Why John Leguizamo loves 'Latinx' but doesn't like 'people of color' - the phrase, that is

At 55, John Leguizamo may technically be a baby boomer, but you won’t often find him on the “get off my lawn” side of the generational divide.

Take the debate over the gender-neutral identity marker “Latinx.”

“I love the term Latinx, because it makes me think that being Latin is a superpower,” Leguizamo says, even though he didn’t use it in the title of his latest one-man show, “Latin History for Morons.”

“I want Latinx youth to succeed,” he says. “They’re my target, and they’re my protectorship, because they’re the most vulnerable. ‘Latinx’ to me protects young Latin girls from being excluded, because the masculine side of the word does exclude them.”

A quest to find Latin heroes

Leguizamo brings his “Latin History” tour to Tempe’s ASU Gammage on Dec. 7. It’s his sixth one-man show, and the fourth that he has taken to Broadway (starting with 1998’s “Freak”).

A filmed performance has been streaming on Netflix for a year, but Leguizamo continues to add new material to his rapid-fire tour through a historical hall of fame.

The show wasn’t inspired so much as provoked by the lack of Latino history in the textbooks his two kids were reading at school, and by his son’s experience of being bullied over his ethnic heritage. Leguizamo set out to find the Latin American heroes that had been erased from history — and he found plenty, including the soldiers who fought in every U.S. war since 1776.

“The beautiful thing that happened was I was the one who was empowered and changed by doing all this research,” he says.

“We are the sons and daughters of the American Revolution. Why isn’t that everywhere, and statues and parades for us? How come we’re not in ‘Band of Brothers’? It’s outrageous how we’re marginalized, overlooked, erased. And I’ve had enough.”

‘I love identity politics’

This kind of in-your-face identity politics will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Leguizamo’s wide-ranging career, and not just his performances in mainstream fare such as “John Wick” or the “Ice Age” movies (as the voice of Sid the giant sloth).

“I love identity politics,” he says. “The only thing that I’m not cool with is the term ‘people of color,’ because at first I thought it was unifying, and now I’m realizing it’s become a way of making quotas and further excluding Latin people.”

He cites a call he says he made to his hometown newspaper — that would be the New York Times — about the lack of Latinos on its pages.

“And they say, ‘Well, we have the largest (representation of) contributors of people of color,’” he says. “I go, ‘That’s incredible, I’m so happy for you. How many of those are Latin?’ Quiet. ‘We’ll get back to you with those numbers.’”

Crowdfunding a Latin superhero

For his next project, Leguizamo is moving on from historical heroes to superheroes. He is in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign to publish a comic book series he’s writing titled “PhenomX,” about an ex-con trying to clear his name.

“All the money goes to the artists, none to me,” he says. “They’re all Latinx, some women, some men.”

So no, John Leguizamo isn’t particularly worried about getting “OK boomered” by younger generations.

“If you’re reading and you’re talking to them and you’re changing as you get older, you’re not going to be that ‘OK boomer,’ ” he says. “You’re going to be a hip, woke boomer. But if you’re not growing and changing and you’re stuck in your ways? Goodbye, boomer.”

John Leguizamo: ‘Latin History for Morons’

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7.

Where: ASU Gammage, Mill Avenue and Apache Boulevard, Tempe.

Admission: $20 and up.

Details: 480-965-3434, asugammage.com.

Talk to the writer about arts and culture at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.

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