Itzel

On Linguistic (In)Justice

This article is from the Moody Center magazine, set to publish spring 2022. To learn more about the magazine and Moody Center, subscribe to their newsletter.

“‘NO SPANISH!’ she bellowed. ‘You were all told that in your classroom! There will BE ONLY ENGLISH SPOKEN on the school grounds! Do you boys understand me!’ […] ‘I told you, NO SPANISH!’ yelled the teacher, grabbing Ramón by his shoulders and shaking him […] And she slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times.”

This excerpt, taken from Victor Villaseñor’s memoir, Burro Genius (2004), describes, in painful detail, the experiences of Victor as a young boy growing up in Carlsbad, California in the 1950s. Schools all across the country, especially in states with high populations of Spanish speakers, enforced a strict English-only policy. In Blackwell, a segregated school in Texas designated for children of Mexican ancestry, a symbolic burial of the Spanish language was performed. During the “Burial of Mr. Spanish,” students were asked to write notes of their favorite Spanish words that were then inserted in cigar boxes and buried at the base of the American flag[1]. It was, as if, to achieve true “Americanness,” students had to literally bury parts of their identity. More than half a century later, the English-only rhetoric continues to find a home in U.S. society. Students are still reprimanded for speaking Spanish in schools, families are attacked for communicating in Spanish, and English continues to be seen as the only legitimate U.S. language.

In many respects, the U.S. has adopted a replacive attitude of language learning. This posture supports the idea that, in order to learn English, one must forget Spanish or any other language. Yet, God created us with the amazing ability of learning multiple languages. We don’t have to forget a language, to learn another. In fact, monolinguals[2] are the minority (40% of the world). Bilingualism is not only normal but also greatly beneficial. In addition, there are many cognitive, socio-emotional and interpersonal advantages associated with bilingualism. For example, while bilingualism doesn’t prevent dementia, it does delay its onset by approximately 4-5 years, and a recent study[3] found that bilingual patients who had suffered a stroke were twice as likely to achieve full cognitive recovery compared to their monolingual counterparts. In short, multilingual people’s brains and worlds are expanded as a result of their linguistic abilities.

The overwhelming evidence supporting bilingualism is not only ignored in the U.S., but bilingual individuals are often seen as deviant. Thirty-four million viewers watched as Jennifer Lopez recited a Spanish line of the Pledge of Allegiance during her performance at President Biden’s inauguration: “Una nación, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos!”. While this gesture was embraced by many viewers, especially those of Spanish-speaking heritage, many others took offense to this and expressed their dissatisfaction publicly. “This is America. We speak English,” “No idea what J.Lo just belted out in Spanish. Try communicating with EVERYONE,” and “Speaking Spanish at the American President Inauguration? Not everybody speaks Spanish! It was sad and shows a low education,” were some of the reactions posted on Twitter. Despite the fact that the U.S. does not have an official language at the federal level, that 67.3 million people in the U.S speak a language other than English at home[4] and that Spanish is a recognized language spoken by 500 million people worldwide, the assumptions revealed by the Twitter posts were that English is the official language of the U.S., that English is spoken and understood by everyone in the U.S. and that Spanish is spoken by uneducated people.

Language ideologies are implicit assumptions about a language and language varieties that are highly influenced by sociopolitical and cultural factors. For example, the idea that the French language “sounds romantic,” is directly linked to the perception that individuals have about French society – “sophisticated, romantic, elegant” – and these notions directly influence the manner in which the French language is perceived. Similarly, certain linguistic varieties of the same language are rendered more desirable and even appropriate based on the perception that society has of the people group that is associated with that variety; British English is “better” than Ghanaian English; Spaniards speak “correct” Spanish whereas Dominicans speak a defective variety (note that the Dominican Republic has a significantly high Afro-Latina/o population); African-American English and Latino English are substandard varieties in need of correction, etc. If you want to identify the languages and linguistic varieties that enjoy the most and least prestige in any society, it is sufficient to analyze racial and class status. In Mexico, for example, the Spanish spoken by indigenous people is often stigmatized and considered “ugly,” and in Italy there is a predilection for the Italian spoken in Milan over the one spoken in Sicily (Sicilians tend to be darker in complexion and Milan is wealthier). We may believe that language attitudes are mostly formed by inherent truths about languages and dialects; in reality, they are, to a large extent, shaped by power dynamics that sustain certain racial and class hierarchies.   

Language ideologies affect racialized bodies in different ways. I often hear from my White students, “I wish I had learned Spanish as a child” and “I always knew that bilingualism is beneficial.” They’re initially confused when they learn that bilingualism is not always encouraged and at times, even punished. In non-White bodies, bilingualism is often seen as a liability, a menace against the English language, and an assault against “Americanness.” No John Smith has ever been told, “Speak English, we’re in America” but when Spanish is spoken by a Miguel Rodriguez or Korean by a Hayun Kim, suspicion quickly arises.   

My son was ten years old when he told me that he didn’t want to speak Spanish because he was, “an American.” “El español te da de comer, mijito (Spanish feeds you),” I told him sarcastically, reminding him that our income was generated by my ability to teach Spanish. In reality, the idea that Spanish did not belong in this land nor could it exist in the mouths of “real Americans” was not his own; this message had been transmitted to him at a very young age. Admittedly, I had gone through a similar phase. I remember feeling secretly ashamed that my parents spoke Spanish, and when they attempted to speak English, I quickly intervened, not because I was trying to help them, but because I felt they would embarrass me with their “poor English.” Feeling ashamed of your family, your language, your heritage is incredibly damaging. It is imperative that we carefully examine the ways in which we might be inadvertently perpetuating linguistic notions that serve to further victimize communities of color.

It is amazing that God gave the ability of multilingualism to Jesus, who spoke Hebrew and Aramaic[5]. We know that Jesus did not come to this earth as King but as a Brown man from the margins[6]. As a Galilean Jew, Jesus did not speak the prestigious variety of the religious elite[7] and his non-standard accented speech[8] emphasized his status as a marginal subject. Our savior came to this world to deliver the message of salvation using a linguistic variety that, given linguistic prejudices, might have been considered “ugly,” “undesirable” and “unintelligent.”

Multilingualism is a God-given gift that must be cherished and celebrated. Every language you speak gives you access to a particular group of people and allows you to form deeper bonds with those individuals. My languages are the bridges that enable me to traverse paths that would otherwise remain unknown to me. My languages give me the possibility to understand the sorrows of my neighbors and share the joys of my friends. Through my languages, I can speak of Jesus in a way that is understood by multiple communities. ¡Gloria a Dios! Glory to God!

About Dra. Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto's work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] Bacigalupo, Chantelle (2019): https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-04-29/no-spanish-allowed-texas-school-museum-revisits-history-segregation

[2] Monolinguals are people who only speak one language.

[3] Alladi, Suvarna, et al. “Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Outcome After Stroke.” Stroke, vol. 47, no. 1, 2016, pp. 258–261., doi:10.1161/strokeaha.115.010418. 

[4] Center for Immigration Studies (2018)

[5] According to Dr. Jonathan Katz of the University of Oxford, Jesus may have also spoken Greek, as cited in https://www.history.com/news/jesus-spoke-language

[6] See Robert Chao Romero’s book, “The Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology and Identity” (2020).

[7] See Virgilio Elizondo’s book, “Galilean Journey: the Mexican-American promise” (2000).

[8] It is important to note that we all speak with an accent. Accents are contextually determined; for instance, people from England might think Canadians have accents and vice versa. “Standard” and “non-standard” accents are not “scientifically” determined; instead, they are based on social perceptions.


