorthand for situations where for whatever reason people don't want to use the word 'Hispanic'. I'm seeing it more and more often these days.
Huh. I only see the a, thus defeating the purpose. Can't they just say Latino/a?
The irony is that in Spanish, the male pronoun is always used when dealing with mixed genders or an unknown gender. A group of male and female Hispanic Americans is always going to be referred to as Latinos. So in their ham-handed attempt to be politically correct, they willfully disregarded another culture's linguistic conventions. RACISTS!
That reminds me of my reaction when seeing a "alumni/ae" hall in our journalism school. My cringing reminded me that the Latinophone in me was not yet fully dead... By the way, what's the problem with "Hispanic"?
Averroes, I'm thinking the ones with six figure salaries will be the ones who tried to speak in defense of the administration.
Some people feels like the term ties Latin@s (?) to their colonial Spanish oppressors, when their genetic identity is predominantly Native American. I've never known a Hispanic who minded the term, but I've of course not met that many of them.
