Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either
Language—even its loss—is part of what “makes” Latinos, Latino.
Editor’s Note: This story is part of a collection of work by Xochitl Gonzalez that was the finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Welcome, dear reader, to Hispanic Heritage Month! The only heritage month that, like many of us whom it celebrates, exists across borders—of time, that is (in this case, the months of September and October!). It’s a four-week period where my calendar is as jam-packed as Dolores Del Rio’s dance card at the Trocadero.
I have mixed feelings about these calendar-based celebrations. On the one hand, I like seeing our stories and history given a brighter light—particularly considering that Latinos make up nearly 20 percent of the American population right now. On the other hand, given that statistic, I personally won’t be satisfied until that light shines on our stories around 20 percent of the time, 100 percent of the year.
Either way, for the next four weeks, I will ride the bandwagon and dedicate this space to what I will call “Hispanic Concerns”. Or, more accurately, “My Hispanic Concerns”. Stuff that really interests me, or sticks in my craw, both within my community and regarding how the outside world perceives us. This week: language.
A conundrum of the Latino experience in the United States is that we are an ethnic identity defined by nuance and diversity, who exist within a national conversation that is allergic to nuance and can’t really wrap its head around either. Hispanics (and I use the two terms interchangeably; if you want to know why I’m not using Latinx, please see here) are not a race, we are not universally immigrants, and we do not all speak Spanish.
This last piece perhaps is most befuddling, and occasionally distressing, to both white non-Hispanics as well as some subsections of the Hispanic community. As a Latina who does not speak fluent Spanish, and is very cognizant of the painful history as to why, nothing is more amusing and infuriating than the crestfallen look of a white non-Hispanic when they ask if you are fluent in Spanish and you say no. There’s often an awkward moment of silence when you can visibly see the person’s confusion, when they no longer know where to place you in their personal taxonomy system for other people’s identities.
In the old days, when people still felt comfortable saying the quiet parts out loud—roughly as recently as the late aughts—admitting I don’t speak Spanish to a white non-Hispanic might yield statements like, “So you’re not really Latina.” This reaction would render me both ashamed at my perceived deficiency and obliged to defend myself. I found myself overexplaining my comprehension skills and awkwardly apologizing for my grandparents, who—like so many others—were shamed and taunted for speaking Spanish and who, in an effort to shield their descendants from that discrimination, made English the dominant language of the household. And how, unlike my parents, I just never picked it up.
Of course, I am far from alone in this experience. This was an issue that, per the Washington Post, plagued Julián Castro during his presidential run, when the media would repeatedly stop just short of taunting the congressman with the Spanish-language prowess of the then-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg; New Jersey Senator Cory Booker; and Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke. Indeed, some say it cost him the vice-presidential nod in 2016, which went to a fluent Spanish speaker, Senator Tim Kaine. “Speaking Spanish fluently is just one part of the overall connection to the Latino community,” Castro told The Washington Post in 2019. “But mainstream media turns that into the only variable as to whether somebody is Latino or not, which is completely out of line with reality.”
For me, personally, it took years to register that the right response to non-Hispanic white people should be patient indignation. Patience because, to quote Lauryn Hill paraphrasing the Gospel of Luke: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Indignation that the same prevailing white-American culture that forced—through means passive and violent—my ancestors to sublimate their language now feels entitled to diminish my identity based on the absence of that language, without ever thinking to acknowledge the role the culture played in rendering the scar of its absence.
And it is a scar. There are few Latino-identifying people who don’t speak Spanish who don’t feel a certain way about it, be that ashamed, defiant, deficient, or proud. The loss of language within our community is rarely passive. There are many who wear their lack of Spanish-speaking ability as a badge of honor: a testament to their commitment to American-ness. And then there are the countless others who feel, as I once did, embarrassed—particularly when in the company of other Latinos—at how “American” this makes them. These are Latinos who mourn the loss of their culture. But this scar in absentia, this loss of Spanish, is too a part of our Latino experience. Because it is a part of our story as people of the United States.