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Stay or Leave

Should I stay or should I leave? Am I trapped in the barrio or is the barrio an inescapable, yet beautiful part of me from which I should not flee (or even have the desire to leave)? Should the life-taking stories of my barrio take precedence (like they do in the news) or do I privilege only the life-giving (counter) narratives that dignify my city? If I stay, am I being a bad parent, allowing my son to remain in a potentially dangerous environment where opportunity and resources are scant? If I leave, am I being a bad Christian by opting for my family’s and my own comfort and safety?

These questions invaded my mind and the noises of my barrio played a conflicting melody where love, sacrifice, injustice, and pain entwined.

El ruido que amo (the noise that I love)

I love las cumbias, las rancheras y los boleros I hear desde mi ventana. I didn’t exactly request this music pero my neighbors’ music selection is everyone’s delight. Ok, maybe not everyone’s, but I like it. I’ll be hanging out in my back yard and suddenly la canción de Ana Gabriel que puso la vecina gets me going, and I start singing my heart out: ¿Quién como tú, que día a día puedes tenerle? It takes me back to the many road trips I took with my parents when I was a little girl. Ana Gabriel, Juan Gabriel, Los Bukis – those were my jams!

I love el ruido que mi gente makes when they’re hussling. Tamales, tamales, tamales. ¡Tamales de piña, de puerco, de pollo, tamales! I love when my son runs out yelling raspadooo when the street vendors pass by honking their horns announcing la llegada of those delicious raspados we all slurp with such gozo. I love hearing mi pueblo use their voice to try to make ends meet en el swapmeet: barato, barato, barato, pásele; ¿qué le damos, señorita, pásele a lo barato? 

I love la euforia que se escucha cuando la selección mexicana scores a goooooooool!

Whoever said my people have been silenced, has not set foot in my neighborhood.

El ruido que odio (the noise that I hate)

I hate that I can distinguish the sound of fireworks from gunshots. I hate that we have to run inside the house and lock every door when we hear shots fired. I hate that every other day police sirens and the noise of helicopters drown out the sound of my favorite TV show, reminding me that I am not safe. I hate the cries of yet another grieving mother as she pleas with the public to help her find her child’s murderer.

El ruido que amo y el ruido que odio are juxtaposed mainly because “U.S. barrios have been a source of cultural resistance; they function as reterritorialized spaces where it is possible to maintain one ́s culture and to resist assimilation. At the same time, the barrios are social spaces where ethnic lower classes are segregated thus impairing their economic development and creating a subculture of violence and poverty.”[1]

El silencio que mata (the silence that kills)

But the most murderous force in my neighborhood is silent. The culprit hides in plain sight. More than two thousand pounds of toxic chemicals are emitted in Wilmington, California every single day. My beloved city is surrounded by the largest concentration of oil refineries in the state and the third largest oil field in the contiguous U.S., and it is home to the largest port in North America (Grist 2022). Wilmington, which is 90% Latino and 40% immigrant, is a toxic wasteland; the dumping grounds of big oil corporations. The contaminants expelled daily create diseased bodies in a community where the median household income is 40% below the state’s average and where 28% of its residents are not medically insured, a number that represents three times more than the national average. The environmental hazard created by these companies also has an impact on violent crime. Several studies have found a link between violent crime and pollutant exposure: “air pollutants act as stressors, eliciting endocrine stress responses in our brains that lead to irrational decisions and violent tendencies and also disturb the physical, cognitive and emotional health of people exposed to it at high levels” (The Guardian 2022).

Wilmington, CA; they call it a “bad neighborhood” and bad neighborhoods are always bad because of the individuals that inhabit it. A “bad neighborhood” is never thought to be bad by virtue of systemic injustices that include racial and environmental inequalities. My family and I are from a “bad neighborhood,” but I don’t think we’re bad people. Jesus himself was from Galilea, a neighborhood deemed undesirable. Dr. Chao Romero asserts that if Jesus was from California, he would not come from Beverly Hills or Calabasas, but the most marginalized regions of the state, like East LA or the Central Valley.[2]

What we really mean when we say “bad neighborhood” is impoverished, and, often, Brown or Black. The “good neighborhoods” are strictly regulated. Associations determine rules about the colors in which you are allowed to paint your house, how often you’re supposed to do your lawn, and how much noise you can make. “Good neighborhoods” are wealthy, have good school districts, lower crime rates and are predominantly White. Language matters because language constructs truth. The use of “good/bad” as it refers to neighborhoods continues to strengthen the belief that the people who live there are inherently bad and completely disregards systemic issues that have created and continue to sustain the disenfranchisement of our barrios.

I understand the ways in which systemic issues have worked against my community. I love my community for the ways in which it has shaped me to be resilient, humble, and faithful. I am grateful for the ties I have formed there and the life lessons that have been imparted to me: to not judge people by what they have or where they came from. Nonetheless, there is another competing truth: I have witnessed more gun violence than the average American, I attended low-performing schools in the area and do not feel safe letting my teenage son walk alone to the store that is 100 feet away from my house. I have lived in this city for over 30 years and there is a certain level of comfort granted to me by familiarity, but as a mother, I face a conundrum: do I stay or do I leave?

 

Deciding to leave our barrios is more than aspiring to a bigger, nicer house with abundant parking, and plentiful green spaces. Leaving our barrios means that our children will have better educational opportunities, access to resources that improve their livelihoods, and the probability of being less exposed to violent crime. Ironically, the dilemma many of us face is similar to the one experienced by our first-generation immigrant parents with one distinction: my socioeconomic status and educational levels have significantly improved while remaining in my native community.

The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) emphasizes a ministry of presence in which believers are active members of the communities in which they serve. It is a way of doing ministry that decentralizes white saviorism and centers the voices of community members. They invite people to be wholly present in their areas of ministry by becoming (and remaining) a neighbor. As a Christian that understands the importance of serving the socially dispossessed, am I to remain and use my social and economic capital to help my community flourish or should I leave relocating in a city where my children will be safer and have access to opportunity?

I left. It might seem like that was the easiest decision to make, but it certainly didn’t feel that way. I wrestled with this decision for quite some time, asking the Lord for guidance: “Lord, help us; ayúdanos a entender tu voluntad.” Months later, my husband and I received an answer to our prayers that gave us the certainty that we were being called out of my beloved city. In very God-like fashion, he set the pieces in motion and directed our steps.

So, should you stay or should you leave? I don’t know, and I don’t think there’s a generic right or wrong answer. God directs our paths in unique ways in different seasons of our lives (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8). For people of color, these decisions are especially difficult as we encounter survivor’s guilt. Dr. Piorkowski explains that survivor’s guilt, or success guilt, is prevalent amongst first-generation college students from marginalized communities. We often ask ourselves – and God – questions that are filled with remorse: Why did I succeed when so many others in my neighborhood didn’t? Why am I alive when many of my classmates aren’t? Why do I have the opportunity to live in better conditions when many of my family members don’t? How is it possible that I love my barrio, but still want to leave it?

Guilt and gratefulness collide, but this guilt is crippling because it doesn’t allow me to faithfully receive God’s blessings. Instead of viewing the earth as a punishment that we must endure to buy our way into Heaven, we must understand the earth as a good place created by God (Genesis 1:18; Genesis 1:31) and our salvation as a free gift from our Lord (Ephesians 2:8; Romans 6:23). Perhaps God is indeed calling you to stay, but the decision to remain should not be guided by guilt. Conversely, if we are being led to leave, we must not do so developing a posture where we see our former neighbors as less-than, or inherently lacking, because of their socioeconomic status, and in doing so, engaging in the further dehumanization of our barrios. Remember that “You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are” (The House on Mango Street). 

About Dra. Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] Views of the Barrio in Chicano and Puerto Rican Narrative (Antonia Domínguez Miguela)

[2] The Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology and Identity (2020) 


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Immigrants Against Immigration?

