Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will prohibit the usage of the term “Latinx” in government documents through an executive order.
Sanders, who was sworn in as the primary female governor of Arkansas on Tuesday, justified the ban of the word “Latinx” in government documents and name titles by citing a Pew Research poll that found only 3% of American Latinos and Hispanics used the term to explain themselves.
“Ethnically insensitive and pejorative language has no place in official government documents or government worker titles,” Sanders’ executive order states. “The federal government has a responsibility to respect its residents and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities.”
Progressive groups and a few politicians have pushed the term “Latinx” lately as a gender-neutral alternative to the Spanish words Latina and Latino.
Sanders noted in the manager order that the Real Academia Española, a Madrid-based institution that serves as a linguistic guide for Spanish, officially rejects the usage of “x” to interchange “o” and “a” as a option to discover gender within the language.
“One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English,” the manager order states. “It’s the policy of the Governor’s administration to ban the usage of culturally insensitive words for official state government business.”
Sanders now serves in the identical post as her father, Mike Huckabee, who was governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. She is the youngest governor within the country at 40 years old.
One other executive order set to be signed by Sanders will ban the usage of TikTok on state devices and government networks — an motion first reported by Fox News Digital. The order follows similar bans from the federal government and greater than 20 other states.
Sanders previously worked because the press secretary for former President Donald Trump in 2019. She told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that as a mother, education will probably be a core issue in her governorship.
“I’ve made no secret that the largest priority I even have for this session is a large-scale education reform package,” Sanders said. “I’m living it on daily basis with a fifth-grader, a third-grader and a first-grader, and I feel the impact of education and what it means and what it means to every kid.”