Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order on Tuesday prohibiting the word “Latinx” from official use in the state government.
The order (pdf), which was among several Sanders signed, came just hours after she was sworn in as the new governor.
The order states that ethnically insensitive and pejorative language “has no place in official government documents or government employee titles,” and that the government “has a responsibility to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities.”
The term “Latinx” has been used by some social commentators in recent years as a “gender-neutral” alternative to the Spanish words Latina and Latino.
Sanders, a Republican, cited a Pew Research study published in 2020, which found that just 23 percent of U.S. adults who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino had ever heard of the term “Latinx,” and only 3 percent used the word.
The survey was conducted among 3,030 U.S. Hispanic adults in December 2019 as part of the yearly National Survey of Latinos.
Tuesday’s order also pointed to the Real Academia Española, a Madrid-based institution that governs the Spanish language, which has officially rejected the use of “x” as an alternative to “o” and “a” in Spanish.
“One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English,” the executive order states.
Under the order, all state offices, departments, and agencies—unless granted an exemption by Sanders—will have to review existing official documents of their respective entities regarding the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents, and submit a report to the governor detailing the findings of their review.
Within 60 days, they will have to replace the term “Latinx” in all forms with the terms “Hispanic,” “Latino,” or “Latina.”
The move was welcomed by many, but proponents of changing the language disagreed.
Ed Morales, author of “Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture,” told NBC News that Sanders’ decision to remove the term “Latinx” from official use in the state government suggests that the Republican Party is increasingly pandering to the “anti-woke agenda.”
“It is something that seems to be tied to things that they object to, which is really anything that prioritizes marginalized people and marginalized points of view,” Morales told NBC News.
Sanders Goes After CRT in Schools
Sanders, the first-ever female governor of Arkansas, signed a string of other executive orders on her first day in office, including one “prohibiting indoctrination” and banning the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in Arkansas schools.
“Schools must educate, not indoctrinate students; and their education policies must protect children and prepare them to enter the workforce,” the order states. “Teachers and school administrators should teach students how to think—not what to think.”
CRT controversially redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors”—typically considered to be white people of European ancestry—and the “oppressed,” encompassing all other identity groups, similar to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.”
The theory has slowly expanded in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world, despite opposition from parents and communities across the country.
Other notable orders signed by Sanders on Tuesday included one initiating an immediate freeze on new government hiring and promotions in an effort to reduce government financial waste and ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely, and another aimed at limiting government overreach and reducing bureaucracy.
Another order is aimed at protecting the state’s information and communication technologies from the influence of adversarial foreign governments such as China.
Katabella Roberts is a news writer for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States, world, and business news.