We were in our dining room table tomando cafecito and chit chatting. The TV had remained on in the background and Noticias Univision announced that there was a new wave of Central American migrant caravans approaching la frontera. She reacted angrily and exclaimed, “Nada más vienen a robar, a aprovecharse del gobierno y a quitarnos lo que es nuestro” (They only come here to steal, to take advantage of the government and to suck us dry). I had heard this phrase before, but never in my home and certainly never in Spanish. Her comments me cayeron como un balde de agua fría – they destabilized my narrative.

As a second-generation Mexican-American immigrant, I carry my family’s migration story with pride and a great sense of responsibility. Part of my identity was formed by that journey. Although I was born in the U.S., never had to flee my home in search of better opportunities, and have not suffered persecution based on my citizenship status, I am intimately connected to these stories through my family members. As a Christian, I am also linked to the migrant narrative through the Bible. Jesus was an immigrant,[1] and the Bible is filled with stories of people who had to migrate in order to escape violence, poverty, or because they felt God’s calling in a new land.

I’ve carried, protected and defended my immigrant family’s inherent value in a society that devalues them and fails to recognize their full humanity. I’ve clung to the biblical truths that exhort us to love and care for all people, particularly those in vulnerable positions.[2] I am, to a certain extent, accustomed to the anti-immigrant rhetoric repeated by individuals outside of the immigrant community. I am familiar with the misapplied Romans 13 verse used by Christians who oppose (undocumented) migration, but this rhetoric had now infested my home and disrupted my story.     

What was most destabilized were the college applications that I wrote, proudly referencing my family’s migration journey; the lesson plans I prepared for students in which we explored migrant stories in the Bible; the scholarship I produced about the immigrant experience; my multiple conversations with my son about his grandparents’ journey so that he wouldn’t forget and become one of those third-generation Mexican-Americans who ignores the plight of immigrants, or worst yet, resents it. I was haunted by this question: “Does my advocacy and story make sense now that my relative declared herself anti-immigrant in our dining room table?”

We’re used to telling simplified stories of ourselves and others. Dichotomous stories have become our templates: villain/hero, victim/victimizer, good/bad. However, our reality as humans is a lot more complex. In fact, biblical narratives do not rely on utopian, unidimensional characters. The stories told in the Bible direct us towards God’s perfect love, not to our own perfection. As humans, we embody positive and negative traits, and it is only by God’s redeeming grace that we are salvos.

When she pronounced herself anti-immigrant my story became muddied. Frankly, I wanted to pretend she had never uttered those words, but that conversation haunted me. She was a first-generation immigrant herself. How could she speak so vilely about immigrants? Renowned journalist María Hinojosa’s memoir Once I was You describes how her positionality as a 1.5 generation immigrant made her empathetic to the suffering of immigrants and keenly aware of the injustices committed against this group. But my relative, unlike María, had not developed a deeper sense of awareness or empathy. “Once you were them,” I told her, “How can you say all this?”

This article attempts to answer that question. My goal is to engage in an honest, even if difficult, reflection about why members of the Latino community, particularly immigrants, hold anti-immigrant notions. To accomplish this, in the following sections, I will hypothesize on the potential factors that contribute to the existence of an anti-immigrant rhetoric upheld by immigrants themselves.

Hypothesis #1: A distorted view of justice

Last year, when I first heard the rumors about the cancelation of student loans, my immediate reaction was anger. “I’ve paid thousands and sacrificed so much! Why do these people now get to have their loans canceled?” I thought.

My angry reaction about the cancelation of student debt and the belief that, “If I suffered, others must too” was selfish and absurd. In a way, we’ve normalized a warped vision of justice in which we believe that we are entitled to sustaining oppressive systems on the basis that those systems oppressed us. We tend to feel as though the suffering of others somehow justifies our own, but two injustices don’t equal justice. Your suffering doesn’t erase or ameliorate mine. We consider it unfair if others “get a pass” or “have it easier than us.” Some immigrants believe that if they had to go through all those troubles, so do others. We can accept God’s free gift of salvation but cannot tolerate when others are “freely rewarded.”

The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35) tells the story of a man who pled for mercy for not being able to pay his debt. After the King shows him mercy and forgives his debt, the man meets a fellow servant that owed him money, demands payment and throws him in jail when he could not pay. Many immigrants are pleading to be let in as they try to find refuge for a multitude of reasons, and some immigrants who are now living in the States refuse to welcome them. In a 2015 survey conducted by the American Values Atlas, 10% of immigrants who had lived in the States for a year or less thought that immigrants threatened traditional American customs and values, and 14% of immigrants who had resided in the U.S. for 20 years perceived newcomers as threats.

In times of financial hardship immigrants become economic scapegoats. “I hear they’re getting free health care,” she said trying to strengthen her case, “and I have to pay for mine out-of-pocket.”

Placing blame on the most socially dispossessed groups of people in our society during times of economic adversity is not uncommon. Perhaps immigrants that have been in this country for decades feel an added sense of frustration as they realize that the promise of the American Dream was not fulfilled in the ways they had imagined and la mentalidad cangrejo or “if I can’t have it, why should others,” prevails. Instead of binding together to help each other, we tear one another down and call that fair, but Christ points us in the direction of love, humility and compassion.

Hypothesis #2: Racism, colorism & nationalism

Although we might be more accustomed to thinking about the evils of racism within a white vs. POC framework, the truth is that racism and colorism also operate within our own communities. Being a Latin American immigrant doesn’t automatically place everyone on an “equal playing field;” racism and colorism don’t disappear in immigrant spaces and these corrupt ideologies often impact the experiences of immigrants in the country of destination.

Pew Research (2021) found that Latino-on-Latino discrimination is almost as common as discrimination experienced from other ethnic groups, and skin color and nativity seem to play a role; 41% of Latinos with darker skin report receiving unfair treatment by other Latinos, compared to 25% of lighter skin Latinos. Latinos born in Latin America are 9% more susceptible to suffering discrimination from other Latinos. Furthermore, close to 50% of Latinos reported hearing racially insensitive or racist remarks about other Latinos often (13%) or sometimes (35%).

In a skin tone stratified society that privileges fair skin, skin color also plays a role in the experiences encountered by immigrants. A recent report published by Freedom for Immigrants revealed that Black immigrants are six times more likely to be placed in solitary confinement; that although Black immigrants only make up 7% of all non-citizens in the U.S., they account for 20% of immigrants detained on criminal grounds. Indigenous peoples are also disproportionately affected by anti-asylum policies, face linguistic exclusion within immigration services, and are victims of anti-Indigeneity racism (Amnesty International 2021).  

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There are also elements of nationalism that play a role in Latino intragroup discrimination. If you are part of a Mexican family, you’ve probably heard many derogatory comments said by your family about Central Americans. The anti-Central-American attitudes predate the migrant caravans, but the influx of Central Americans traversing Mexico has strengthened feelings of hostility and rejection felt by Mexicans towards the Central American community. In fact, a 2019 survey conducted by Washington Post and Reforma found that 6 in 10 Mexicans (who lived in Mexico) considered migrants to be burdens and 55% supported deporting migrants. One would assume that Mexicans, many of whom have family members living abroad as immigrants, would welcome immigrants with open arms.

As a Church, our call is to welcome everyone, not only those who look like us, speak like us or have the same passport as us. Rev. Alexa Salvatierra reminds us that, “The Church is called to embody the boundless love of God by being a community of radical welcome to all God’s children.” Radical welcome embraces the wholeness of the guest and allows engagement in mutually life-giving relationships.

Hypothesis #3: Whiteness as an ideology that also infects immigrants of color

Whiteness is an ideology that can be upheld by white and non-white people alike; much like machismo, a male-centered ideology that is, on many occasions, supported and perpetuated by women. It is perplexing, but we must recognize that as social beings we breathe the same air; whiteness, in this country, is the polluted air we all breathe. Survival is the name of the game for many first-generation immigrants and “the desired proximity to whiteness and white acceptance, and the temptation to protect it once you have it, is a survival mechanism” (Vu). Perhaps the animosity felt by first-generation immigrants towards other fellow immigrants is birthed out of decades of contorting their identities in white-appeasing ways for the purpose of fitting into a society that views whiteness as normal and everything else, as undesirably foreign. 

