Note: This is the first part of the series “Not Latinx Enough: Examining the Expectations, Assumptions, and Stereotypes of being a Latinx Person in the U.S”
Following Mandarin, Spanish is the second most spoken language worldwide. According to a Pew Research Center study conducted in 2011, 37.5 million people in the United States speak Spanish, 2.8 million of them are non- Hispanic or Latinx people. Though English proficiency among Latinx and Hispanic people is rising, with most of those born in the U.S speaking English and more than a quarter of those outside of the U.S speaking English, 35.8 million Latinx and Hispanic people were found in 2015 to be actively speaking Spanish at home. It was reported in the 2011 National Survey of Latinos Dataset gathered by The Pew Research Center that “More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so.” Therefore, as these stats show, speaking and knowing Spanish is very prevalent and important to many Latinx people. Thus, one of the ways Latinx people are policed by others within the community and outside the community is through the knowledge of Spanish (or lack of). As mentioned previously, I did not grow up speaking Spanish. My mom did not grow up speaking Spanish as well so she did not have the opportunity to teach my brother and I. Whenever I tell people I am part Mexican and don’t speak Spanish, they are shocked and ask in a judgmental tone why I do not. When researching for this article, I discovered many other Latinx people discussing this same issue.
This issue is not just limited to those who are part white like myself but even to those who identify as full Latinx and/or can check the other “requirements” of being Latinx mentioned previously in the introduction to this series (brownskin and recent immigration within family either themselves or their parents). Blogger Lisa Quinones-Fontanez from Atypical Familia writes about being called a “white girl” and “valley girl” and even an “embarrassment” for not speaking Spanish while identifying as a Latina and fitting the mold of “looking” like a Latina. She points out that even if she did learn Spanish she might be judged for not having the “right” accent. The video “Things Non-Spanish Speaking Latinos are sick of hearing” by the Youtube channel Flama portrays a similar circumstance showing a Latinx man named Alejandro who “looks” Latinx but does not speak Spanish. In the video, a Spanish speaking coworker of Alejandro’s corrected his pronunciation of his home neighborhood Los Feliz, badgered him to make sure he at least tried to learn Spanish at some point in his life, and then called him a fake person who “in his head is a white man.” This idea of “if you don’t speak Spanish as a Latinx person you are just white” was also portrayed in the Starz show Vida. Vida centers two Mexican-American girls in East Los Angeles who take over a neighborhood bar their mother owned after she died. The youngest of the two sisters, Lynn (Melissa Barrera) is often called a “coconut” (brown on the outside white on the inside) because she does not speak Spanish. She is later judged by one of her love interests’ mothers because of her lack of speaking the language. We also see Latinx people in high office and in the public eye criticized for their lack of Spanish as well. An article in The Washington Post by Samantha Schmidt centers politician Julien Castro’s inability to speak Spanish as a third-generation Mexican-American. Schmidt points out that Castro’s lack of the language has been brought up many times in Castro’s career. Castro mentions that he was not explicitly told that he could not learn Spanish but that speaking English over Spanish in the home was so normalized. Ed Pilkington of The Guardian went as far to imply that Castro cannot be considered a Latino politician because he does not speak fluent Spanish.
There are also those who know and speak the language but are denounced for not speaking Spanish the “correct way.” In the Youtube video “Struggles of not Feeling Latino Enough” by the Latinx focused Youtube channel Pero Like, Maya Murillo talks about how she felt judged by her Latinx friends for speaking Spanglish instead of formal Spanish. Murillo states that this questioning from her friends made her feel “very, very bad about myself.” In the movie Selena based on the famous singer Selena Quintanilla (Jennifer Lopez), there is a scene in which Selena talks about wanting to go to Mexico and her dad Abraham (Edward James Olmos) worries because even though Selena has been singing in Spanish he says she speaks it “funny” and that she needs to speak it “perfect” to not get backlash. Abraham then explains that the problem with being Mexican American is that white people in America judge Mexican Americans for not speaking English fluently or even “correctly” while Mexicans in Mexico judge Mexican Americans for not speaking Spanish “correctly.” Therefore, in all of the above examples it is clear that if you don’t know Spanish or speak Spanglish your ethnic identity is questioned or is taken away from you even if you have brown skin or a Latinx sounding name. It seems that Spanish is the dealbreaker when it comes to being Latinx.
It is clear that if you don’t know Spanish or speak Spanglish your ethnic identity is questioned or is taken away from you even if you have brown skin or a Latinx sounding name.