This is partially why, when other Latino people are the ones using Spanish proficiency as some kind of community litmus test, it is particularly painful. Because very rarely is that knowledge deficit a personal choice, and, all too often, it is one that arose as a protective stance against discrimination. It extends no empathy to the difficulty—in a mixed-language environment or an English-dominant community—of retaining or reasserting language into the next generation. These things, once lost, are not easily returned.
For Afro-Latinos, Asian Latinos, and a growing group of Americans of mixed-race Latino identity who aren’t fluent, this negative judgment, coupled with the historic racism and colorism that exists within our own community, is doubly painful. It messages not just deficiency, but a seeming rejection from a community. And it’s an attitude that I believe acts as a cudgel against our own understanding of who we are as a community —of our history in this country—and detracts from our collective power as a group.
But back to white America: It’s interesting to me that Latino people seem to be the only ethinic group held to this double standard of language retention. The only group where assimilation is demanded but then turned against you like a sword as a marker of “disqualification.” If one was a Russian American or an Italian American who did not speak the once–mother tongue, sure, it might distress a grandmother or two. But white-American society would not see this as a “disqualification” from that person’s claim to that identity. Rudy Giuliani’s “Italianness” was never called into question just because he can’t speak the language. I don’t know if anyone has ever asked Nancy Pelosi or Devin Nunes, “Parli Italiano?” or “¿Você parle Português?” But no one questions their claims to Italian American or Portuguese American identity. Nor was it the case for any of the proud Russian, Polish, Greek, or countless other second- or third-generation Americans I grew up with. In fact, the language loss would be seen as “progress” in their family’s journey to being part of the fiber of this country. Not so for Latinos.
So why the double-edged sword for us? My friend, the very talented poet Marisa Tirado, hints at one possible theory in her poem, from which I borrowed this week’s column title, “Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either,” in which she writes:
When I learned that at first, Selena didn’t know Spanish
Either,
I entered a moment beyond my own poetics.
Truth is, white kids get more gold stars per language,
get corporate jobs in Mexico City. I watched them take
family cruises down to meet my ancestors before I could.
Do you know what it’s like to be off-limits from yourself?
Perhaps there is a blind spot in the white-American consciousness—a place where, as Marisa writes, “white kids get more gold stars per language”—concerning the impact of white-American discrimination on the Hispanic experience, including its role in language loss. Perhaps, as I wrote earlier, it’s simply the struggle of the American populace to do “nuance.”
Or perhaps it’s something altogether more complex and, I’ll admit, slightly more cynical: resentment. Of the perceived privileges of being a minority group. As if being Hispanic qualifies one for an array of benefits, such as minority business loans, affirmative-actions spots in colleges, and cultural buy-in to Bad Bunny, and, because we are not a race, speaking Spanish is how we are meant to “prove” we deserve this “special experience” of being marginalized in the United States of America. As if by not speaking Spanish, we are trying to “get away with something.”
I believe it is for this reason that the question of language, when raised by white Americans, so often feels—as Castro pointed out—like a gauntlet thrown down. It’s a gauntlet that seems to scream: “What gives you the right to claim this identity? Prove yourself to me!!” As if Kaine’s language proficiency carries the weight of forbearers whose bodies were experimented on so that American women could have birth control. As if O’Rourke’s Spanish holds the pain of grandparents being sent to segregated schools; of aunts and uncles being victims of mob violence; of arduous journeys made at great sacrifice across borders to work the jobs no one else wanted. I could go on and on here, but you get my point.
To my bilingual Latino readers: You carry in your tongues the history of where we descended from, where we’ve come from. These are places many of us still think of as home, or at least homes away from home. Keep it alive!
To my non-Spanish-speaking Latino readers, your loss of language is, too, a part of our history—that is, of our history here in America. Our loss of language is the history of the things our families before us endured, and the things we’ve endured personally. It’s a fact that we can choose, with great effort, to try and amend, but nothing we should ever feel we need to apologize for. And to my white, non-Latino readers: This Hispanic Heritage Month, let us tell you what makes Latinidad. (Hint: It doesn’t start and stop with Spanish skills.)
Some of my colleagues will be in conversation with several of today’s biggest names in business, culture, politics, and health next week at The Atlantic Festival. For a limited time, use the code TAFFRIEND for 50 percent off in-person registration. Learn more here.