People of color who uphold whiteness and by extension, immigrants who oppose immigration, seem to be preposterous and self-harming, but internalized oppression leaves us all exposed. In his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire claims that the oppressor’s concern is to change the consciousness of the oppressed in order to convince them that oppression isn’t actually occurring, enabling conformity and uniformity. According to Frantz Fanon, the “breaking in” of the oppressed happens when the oppressed themselves admit “loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man’s values” (The Wretched of the Earth). Internalized oppression occurs when we turn against ourselves, our families, and our communities and we take to heart and mind the lies of the enemy. This type of oppression doesn’t always manifest in loud and clear ways; instead, it lurks in our subconscious, inhabits our deepest thoughts, and expresses itself in the most unexpected ways. Whiteness contaminates our mind. We suck in this polluted air for so long that it becomes our norm, even as it destroys us. This is why people like my relative can have first-hand experiences, intimately know the stories, bear the oppression, and still become their community’s most avid persecutor.  

Final Thoughts

Sometimes the stranger becomes known, the foreign land becomes familiar, and the powerless gain power. Our circumstances may change, but our compassion, empathy and love for each other should not wane. Oppression, says Freire, “is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life” and God is the antithesis of death.

According to a Pew study, people’s religion greatly influences their views on abortion, the death penalty, and homosexuality, but not immigration. Similarly, a LifeWay Research poll found that only 12% of evangelicals think biblically about immigration, citing the media as more influential on their immigration views. There seems to be an obvious disconnect considering that the Bible speaks amply about immigration and references the foreigner extensively[3]. God doesn’t speak to us tangentially about immigrants; in fact, God commands us to welcome the foreigner (Leviticus 19:34), treat them justly (Deuteronomy 27:19; Exodus 22:21) and care for them (Matthew 25:35-40; Deuteronomy 10:18-19).   

Sinful ideologies can also infect the very same people we’re trying to defend, but our advocacy for the vulnerable should always be guided by God’s unwavering word and His love for immigrants.

“El inmigrante militante”

Aún huelo tu aroma en ese recoveco en el cual te escondiste. Aún siento tu sudor y escucho el pálpito de tu corazón al intentar cruzar desapercibidamente. Anhelabas con que ese espacio minúsculo, carente de luz, te condujera hacia tu nuevo hogar. Y ese hogar te dio tanto, pero también te quitó todo. Treinta años después, la casa de oro te construyó, y el corazón de piedra te formó. Ahora, tú vigilas la frontera, destruyendo sueños ajenos. Pero esos sueños también eran los tuyos. Formaste enemigos imaginarios, volcándote contra ti misma. Creíste la mentira del enemigo, sabiendo por experiencia propia la verdad. Recuerda, hija, el día en que tú saliste de Egipto.

About Dra. Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] See Octavio Esqueda’s What’s Your Immigration Status? Divine (2017)

[2] See Robert Chao Romero’s The Brown Church (2020). 

[3] For theological references that center immigration, consult the Mygration Christian Conference.


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We Speak Spanglish ¿Y qué?

I Speak Spanglish-1.png

My parents are from Mexico but they have lived in the U.S. for over 35 years. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have lived most of my life in a predominantly Latino community. I am also a Spanish professor. This is the lens from which I am writing.[1]

My dearest Spanglish, 

They despise you. They think you’re an abomination, a creature birthed from insufficiency and miseducation. They punish you in Spanish class and beat you in English class. Dicen que eres un bastardo, un malparido.  

“¡Habla bien! ¿Por qué hablas mocho? No se dice aplicación, se dice solicitud. No se llama librería, se llama biblioteca. Deja de decir esas barbaridades – jangear, mapiar, lonchar, marketa – Dios mío, le vas a provocar un paro cardiaco a la grandísima, estimadísima y respetuosísima Real Academia Española. ¿Qué diría tu abuela? Mira como se ríen de ti tus tías en México. Tu existencia es un insulto, una vergüenza. No maltrates a nuestra hermosa lengua con tus medias palabras. El idioma se respeta y tú, mentado Spanglish, eres un irrespetuoso”. 

That’s what they say, querido Spanglish. But I… I love you. You’re the language of my people, birthed from love and sacrifice. Tu existencia brotó in our communities como las estrellas brotan en el cielo. And when I hear you, I recognize myself and when I utter your words, I know I’m at home, en esa casa that my parents built con tanto sacrificio en una tierra desconocida.  

They insist, querido Spanglish, que no existes, but languages are not formed in the cradle de las academias reales. You are not held hostage by official institutions; you are held in the arms of your people and rest on the lips de tu gente.  

Tu descendiente, 

La Chicana.

Ask ten people in the U.S. Latina/o community what they think of Spanglish and you might obtain ten different answers, but their responses will never be dull. The use of Spanglish provokes emotionally-charged reactions that elicit everything from joyful expressions to furious replies. Renowned Mexican author Octavio Paz once said that Spanglish was, “neither good nor bad, but abominable” (Ni es bueno, ni es malo, sino abominable). Carlos Varo, a Spanish-Puerto Rican author called Spanglish a chronic illness, and Eduardo Seda Bonilla claimed that it was a colonial crutch, a linguistic form that is “characteristic of colonial situations where there is an attempt to eradicate and lower the language and culture of a subjugated nation”[2]. Still today, for many people, Spanglish represents just another form in which colonial English is encroaching into our space. Spanglish, perceived in this vein, is a contaminated form of Spanish that is no longer recognizable, one that bears the violence of colonial traces.

Nevertheless, there are those who vehemently support the use of Spanglish and claim that it enhances their linguistic repertoires. When the question, “Why do some people speak Spanglish” was posed on Quora, a person responded, “Because it’s fun! I enjoy saying that my daughter is malcriada, she had a huge berrinche this morning’ rather than ‘my daughter is badly behaved, she had a huge tantrum this morning’ Spanglish is more fun than either language by itself.”[3]

So, what is Spanglish? Well, linguistically, Spanglish has different manifestations. Perhaps the one most distinguishable is code-switching, when the speaker alternates between English and Spanish in a single conversation. Calques and loan words are also common in Spanglish phraseology.

  1. Code-switching: Fíjate que ayer I went to the store y me compré muchas cremas that were on sale

  2. Calques are literal translations, such as te llamo pa’tras (I’ll call you back; te llamo después), tener buen tiempo (to have a good time; pasarla bien), hacer decisiones (make decisions; tomar decisiones)

  3. Loan words: lonchar (to have lunch; almorzar), el mol (the mall; el centro comercial), friser (freezer; congelador) mapear (to mop; trapear), checar (to check; revisar), breik (break; descanso), brecas (car brakes; frenos)

Regardless of whether you personally love or hate Spanglish, it is important to acknowledge that Spanglish, similar to all languages, is rule-governed, guided by grammatical and social principles. Speakers of Spanglish abide by certain rules, albeit unconsciously, just as native speakers of Spanish and English construct sentences with ease without being cognizant of the grammatical rules that guide their speech. Read the following examples:

  1. Fernanda wants el ice cream from the casa de my madre.

  2. José se enojó and he gritó.

  3. Lorena me va dar un raite once she’s done with work.

  4. Estoy jugando soccer with Blanca.   

I surveyed twenty Spanglish speakers, asking them to identify the ones that sounded “wrong” to them and their answers revealed a high degree of consensus, as was expected. Although the four examples given above are all written using hybrid speech, not all sound right. Numbers one and two are not natural Spanglish expressions, while three and four represent normal incidences of code-switching. Interestingly, two people responded that all sentences were problematic because they were written in Spanglish, perhaps echoing what they’ve heard their whole lives – that Spanglish is incorrect.