There are valid reasons for why many Latinx in the U.S people do not speak Spanish, one of them being the history of Latinx people being encouraged not to speak Spanish in order to avoid facing violence. According to the article, “The Brutal History of Anti-Latino Discrimination in America” by Erin Blakemore, Mexicans have been discriminated against since the Mexican-American war. Due to the Treaty of Hidalgo, many Mexicans became U.S citizens once parts of Mexico were acquired by the U.S. More Mexicans were encouraged to move to the U.S because they were valued for their cheap labor such as their work on the railroads and in agriculture. However, anti-Latino sentiment grew and many of those who spoke Spanish were terrorized and killed by white people. Blakemore and Marie Arana explain that many Mexicans including Mexican children were attacked by mobs and even lynched in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Great Depression millions of Mexicans, many who were U.S citizens, were forcibly deported or “repatriated” after being blamed for the lack of jobs available, “Around one third of Los Angeles’ Mexican population left the country, as did a third of Texas’ Mexican-born population.” Latinx people were segregated even though there were not any laws for this like the Jim Crow laws for black people. Mexican children were forced to attend low quality segregated schools, that were basically shacks, up to 1946 when this segregation was outlawed. The segregation was based on the false belief that Mexican students weren’t as smart as white students since they did not speak English. According to Slyiva Mendez whose dad played a major role in desegregating schools in California, students “weren’t taught how to read and write…We were taught home economics, how to crochet and knit.”
This violence still continues up to this day and has increased under the ruling of Donald Trump. Back in 2015, when talking about Mexican immigrants Trump was infamously quoted saying, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Also in 2015, when announcing his candidacy, Trump declared, “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that.” In addition, Trump during a Republican Presidential debate slandered speaking Spanish in the U.S by expressing that “This is a country where we speak English not Spanish.” This rhetoric has led to an increase in the number of hate crimes towards Latinx and Hispanic people with 671 incidents being recorded by the FBI in 2018.
Many of these attacks occurred because of Latinx people speaking Spanish. One of these crimes occurred in a Latinx neighborhood in Boston in 2020 against a daughter and mother who were physically assaulted and told to speak English. In a Burger King in Florida, the manager was told by two older women to, “Go back to Mexico if you want to keep speaking Spanish.” It is important to note here that the manager was Puerto Rican and even told the women he is not Mexican. Virginia Isaad of the website Hip Latina discussed verbal assaults on Latinx people speaking Spanish including: a woman in the air force who was told that her speaking Spanish “does not represent America”, a woman who was questioned by a border patrol officer in Montana and asked to see her ID, and a white lawyer who threatened to call ICE on employees at a restaurant in Manhattan for speaking Spanish to customers. It is rather horrifying and jarring that these attacks still continue to happen and that there is a ProEnglish movement in America. Supporters of the ProEnglish movement are pushing for English to be the official language of the U.S. Those who support the deemed hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, don’t consider themselves anti-Spanish necessarily but believe that speaking English in America will help secure success for immigrants rather than just only speaking their native language. These attacks on speaking Spanish and this push to only speak English in America is a key tactic for racist white Americans to keep their place and their way of life because they see the rising population of Latinx people as a threat.
This violence has affected the learning of Spanish. In an article by Darian Trotter, Mexican-American Gina Eisenberg said her parents did not teach her to speak Spanish because of the possibility of being faced with prejudice, discrimination, and racism. In my own family history this was a common practice as well. My great grandma spoke Spanish but did not teach her children because she wanted them to pass as white. Gloria Monroy writes that many Latinx people face linguistic assimilation which is basically the idea that they have to give up their native tongue and speak English. To Monroy, speaking Spanish is a part of many Mexican people’s identity like herself and feels as if Latinx people’s “cultural roots” are threatened if they have to give up their language. This pressure to not speak Spanish to avoid violence while living in America has led to a decline in the teaching of Spanish across immigrant generations, charted by a Pew Research Study conducted in 2018. 49% of those who are third generation Latinx people, who had parents both born in the U.S, teach their children Spanish compared to 97% of those born outside of the United States. One can also argue that this phenomena of Spanish declining across generations may also contribute to the fact that Pew Research Center revealed in 2016 that “…most Latino adults say it is not necessary to speak Spanish to be considered Latino…71% of Latino adults hold this view while 28% say the opposite.” When young Latinx people, age 18-35, were asked about speaking Spanish, 59% say they use Spanish and 76% say that Spanish isn’t essential to calling yourself Latino. There are other reasons for changes in the rates of the amount of Latinx people who speak Spanish. For example, more Latinx people being born in the United States has also contributed to the decline and importance of Spanish in the home.
My great grandma spoke Spanish but did not teach her children because she wanted them to pass as white
Thus, within this toxic environment with the pressure to conform and to give up part of one’s identity, speaking Spanish may even be an act of resistance and/or a way of empowering oneself. In discussion with RollingStone, Selena Gomez explains that she was at one point in her life fluent in Spanish and relearned it for her Spanish album Revelacion. She also said that she prefers her singing voice in Spanish compared to English. She explains that the experience of making this album made her feel a sense of belonging and that she made the album in Spanish because of the pride she has in her heritage. Thus for Gomez, singing and relearning Spanish is a way for her to connect to her roots and feel truly at one with her ethnic background. Chicana feminist Gloria Anzadlua in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza wrote a section called “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” where she talks about her own experience of being judged for she spoke English and Spanish. Anazulda implies that she always felt like others were always trying to tame her tongue to get her to speak the way they wanted her too. She also lists and discusses all the different languages Chicanos speak:
“1. Standard English
2. Working class and slang English
3. Standard Spanish
4. Standard Mexican Spanish
5. North Mexican Spanish dialect
6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California
have regional variations)
7. Tex-Mex
8. Pachuco (called calo)”
Anazldua says that Chicano Spanish and Tex-Mex are her “home.” She disrupts the false narrative that Chicano Spanish is an “illegitimate bastard language” but a core part to Chicanos’ identities. She explains that the variety of languages she knows and speaks are more than words but who she is as a person. Her ethnic and linguistic identity are deeply connected. Therefore, she finds empowerment and her true self in all her varieties of Spanish.
