Latino Peoples’ Resistance to Language Silencing

• • racializing Spanish

Research Joe Feagin and I conducted revealed that when silencing attempts are directed at Latino peoples they frequently do not accept them meekly but are likely to respond against the perpetrators’ command in strong terms. Here is an example: A Cuban-American executive and his wife, though fluent in English, spoke in Spanish to their son so that he would learn the language. They were at Disneyworld and after he spoke in Spanish to their son an unsavory silencing episode occurred that could have turned into a tragedy. He described it as follows:

I had a really bad experience at Disneyworld . . . . My son at the time was three . . . . He jumped the line and went straight to where there was Pluto or Mickey Mouse or something and I said “[Son’s name], come back,” in Spanish and . . . ran after him. And I heard behind me somebody say, “It would be a fucking spic that would cut the line.” Now my wife saw who said it, and I said ”Who said that?” in English and nobody said a word. And I said [to my wife], “Point him out, I want to know who said that,” and she refused. I was like, “Who was the motherfucker who said that?” I said, “Be brave enough to say it to my face because I’m going to kill you.” You can see me, I’m 6’3’’, 275 [pounds]. Nobody volunteered . . . . [Interviewer:] So nobody stepped up? No, no and there was a bunch of guys there, and I would have thrown down two or three of them; I wouldn’t have had a problem (pp. 49-50).

The executive was willing to confront the perpetrator physically. Fortunately, the situation did not reach that point, but he stated in unequivocal terms his opposition to the treatment received by his child from a white bigot.

A recent silencing episode resulted in a surprising and delightful case of resistance. The victim of the silencing attempt relates the episode as follows:

This man just asked me to “please stop speaking Spanish” on this plane to NYC (in his defense it’s very early and he’s racist) so the man next to him STARTED SPEAKING SPANISH and then the flight attendant [started speaking Spanish as well].

The silencer did not anticipate that there we other Spanish speakers nearby. One can only imagine his reaction when confronted with a joint resistance response. As the number of Spanish speakers in the US is augmented with the immigration from Latin America, and since there are no indications that tolerance of Spanish will increase among whites and others, one can expect episodes of the silencing-resistance dialectic to become more frequent.

Since it would be absurd to expect a people to become crypto-speakers of their own language, it seems as if an increase in tolerance for Spanish among those who blindly oppose it is the only solution to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. We can start by electing politicians who hold a pro-Latino platform and display an interest in speaking Spanish in public and thus will promote its legitimacy.

Silencing Spanish Speakers

• • Anti-Spanish Framing

CNN reports an act of silencing Spanish that took place at a Burger King restaurant in Eustis, Florida on July 6.

Two white customers became upset because a manager had a brief conversation in Spanish with one of his employees. After the employee left, the customers told the manager they wanted to complain. Thinking they were dissatisfied with their meal, he offered to give them credit or a free desert. One of the customers explained that their complaint was about the manager’s speaking Spanish. They said that he shouldn’t be speaking Spanish but “American English” instead because “we’re in America.” The manager said, “No ma’am, I don’t,” and one the protagonists told the manager to go back to Mexico. The manager responded “”Guess what ma’am, I’m not Mexican [he is of Puerto Rican descent] but you’re being very prejudiced and I want you out of my restaurant, right now.” The customers responded that what they meant was that the manager should speak Spanish at home, not in public places like the restaurant and added they would leave after they finished their meals but left soon thereafter left after the manager threatened to call the police.

This was an episode in silencing. Joe Feagin and I discussed silencing in our book, where we point out that silencing is related to beliefs in the White Racial Frame that define vernacular Spanish as not having legitimacy in the United States and others have the authority to interfere in conversations in Spanish and demand that the speakers stop and switch to English.

As we said in the book and have repeated elsewhere, silencing is on the surface absurd since it demands that people abandon their language, the one they feel comfortable speaking, and switch to English, a foreign language. It is in fact an extreme act of denigration against Latinos, a rooted people in the US, and their language, which is equally rooted. On the surface it is white elite racism in its purest form: claiming white supremacy over vernacular Spanish on utterly racist, xenophobic, and irrational grounds.

Spanish as Old Respected Language: Why Not Now?

• • Spanish

The Spanish language has followed two paths in the history of the United States: early on as a respected language and more recently as the derided vernacular of a racialized people. The majority of the sociological literature has focused on the racialization of Spanish and skipped over the “acceptable” roots of the language in this country. But both coexist today and the former’s status cannot be properly understood without consideration of the status of the latter.

The respectability of Spanish can be traced to early colonial days. Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson stated that the study of Spanish would be beneficial to young men interested in commerce and Jefferson included Spanish in the curriculum that he designed for the College of William and Mary. By the nineteenth century Spanish-language instruction was adopted by many institutions of higher education, including Harvard University and other Ivy League schools and Spanish-language newspapers were published in New Mexico, Louisiana, and other areas of the United States.

Spanish remains “respectable” in academic and artistic areas, but since the end of the war between the US and Mexico in the 1840s there has been a significant white racialization of Spanish as the language of conquered Latino peoples. Even as millions of former Mexican citizens, most of whom spoke Spanish as their native tongue, were incorporated into the United States, the dominant White Racial Frame declared vernacular Spanish as foreign and not belonging in the United States.

Such assertions are simplistic and inaccurate. They represent justifications of the subjugation of Latino peoples and lack a factual basis. Historian Rosina Lozano explains the complex history of Spanish in the US and its legitimacy (pp. 4-5):

After the passage of centuries, Spanish became the native language of Spanish settlements in Louisiana, parts of the future U.S. Midwest, and the future Southwest, and the lingua franca for many American Indians who lived among these Spanish-speaking settlements. Over the course of the twentieth century, migration to the United States from Latin American countries has replenished Spanish’s place in the country and bolstered perceptions of Spanish as an immigrant language, distracting most from its earlier manifestations. This long exposure to the Spanish language makes it part of the nation’s fabric.

Although I have not conducted a systematic study, it seems to me that recently the racialization of Spanish has been fused with the xenophobia that has made “Latino” and vernacular Spanish coterminous with “illegal” and the rejection of immigrants entails the rejection of their everyday language.

Research that Joe Feagin and I have conducted shows that Spanish speakers “caught” conversing in their own language are admonished to “speak English, this is America.” In other words, Spanish does not belong in the United States as a vernacular and neither do you as a Latino. This situation approaches lunacy. The deep rootedness of vernacular Spanish in North and South America is undeniable and its rejection as a legitimate everyday language in the US defies its importance in areas such as politics, business, and the media in North and South America. These are positions incongruent with the facts but consonant with a White Racial Frame that provides an ideology that supports the exploitation of a vulnerable proletariat.

I would venture a guess that, in the eyes of the white elite, the Spanish language as an academic and literate language that does not challenge their interests, will remain respectable while vernacular Spanish, the language of the oppressed, will continue to be a handy tool to deride Latinos/”illegals” for a long time. That is, the treatment of Spanish in the US by whites is about a log more than language. Try white racism.