In reality, Spanglish isn’t wrong or right, it just is, and perhaps that’s the beauty of it. Spanglish is patterned but these patterns can change over time and are extremely malleable. People can’t correct you in your Spanglish, the way they would with Spanish or English, for example. Spanglish is not a made-up language either. We didn’t make up Spanglish – Spanglish is a natural expression of who we are as bilingual and bicultural individuals living in liminal spaces. I can’t tell you how I learned Spanglish. I can tell you that I learned Spanish at home and English at school and that my life was not as linguistically compartmentalized as some might think because my friends spoke English, but also Spanish and my family spoke Spanish, but also English and I embraced that through Spanglish.

Spanglish, similar to formally recognized languages, has distinct varieties, or dialects. Ilan Stavans, who wrote an adaptation of Don Quixote in Spanglish and authored Spanglish: the Making of a New American Language (2004), explains,

“There is no one Spanglish, but a variety of Spanglishes that are alive and well in this country and that are defined by geographical location and country of origin. The Spanglish spoken by Mexican Americans in, say L.A., is different from the Spanglish spoken by Cuban Americans in Miami or the Spanglish spoken by Puerto Ricans in New York. Each of these Spanglishes has its own patterns, its own idiosyncrasies.”[4] 

Moreover, Stavans indicates that generational and geographical differences also impact the type of Spanglish that is spoken by each group. Similar to English and Spanish, Spanglish has many dialects that are influenced by a myriad of factors, including communities of contact, age, and social status.

I remember my cousins in Mexico exclaiming, ¿cómo pueden hablar así? when my cousins from the U.S. and I visited Mexico and spoke to each other in our comfort tongue. It wasn’t a question that denoted disgust, but admiration. They thought it was fascinating that we could switch between languages in the same sentence with such ease and they asked us to teach them, the same way they had taught us to speak “el idioma de la F”[5] but we couldn’t teach our Spanglish because we had acquired it organically as part of our identity as U.S. Latina/os.

I know many people in Mexico that speak English as a second language and Spanish as their native tongue, but they cannot produce Spanglish. Similarly, many native English speakers who learned Spanish as a second language are unable to speak Spanglish. Simply knowing both languages does not guarantee Spanglish proficiency. So, what is the breeding ground of Spanglish? Spanglish was born in the United States. It is in this country, in Latino communities, where it flourishes.

Dr. Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, a professor at UT Austin who has been studying bilingualism for decades claims that, “CS [code-switching] remains a stigmatized bilingual behavior, viewed as a failure on the part of the speakers to ‘control’ their languages […] Some see it as a lack of competence or even poor manners”.[6] Often times, the assumption is that speakers of Spanglish are lazy, deficient or ashamed of the Spanish language.

There’s a constant safeguarding of dual spaces and we are asked to split ourselves and to not “cross-contaminate.” This is an impossible request and one that should not be made. “To survive the Borderlands, you must live sin fronteras,” affirmed Gloria Anzaldúa. English says, “Spanish is prohibited in my land” and Spanish replies, “Este es mi territorio, fuera el inglés” and Spanglish thrives, sin fronteras. Spanglish does not attempt to usurp either language; it is its own mode of expression. Do you criticize burritos for not being taco enough?

I told you earlier that I’m a Spanish professor pero yo no respeto el español because languages are not meant to be respected – people are. When you tell people that Spanglish es una forma incorrecta de hablar, you’re really telling them that who they are is a “wrong” version of themselves, one that should be rejected. I know it can be difficult for a lot of immigrant parents to accept that their children are culturally and linguistically different from them and, to a certain extent, I understand why so many first-generation Latina/os are resentful of Spanglish. However, we can’t forget the fact that there are millions of individuals who identify as Latina/o but were born and raised in the U.S. We were not raised in our family’s countries as monolinguals. We do not have the same culture as our parents, but mainstream U.S. culture does not represent us either. We’ve created our own spaces and have formed new cultural expressions that should not be viewed as tainted versions but as unique creations. Hablamos espanglish because it’s who we are.

Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.
— Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
 
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ABOUT DRA. ITZEL meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] Poem titled, “Querido Spanglish” by Itzel Reyes (2021)

[2] “Réquiem por una cultura: Ensayos sobre la socialización del puertorriqueño en su cultura y en ámbito del poder neocolonial” (1970).

[3] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-talk-spanglish

[4] As quoted here: https://people.howstuffworks.com/spanglish.htm 

[5]  “El idioma de la F” is not an actual language. It is a playful way in which children could speak “in code” by adding the letter F to every vowel. For example, “te amo” would be “tefe afamofo”. I learned how to speak this “language” in Mexico and it was mainly used when we didn’t want the adults to understand our dialogue.

[6] As quoted on, “Love it or hate it, Spanglish is here to stay and it’s good exercise for your brain”  (2018).


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Believe Me When I Say it Hurts

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I saw her smile slowly disappear. She pressed in hard, frantically gliding the ultrasound, searching for a heartbeat that would never again beat. “Keep trying!” I screamed at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “there’s no heartbeat.”

“Keep trying,” I sobbed.

The well-intentioned doctor offered me several explanations that were intended to extinguish my sorrow. She explained that this was a normal occurrence, that it happens to nearly 1 in 4 women, that I was young, and that I would surely become pregnant again soon. She said that miscarriage was a protective mechanism that the body uses when disposing of unhealthy organisms and what I heard was, “You should be grateful that your body is so smart.” She tried to bury my pain in scientific reasoning and normalcy. Normal, normal, normal. Normal, as in trivial, as in my life should not be altered and my heart should not ache. Her words felt cold, the type of cold that burns.

I was convinced that my doctor was not Christian, or she would understand the meaning of sanctity of life and surely know why I was in so much pain.

“She’s desensitized,” I thought. “She’s had to deal with so many miscarriages that she has convinced herself that these are not human lives but a conglomeration of cells with little to no human value.” I believed that her lack of faith had caused her insensitivity so I instinctively sought refuge in my community of faith. To my dismay, Christians also minimized my pain. They wanted to subdue my pain and transform it into something nicer, like hope or gratitude, as if hope and gratitude were the only sentiments allowed to be felt by a Christian woman who had just experienced great loss. “At least you are already a mother,” “You’re young, you can have more kids,” “At least you were not further along,” were some of the comments that pierced me open.

The legitimacy of my pain came into question and I was led to believe that I was foolish for carrying this pain. I only carried my child for nine weeks, yet I carried this pain everywhere I went. I carried it to my bedroom, to my office, and to my car. I carried it in my dreams and in my prayers. The pain accompanied me everywhere and filled spaces that my child could no longer fill. It’s true that your heart physically aches when the pain is too overwhelming, but the heart is not the only part of your body that suddenly feels too heavy. Walking, even the shortest distance, absorbed all of my energy, and eating became a laborious task. It’s odd how the heaviness can be accompanied by an emptiness. The pain becomes so unbearable that your body turns numb, but it’s not the type of numb where you feel nothing; it’s the kind of numb where you feel everything.

My pain was slowly being coupled with something even more isolating – shame. The general perception was that my pain was rather unreasonable or exaggerated. I could hear it in their tone; nine weeks wasn’t enough for me to feel this sorrow. My loss was being compared to the suffering of a woman who lost her baby girl to SIDS[1] and of another whose daughter was stillborn.[2] I think people assumed that this would give me “perspective” and alleviate my pain. I’m sure they weren’t trying to hurt me – they thought these stories would help me heal, but shame is no antidote to pain. 

“I should feel better because someone else’s tragedy is worst” was the message being conveyed by people who truly thought were helping me.

