This Week's Inquirer: Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ ‘Latinx’ ban is performative anti-wokeness

You don’t have to like the word Latinx, an imperfect term for a world that now has a wider understanding of gender. But whether it’s taken up in our lexicon isn't up to you, or even me.

Dear Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders,

You were so close.

This month, on your first day as governor of Arkansas, you issued an executive order directing the state government to strike the term Latinx from official state documents. Although the term is meant to be gender-neutral (unlike Latino or Latina), you find it problematic, and — given its limited uptake among self-identified U.S. Hispanic and Latino adults — you’re not entirely wrong.

You framed your rule to sound progressive, even sensitive: “Executive Order to Respect the Latino Community by Eliminating Culturally Insensitive Words From Official Use in Government.” Gosh, that sounds almost — can I say this out loud? — woke.

There are just two problems.

First, you’re trying to dictate language use from the top down, and that’s not how language works.

And second, it takes only a quick glance at the context in which you released this executive order to see you don’t care about “culturally insensitive words” at all.

Read the full column at Inquirer.com.