Clearing Out The In-Box -- December 13, 2020

US consumer sentiment: rises unexpectedly. Link here.

• prior: 76.9
• forecast: 75.5
• actual: 81.4

People were pouring out of US cities well before Covid-19. Link here. 

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Latinx

About one-in-four US Hispanics have heard of Latin, but just 3% use it. Link here.

Latinx is gender-neutral, an alternate for "Latino" or "Latina."

From the linked article:

Yet the use of Latinx is not common practice, and the term’s emergence has generated debate about its appropriateness in a gendered language like Spanish. 

Some critics point to its origins among U.S. English speakers, saying it ignores the Spanish language and its gendered form. Still, there are examples of the term’s use in Spanish in the U.S. and abroad.

Meanwhile, others see Latinx as a gender- and LGBTQ-inclusive term, reflecting a broader movement within the U.S. around gender identity.

I haven't paid much attention to the new term. I've run across is once in awhile but yesterday saw it in a headline over at the LA Times and was finally curious enough to learn something about it.

My wife's father was of Mexican heritage. I assume his ancestry was Spanish and Native Mexicans. We most often use "Hispanic" when discussing the ancestry of our daughters and grandchildren.