Toxic positivity is defined by therapists Samara Quintero and Jamie Long as, “the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.[3]” This seemingly helpful mindset, actually produces more harm and trauma because it encourages silencing and transforms pain into a “dirty secret.” In Christian circles, toxic positivity disguises itself as faith and hope and can make individuals feel inadequate in their faith.  

One in four women have suffered a miscarriage.[4] “Because it’s so common, medical professionals tend to dismiss pregnancy loss, and friends and family members often fail to register its impact,” explains Dr. Janet Jaffe, director of the Center for Reproductive Psychology. However, the fact that so many women experience miscarriages does not mitigate the suffering. A recent study found that 29% of women who had experienced a miscarriage before 12 weeks, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also showed that 24% of these women had moderate to severe anxiety and 11% had moderate to severe depression.[5] I soon discovered that several of my own family members had suffered miscarriages. They quietly shared small pieces of their stories with me, almost hesitantly and I wondered if shame had silenced them too. I suspected that the lack of empathy that their stories had been met with transformed their accounts into a hasty narrative. They recounted their experiences in a way that seemed rather frivolous, though their glistening eyes revealed a different truth. “This is what pain looked like under submission,” I thought.  

Our sufferings are often placed on a hierarchy constructed by cultural understandings that determine which events should hurt more. Certain tragedies are automatically considered more sorrowful than others. Some griefs are “top-rated,” while other losses are rendered unimportant or are even stigmatized – the pain caused by a son being incarcerated or the death of a loved one due to drug overdose, for example. Society invalidates certain pains at the expense of the sufferer, and we don’t tend to pains that we think do not or should not exist.

Neglecting pain based on prejudices is a phenomenon that is also present in the medical industry. Pain bias negatively impacts women as their pain is often dismissed or minimized.[6] Gender bias in medicine leads to a dismissive attitude that often times, causes misdiagnosis. Christin Veasly, director at the “Chronic Pain Research Alliance,” explains that, “women have been more often referred to psychologists or psychiatrists, whereas men are given tests to rule out actual organic conditions.” A study revealed that women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack.[7] Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed and Sick (2019), identified two principal reasons for which women experience significatively higher levels of misdiagnosis than men: 1) there’s a long-standing legacy of women being underrepresented or completely excluded from medical research, which means that medical professionals do not know as much about the female body as they do the male body and 2) women’s accounts about their pain are often met with distrust.

Gender bias contributes to the idea that women are hysterical, making it easy to dismiss their pain, and racial bias insists that certain bodies can withstand more pain. A 2016 study revealed that, “a substantial number of white laypeople and medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites and demonstrates that these beliefs predict racial bias in pain perception and treatment recommendation accuracy.[8]” These beliefs date back to the 19th century when Thomas Hamilton, a plantation owner and physician obsessed with medically justifying the enslavement of Black people, conducted torturous experiments on John Brown, an enslaved Black man. Hamilton claimed that Black people had thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings. This myth, plagued with racist conjectures, seems to persist in today’s medical community. According to a 2019 study, Black and Hispanic patients are significantly less likely to receive pain medication, compared to White patients[9]. In short, medical practitioners are less likely to believe us when we say it hurts if we happen to be women or people of color.   

The lack of empathy expressed by people changes the manner in which you are able to tell your story. Truth and transparency become marred and you are left with remnants, carefully curated words that vaguely resemble what you feel. The way we listen to people’s stories can help them heal or it can cause more trauma. L.J. Isham describes listening as, “an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.” To exercise sympathy and compassion and to adopt the type of listening described by Isham, it is not a requirement to have experienced every single type of pain imaginable to the human condition. We don’t even have to agree with the pain, its cause, duration or intensity. Our holy responsibility is not to rate each other’s pain, but to listen lovingly and to believe one another when we say it hurts. 

The way we listen to those in pain can have life-altering consequences. Pain is a real, intense sentiment that is often difficult to characterize using words, and culture can also influence the modes of expression adopted by each individual. This is why, it is important to listen with an open heart. I felt that my pain was delegitimized to such an extent that, even as I write this now, I have the lingering impulse to justify my pain to you. I am tempted to convince you that my pain was real. I want to explain what this pregnancy meant to me and detail the agonizing moments with such rawness that you would not be able to sanitize my pain. However, I will not do that. That is too much of a burden for a suffering person. I wrote this piece, not with the intention of putting my pain on display, allowing readers to dissect it and examine it thoroughly until they can recognize its validity, but to address the fact that we should believe people when they say it hurts. We can stand with people in their pain without understanding it. We can come alongside suffering people without having had to experience that specific pain ourselves. We can accompany people in their sorrow and console them without any “words of advice” or proposed “solutions.” We can pray for these individuals without even knowing the full story. The Bible tells us that when one member suffers, we all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26). It is pain that unites us, and that propels us to love one another as we understand our interconnectedness in God.

We have a tendency to run away from pain and in reality, it is all too easy, especially if it is not our own pain. We look away and cover our ears and hearts with much ease. Indeed, it is much more difficult to stand with someone who is in pain. However, pain is not alien to the human condition, nor is it unfamiliar to Jesus. Our Savior experienced immense pain. In fact, it was the shortest verse[10] in the Bible that brought me the greatest consolation in my moments of sorrow; “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  I was reminded that He didn’t weep because he was overwhelmed by joy and gratitude; He didn’t shed happy tears. He wept in suffering. He wept in loss. Profound pain caused those precious tears, and it was His pain that ultimately brought salvation to the world. Pain, generated by His everlasting love, is central to the gospel message, yet we often try to disguise it or swiftly move past it in our understanding of Him. In fact, “in early Christian times, the belief that Jesus Christ suffered pain was usually not accepted […] freedom from emotion was something to strive for at that time. Only after the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD did the pain of Christ again stand in the centre of the Christian doctrine of salvation.[11]” When all trace of pain is removed from the gospel, we are left with an anemic version, one that represents God as just a happy character, incapable of being in the midst of our grief and our suffering. When we attempt to alienate our pain from God, we are inadvertently supporting a theological vision that believes that God is incapable of understanding our pain. When we try to hide our pain away from our Creator, we undervalue His love and grace for us. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” The Bible does not say that God ignores our pain and pretends it does not exist; Psalm 147:3 reminds us that, “God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (NIV). Our pain does not condemn us or separate us from God; on the contrary, it draws us closer to our Maker and to each other. 

 
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About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel



Footnotes

[1] Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

[2] “A still birth is the birth of a baby who has died any time from 20 weeks into the pregnancy through to the due date of birth. The baby may have died during the pregnancy or, less commonly, during the birth” (Pregnancy Birth & Baby).

[3] https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

[4] American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

[5] “Posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression following miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (2019).

[6] “‘Brave Men’ and ‘Emotional Women:’ A Theory Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms Towards Patients with Chronic Pain” Pain Research and Management (2018).

[7] “Impact of Initial Hospital Diagnosis on Mortality for Acute Myocardial Infarction: A National Cohort Study” European Heart Journal – Acute Cardiovascular Care (2018).

[8] “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs about Biological Differences Between Whites and Blacks” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9] “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Management of Acute Pain in US Emergency Departments: Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review” The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

[10] It is the shortest verse in many translated versions. 

[11] Markschies C. Der Schmerz und das Christentum. Symbol für Schmerzbewältigung? [Pain and Christianity. A symbol for overcoming pain?] (2007). 


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You Can Call Me by My Name

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The dreaded first day of school was especially frightening for me. The fear of being called on to introduce myself and the anticipation of meeting new people was accompanied by the terror of seeing my teachers’ faces at the exact moment in which they encountered my name. Their reactions often reminded me of the expressions of movie characters in sci-fi films when a UFO was seen descending to earth.  

Itzel y su papa. See footnotes for a correct pronunciation of the name.

