Latinx: ¡Estamos aquí!, or being “Latinx” at UNC-Chapel Hill

Abstract

This essay theorizes the specific use of the term “Latinx” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during 2016–2017, which emanated in the context of the Tar Heel State’s election year politics and the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump one. “Latinx” gained currency at the University of North Carolina in the wake of House Bill 2: The Public Facilities, Privacy, and Security Act, or as it came to be commonly referenced, “HB2.” The bill enforces an oppressive binary sex-and-gender system as well as the potential exploitation of and discrimination against employees. HB2, signed into law, takes aim at transgender and transsexual people and bars employees from filing in state courts against their employers and limits them to bringing their grievance cases to a federal court, a far more expensive and cumbersome process. Latinx was adopted at the University of North Carolina especially but not exclusively by students to be gender-inclusive in the wake of HB2 and, furthermore, to be coalitional. A general consensus exists that discrimination runs along multiple vectors at once, not just gender but also ethno-racial and class vectors where “class” is understood to encompass a variety of factors, including citizenship status.