On a similar note, Spanglish as a whole can be an act of resistance to fuse together two worlds English and Spanish, when there is a desperate urge to keep them apart. Though there is a stigma that Spanglish is informal and incorrect, in her TED talk “Spanglish is a Language Too!” Alondra Posada discusses how she views Spanglish as “a strong representation of both Latino and American heritage” and that “it represents the completeness of both languages.” She explains that Chicano activists (she defines Chicanos as those who were born in the U.S but have Mexican descent) created Spanglish in order to “set themselves apart” and thus create a unique identity that included both American and Mexican. In a Pew Research Study conducted in 2009 it was revealed that Spanglish is important to particularly second generation Latinx youths “26% report that they use it most of the time, and 53% report that they use it some of the time.” There is a college course developed by teaching assistant Professor Lina Reznicek-Parrado from the University of Denver where Spanglish is encouraged and brought to the center. Spanglish is a way for Latinx people, especially those born in the United States to combine both cultures instead of feeling like they need to leave one behind.
However, with all of this in mind, some of us may not want to learn Spanish and don’t feel the need. Let’s not forget that learning a language is difficult as an adult. It takes a lot of time and practice to learn a language and not everyone has the privilege of setting aside that time. As mentioned from the blog Atypical Familia, even if all of us learned the language we still might be criticized for not speaking it “correctly.” For me, the idea that I need to speak Spanish to consider myself Latina is also ableist. I am someone who has stuttered my whole life and speaking in another language for me is even more difficult because of it. I took Spanish in high school and remember a presentation where I just majorly struggled because of my stuttering. Thus, there are those who have a disability where learning a language is not so simple. I also don’t need Spanish to feel at one with my culture. As a young child I have fond memories of dancing Ballet Folklorico and listening to Mexican music in the car with my mom. I am one to enjoy pan dulce, horchata, and tamales. I don’t need to speak a language to feel Mexican enough. We also tend to forget that not every Latin country speaks Spanish, like Brazil, and that Spanish itself is not the native language of a lot of countries. I just find it interesting that we put so much of our cultural and ethnic identity on a language that was forced upon by colonizers. Mexico has 69 official languages with 68 of those being indigenous languages. I wonder if it is more worth our effort to recover indigneous languages than put on this pressure to speak Spanish.
Why is there such this expectation to learn Spanish? There is this racist idea that if you are not white then you are automatically a foreigner to the United States, so marginalized people like those who are Latinx and Asian (or both) are expected to know those languages. This idea is reinforced through the question. “Where are you really from?” There is also this thought of space and distance. In the scene I mentioned earlier from the movie Selena, where her dad Abraham is talking about the struggles of being Mexican American, he explains that what specifically makes it more difficult to be Mexican American is how their homeland is close to them unlike other groups whose homelands are across the ocean. Therefore, since they are in distance close to Mexico the judgement is close to them as well. It is funny to me that I have closer familial ties to Italy than I do Mexico since my grandpa was born in Italy and came over when he was 13, however no one ever expects me to learn Italian or tells me I am not Italian enough. I definitely think distance and space along with racism are the main reasons why Latinx people, and also why Mexicans in California specifically, are criticized and denounced so hard for not knowing Spanish. We also need to remember that we reinforce this notion ourselves.
It is funny to me that I have closer familial ties to Italy than I do Mexico since my grandpa was born in Italy and came over when he was 13, however no one ever expects me to learn Italian or tells me that I am not Italian enough.
We alienate and police those within Latinx communities for not sounding the way we want them to. We shame them, take their ethnic identity away, and resort to proclaiming them as “white” (specifically I am referring to those who are not white). We have internalized this idea that we must need to know Spanish or we do not belong. If you feel like Spanish is important to your Latinx identity or Spanglish then I am happy for you. I admire those who rebel against this conformity and need to assimilate and find ways to make Spanish work for them. It is amazing you find power in a language that is beautiful. Even though I do not speak Spanish and have no desire to learn it I want all of you to know I will stand up for the rights of those to speak Spanish because none of this violence is okay. I will stand by you. We need each other and to listen to each other. Don’t exclude other Latinx people because they don’t feel the same. We can all find a way to connect to the culture and heritage that doesn’t involve the language. There is not one way of being Latinx. We should all unite together in our shared identity instead of gatekeeping it. We need to stop questioning those who don’t speak Spanish but just accept that they don’t. We need to remember the history and respect those who felt like they had to not teach the next generations Spanish out of safety. We need to remind ourselves that a language isn’t a requirement to claim and belong to an identity. I am part Mexican and identify as a Latinx person and I don’t speak Spanish and that should be perfectly ok.