Itzel y su papá. See footnotes for a correct pronunciation of the name.

Itzel, a beautiful Mayan name carefully chosen by my parents for their primogeniture. Itzel, a name that claimed my heritage and honored my indigenous ancestors. Itzel, a name gifted to me while I was still in the womb. Itzel, a name that painfully alienated me. Itzel, a name that I hated and often fantasized of changing. Itzel, a name that I daydreamt of transforming into something more “palatable;” my notebook filled with the names that I yearned to have. While most of the girls my age would write the name of the boy they liked, I used to obsessively write the names that would render me normal. They were always generic names, names that would not cause attention, names that would appear on “the most popular list of baby names.”  

To the dismay of many, my parents did not give me a middle name. They thought my first name was so beautiful that they could not possibly pair it with anything else. “Do you have a middle name?” I was commonly asked. “Do you have a nickname?” was usually the follow-up question. My dad and other family members often called me “Itzelita,” the Spanish diminutive form of “Itzel,” but I did not think “Itzelita” posed a solution. They were grasping at straws and I, too, was desperately searching for a name that would resolve their confusion. Sometimes my teachers would not ask me for a middle name or a nickname but would directly resort to usurping an authority that did not belong to them by asking if they could rename me: “Can we call you something else?” At that moment, I wanted desperately for the attention to be diverted away from me and I would hastily reply, “Call me whatever you want.” I convinced myself that my name was unimportant and that my parents were to blame for giving me such a difficult name.  

And so, I became “It-soul” for many years. Every single time my name was mispronounced I cringed internally but silence and shame prevailed. My beautiful name was ripped to pieces and what remained was ugly and hostile, unrecognizable. I avoided saying my own name, and when I found myself in an unavoidable situation, I said it quickly and quietly, hoping that it would go undetected.   

What still bewilders me is the fact that I attended schools in a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles, where most of the children had Spanish names and a strong linguistic background in Spanish. Why were they unable to pronounce my name? I suspect that it had little to do with my classmates’ ability or lack thereof to say my name. We imitated the pronunciation adopted by our teachers and authority figures at our schools and somehow convinced ourselves that we could not pronounce our own names.  

Some names are indeed difficult to pronounce for the unaccustomed tongue. I, myself, have had trouble pronouncing multiple names. I cannot, in good conscious, blame people for not knowing how to pronounce my name. What is disheartening is not that people don’t automatically know how to pronounce my name but that they do not even attempt. They glance at it once and decide that they are incapable. They find renaming me an easier endeavor than learning how to properly pronounce my name. They overuse pronouns as a cover-up and whenever possible, prefer to ignore my existence. To evade my name, they resort to sophisticated jugglery that ironically requires more cognitive work than learning how to say my name.  

Individuals of all different ethnic backgrounds have their names chronically mispronounced, including Whites. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the Latino population in the United States. However, mispronouncing the names of people of color is especially harmful. In their article, “Teachers, Please Learn Our Names!: Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom” (2012), Kohli and Solorzano contend that mispronouncing the names of students of color is a racial microaggression that, “supports a racial and cultural hierarchy of minority inferiority […] that can negate the thought, care, and significance of the name, and thus the identity of the child” (444). Mispronouncing or changing the name of a student becomes an additional form of othering: “Often unconscious and unintentionally hurtful, when these comments are made to Students of Color, they are layered insults that intersect with an ‘othering’ of race, language and culture” (448).  

To fully capture this idea, one must take into consideration the historical and political contexts in which mispronouncing and changing the names of people of color are situated. As a symbolic manifestation of disregarded humanity and stripped personhood, enslaved Africans were forcefully renamed according to the names of their masters. Seen as property with no real human value, their names were exterminated. Today, many white families enthusiastically excavate their family’s history using their names as tools and proud cultural markers, while many African Americans are only able to trace their lineage back to the masters of their ancestors. Indigenous people also suffered the violence of name modification as a vehicle of racist practices and forced assimilation. According to anthropologists David H. French and Katherine S. French[1], in Native American societies, "names have a dual role, serving also as signs (or symbols) of social identities, relationships, categories, or positions, and as vehicles for modes of social interactions. They make statements, significant ones, both about persons and about groups” (200). In a grotesque disregard of indigenous identity, indigenous people were reassigned Anglicized names for the comfort of the English-trained tongue and as part of their efforts to forcefully assimilate them into White society. As Liliana Elliott explains:

“Anglo-American names were an initial step that marked social death […] Teachers, officials, and administrators expected Native children to fully inhabit their new names by the time they emerged out of industrial school and assumed daily life in white civilization. Indeed, much of the rhetoric of assimilation reflects a belief that true personhood remained impossible until assimilation was complete[2]” (59).

Indigenous names were mocked, considered odd and incomprehensible. Rather than learning about the cultural richness and significance of these names, they were confronted with animosity and torn apart.  

Latina/o names suffered a similar fate in schools. It was a common practice for teachers to change their students’ names to an Anglicized version: Ramón became Raymond, Juanita became Jane and María became Mary, for example. As Orlando Patterson argues, "the changing of a name is almost universally a symbolic act of stripping a person of his former identity[3]" (55). A man that went by the name of Jesse told a story of how his birth name, Jesús, was permanently transformed. The nun of the religious school where he attended refused to call him Jesús, asserting that his name was blasphemous. Operating within the limits of her cultural lens, the nun failed to understand that Mexican families tend to name their children after people they consider admirable or important to their family’s legacy. Jesús, a very common name amongst Mexican families, is a way to honor Christ and not an act of defilement. That day, terrified at the “realization” that his name was profane, young Jesús went home and told his parents to call him Jesse.  

Non-Western names are perceived as an unwelcomed inconvenience and whiteness seems to believe itself deserving of ridding individuals of their identity for the sake of its convenience.  

The insistence that names must be “easily pronounced” in English is linked to the idea that English is the superior language. The linguistic dexterity that seems to be demanded of people of color is ironically not pursued by the people making these demands. Speakers of other languages are expected to pronounce English names with ease as if English was an inherently “easy” language to learn as compared to other languages. Texas Representative Betty Brown boldly stated in the matter of voter identification legislation: “rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese – I understand it’s a rather difficult language – do you think it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here.” Non-Western names are perceived as an unwelcomed inconvenience and whiteness seems to believe itself deserving of ridding individuals of their identity for the sake of its convenience.  

Names are of high importance in the Bible and serve a variety of functions. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28: “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won” (NLT). God also changed the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah after God made a covenant with them. The names Jesus (he will rescue people from their sins) and Immanuel (God with us) were meaningfully chosen and their significance explained. One of the greatest gifts that God gave Adam was the power to name. Naming is a necessary component of creation, as God literally spoke the world into existence. Our names comprise a fundamental aspect of our identity. As parents, we have been entrusted with the power to name our children and as individuals, we have been given authority over our own names. Forcefully anglicizing names seems to be one of the various ways in which whiteness tries to mold people of color into their image.  

The study conducted by Kohli and Solorzano found that the social-emotional well-being of children is negatively affected when their names are mispronounced in the classroom which, in turn, harms their learning. The National Association for Bilingual Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education in California partnered to establish an initiative titled, “My Name My Identity” with the objective of raising awareness about the importance of names. Under this initiative, students and teachers are able to present their learning at school, parent and district board meetings. Some of the sample lessons that they recommend include discussion questions such as: Is there a story behind your name? Who gave you your name? What does your name mean? What is something positive about you or your name that no one can forget. While these initiatives represent a step forward in recognizing the impact of names on student learning, they must become a critical component of teacher training.  

