Are you Hispanic or Latina/o/x/e? Have you ever wondered why you see that question on applications, including our admissions application? Here's why:
Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) is an emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), which means that we are nearing the 25% full-time undergraduate enrollment threshold of students who identified as "Hispanic" in their admissions application. As we work towards becoming an HSI, we are revamping approaches to student services inside and outside the classroom to support this growing community in Salt Lake.
Every day at the college, on the news, and on social media, we encounter the terms "Hispanic," "Latino," "Latina," and most recently, the terms "Latinx" and "Latine." However, what is the difference between the terms? Here is an introduction:
Hispanic is a term that the U.S. Census introduced in the 1980s to capture a demographic with similar cultural characteristics. Hispanic refers to individuals from Spain or those who speak Spanish due to Spanish colonization. If you speak Spanish, you may be from Latin America. However, not everyone in Latin America speaks Spanish. For example, some individuals speak Portuguese, Creole, Quechua or Nahuatl, to name a few of the hundreds of languages spoken in this part of the globe.
Latina (feminine) or Latino (masculine) are more comprehensive terms to refer to cisgender* and transgender individuals who identify with the gender binary and have roots in Latin American territories colonized by a Romance language-speaking empire (i.e., France, Portugal, and Spain). Some scholars believe these terms stem from the French Emperor Napoleon III, who in the mid-1800s dubbed the region Latin America to exert control of the area. For example, if you are from Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Dominican Republic or Haiti and identify within a gender binary, you might self-identify as Latina or Latino.
Latinx (pronounced Latin-X or Latin-equis in Spanish) and Latine refer to individuals from Latin America who do not self-identify in a gender binary and as a gender-inclusive term to describe the population. We use the terms Latinx and Latine interchangeably to be mindful of the community's diversity.
If you identify as Hispanic, Latina, Latino, Latinx or Latine, it is essential to know the origin of these terms. And whether we are members of the Latinx community or not, we must listen carefully to how individuals refer to themselves and their communities so we can reflect their identities correctly.
So how do you identify?
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Written by Brenda Santoyo
SLCC Dream Center Coordinator
*Cisgender: A term used to indicate when a person's gender identity and expression match the biological sex assigned at birth.
Brenda Santoyo (she/hers/ella) is an SLCC alumna, and the college has been a home away from home for her for several years now. As a daughter of Mexican undocumented immigrants, she has always strived to serve the individual needs of her beloved community. In her time at the college, she has played a role in launching the Bruin Dreams scholarship program, maintaining the Undocumented Student Ally Training, upholding the charge of the Undocumented Student Resource Committee, and managing SLCC’s Dream Center, the second in the state of Utah, as its inaugural coordinator.