Editor's note: The Daily Tar Heel does use the term Latinx, following our 2015 shift to gender-neutral language.
Every day, I read stories about campus life which confuse me as to how I should interact with leftist students to avoid giving offense. The campus culture is changing so rapidly and so perversely that to address one facet of it would neglect many others. But, I’ll give it a try.
Recently, students have insisted to The Daily Tar Heel that there should be a permanent space on campus for the Latinx Education Research Hub. The students’ comments took a tone that hinted at an administrative conspiracy to undermine principles of “justice and equity.” Most surprisingly, this story actually uses the word “Latinx” like it’s part of our normal vernacular. I wonder if the academics at the Hub know that a majority of Hispanics living in the United States would most prefer to be identified with their families’ country of origin. Of the remaining 49 percent who would prefer “Hispanic” or “Latino,” only 14 percent prefer “Latino.” I can imagine even fewer prefer a stipulative, ungendered designation like “Latinx.”
In a recent move toward mainstream acceptance of intersectional ideology, the Chapel Hill Public Library will hold an event which seeks to discuss “white women’s roles in supporting white supremacy.”
The writers at another leftist institution, the New York Times, have also recently jumped into the conversation on this topic. In her most recent column for the Times, Alexis Grenell points out that 53 percent of white women “put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness.” Perhaps the left would have white women believe that they are lesser victims now? (Fear not, white women, you can repent by voting for Democrats in November!)
Certain leftist talking points are treated as factual when they are, in fact, debatable, factually inaccurate or illogical on their face: It’s correct to describe people from Central or South America as “Latinx.” A vote for Trump is a vote for female oppression.
The recent events on campus come from these shaky generalizations that we are expected to assume true to even have a productive conversation with someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, students are so deathly afraid of being called racist/sexist/bigoted/homophobic that they blindly accept whatever their woke friends spout as facts.
The speed at which new information is disseminated on social media and on campus challenges us to get with the program or be left behind on the "wrong side of history." But we have to agree on the facts so that we aren’t talking past each other. I implore more left-leaning students on campus to question the basic precepts of their positions on specific central issues. Have the courage to challenge what you are told on Twitter or by some angry student with a megaphone. We have to agree on the rules before we start to play.
