Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture

The Latinx revolution in US culture, society, and politics

"Latinx" (pronounced "La-teen-ex") is the gender-neutral term that covers one of the largest and fastest growing minorities in the United States, accounting for 17 percent of the country. Over 58 million Americans belong to the category, including a sizable part of the country's working class, both foreign and native-born. Their political empowerment is altering the balance of forces in a growing number of states. And yet Latinx barely figure in America's ongoing conversation about race and ethnicity. Remarkably, the US census does not even have a racial category for "Latino."

In this groundbreaking discussion, Ed Morales explains how Latinx political identities are tied to a long Latin American history of mestizaje--"mixedness" or "hybridity"--and that this border thinking is both a key to understanding bilingual, bicultural Latin cultures and politics and a challenge to America's infamously black-white racial regime. This searching and long-overdue exploration of the meaning of race in American life reimagines Cornel West's bestselling Race Matters with a unique Latinx inflection.

Ed Morales is an author, journalist, filmmaker, and poet who teaches at Columbia University. He is the author of The Latin Beat and Living in Spanglish. He has written for the Village Voice, Nation, New York Times, Rolling Stone, and other publications and is a regular commentator on NPR. His film Whose Barrio? premiered at the New York Latino International Film Festival. He lives in New York City.