Learning how to correctly pronounce someone’s name is an act of love. When someone takes interest in learning how to say my name correctly, I have the certainty that they care about me as a person and value me. As a child, I did not have the words nor was I aware of the scholarship that gave voice to my experience. I could not articulate why I felt the way I did, but I knew exactly how I felt – I felt small and unimportant like a piedra en un zapato; an inconvenience, a discomfort. My name was trampled every single day of the school year. I had thousands of opportunities to correct my teachers, but I was too embarrassed, afraid of “offending them.” I like to think that if I would have said something and explained how deeply it affected me, they would have corrected themselves. The truth is that my name is not inherently difficult to pronounce as many people had

led me to believe; the truth is that they had a hard time pronouncing my name but they also had the ability to learn it. Now, when people ask what they can call me, I firmly reply, “You can call me by my name.”


ABOUT DRA. ITZEL Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] Goddard, Ives and William C. Sturtevant. “Personal Names,” Handbook of the North American Indians: Language. vol. 17, Smithsonian Institution, 1978. 

[2] Elliott, Liliana. Names Tell a Story: The Alteration of Student Names at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1890. 2019. University of Colorado Boulder, History Honors Thesis. https://www.colorado.edu/history/sites/default/files/attached-files/elliott_thesis.pdf

[3] Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard University Press, 2018.

On 'Bad Mothering'

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His words infuriated me. I reacted instantaneously and clearly agitated, I replied, “I decide how to spend my time.” He had unknowingly struck a nerve – a deep wound inflicted by the tendencies of machismo[1]. It was a reflex response; the words slipped out of my mouth without pause or hesitation. He apologized and I hurriedly hung up the phone.

“I’ll let you go now so you can go be with your son,” had been his exact words. He was a romantic interest and I identified the cause of my anger almost immediately. I became a mother at nineteen. My eight-month pregnant-self waddled across the stage of my community college graduation. I had a plan. My son would be born in July and in late August, I would begin state college. And I did just that (a 19-year-old healthy body could perform such miracles). I had a whole village that supported me, and thanks to them, I eventually completed my doctoral studies. My son was nine years old when I became a doctora. 

As a single, Latina mom and first-generation college student from a low-income community, the obstacles were many. There were real challenges placed before me. My body was constantly exhausted from attending school full-time, working part-time, and raising a child. My mind attempted to juggle numerous tasks simultaneously and every second of the 24-hour period was carefully planned. My workload was unimaginable but, with the help of the abuela/os and tías, achievable. The unbearable burden was not the physical labor itself but the constant criticisms and accusations dressed as innocuous questions: “¿y cómo dejas a tu hijo tantas horas? Yo no podría” and frequent, “Y tu hijo, ¿con quién lo dejas?” paired with, “pobrecito, ¿y no lo extrañas?” I wish that at that moment I would have immediately identified them as fallacious statements upheld by the violence of patriarchy. But I didn’t.

Instead, I wept. I wept in the shower – in the place where your tears merge with the shower droplets, in the place where the noise can muffle your cries, in the place where solitude accompanies you. There were times when my tears would refuse to respect this sacred place and would instead travel to my bedroom or my car. “I am not a good mom,” I told myself. I despised myself for loving school, for loving my job. I ritualistically apologized to my son quietly as he slept every night and obsessively reminded him of how much I loved him during his waking hours. In reality, I was not trying to comfort him; I was trying to soothe myself. I was atoning for my bad mothering.

Society promotes absurd and unrealistic mothering scripts that are unsustainable. A good mother cannot have hobbies, should not enjoy a night out with friends, cannot spend money on eyelash extensions, oh, and God forbid she dates. It is ironic and almost comical that single mothers are antagonized for being single but are simultaneously forbidden from dating. If you are a Latina mother, you are also expected to ser buena cocinera, maestra, enfermera, chofer, costurera, y mucho más. La madre latina is, in reality, a mythical figure that is half human, half goddess. She is one that morphs into many things and does so willingly, effortlessly and enthusiastically. If you are a Christian Latina mother, these beliefs tend to be exacerbated by erroneous and domesticated interpretations of biblical womanhood put forth by male-dominated narratives[2]. Our love for our children seems to only be acceptable when it is self-consuming. The Latina mother is idealized, but women pay a high price for this veneration. There is nothing glorious about withstanding abuse and being disempowered, but marianismo[3] appears in the Latina/o culture masked as love and admiration. Marianismo is, in reality, a toxic ideology that stems from machismo and demands that mothers sacrifice their selfhood in service of patriarchal ideals. All those who deviate in any way from these prescriptive mothering norms are immediately deemed bad mothers.     

75% of mothers with children are employed full time.
— U.S. Department of Labor (2016)

The image of the traditional housewife whose primary and sole responsibility is to take care of the home and children while the father “brings home the bacon” seems to have been irreparably imprinted in the minds of many individuals. However, the reality is that 71% of U.S. mothers are formally employed[4] (Pew Research 2014). Sound judgement would lead one to conclude that since the majority of modern mothers do, in fact, work outside the home, gender expectations regarding tending the home have shifted. Regrettably, this is not the case. Women, particularly women of color, have long endured the “double shift,” working full-time as paid employees and spending considerably more time than men in unpaid labor in the form of childcare and housework. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2019), men work an average of 7 hours and 54 minutes in paid work per day, while women labor a total of 7 hours and 20 minutes. The number of paid hours worked amounts to a 34-minute difference. In the household, however, women work an average of 120 minutes more than men and Latina women work more than men as compared to women of other ethnicities. These statistics reflect normal circumstances: that is, pre-COVID 19. The pandemic exacerbated these conditions, leading to what is now known as the “double double shift.”

During the coronavirus lockdown, women with full-time employment, a partner and children worked 20 hours a week more than men in domestic labor. The consequences of the unequal division of home duties are manifold and produce a domino effect that affects nearly every aspect of a woman’s life. Carrying a larger workload means less sleep, no time for a jog, or coffee with friends. Enjoying a TV show, attending a Bible study or reading daily devotionals might seem impossible. Leisure and spiritual activities promote mental wellbeing by providing a balanced life that can help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. In a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the midst of the pandemic, 53% of women reported feeling worried or stressed, versus 37% of men. The gender gap is even more pronounced among parents of children under the age of eighteen: 57% of mothers versus 32% of fathers reported that their mental health has deteriorated due to the pandemic.

Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Moreover, increased household obligations impact women’s economic growth. The economic disadvantage that women have historically suffered has worsened since the pandemic. In September alone, approximately 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 200,000 men (UN Women 2020). These figures are not coincidental; they reflect the heavy burden placed upon women’s shoulders who are forced to renounce paid employment in order to devote themselves to unrewarded and underappreciated unpaid care work. Women’s monumental efforts and hard work are not only undervalued, they are overtly punished. Formally employed mothers suffer monetarily in the form of reduced wages through what is known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women of color, who are disproportionately at the bottom of the pay scale, are punished the most. Conversely, fathers are rewarded with a “fatherhood bonus.” “Fatherhood is a valued characteristic of employers, signaling perhaps greater work commitment, stability and deservingness,” explains Dr. Michelle J. Budig. Professor Budig’s research shows, “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.” In short, fatherhood is seen as an asset whereas motherhood is considered a liability.

In 40% of all households with children, women are the breadwinners.
— Pew Research Center (2013)

We analyze the statistics and they are disconcerting. We hear women’s first-hand experiences and we are disturbed. We live out these injustices in our own flesh and yet we continue to do the bidding of an oppressive system that pollutes our soul. I want to be transparent, but it pains me to write this: my most fervent accusers were not men – they were women. Machismo tactically utilizes us, women, as weapons against ourselves and each other. We become machismo’s most faithful little soldiers. We point the gun at each other and shoot relentlessly, not realizing that those bullets are ricocheting and piercing our own bodies. We surveil each other, we play the comparative game, destroy each other in hopes that machismo will honor us as la más santa – mejor que fulanita o zutanita. I, too, have internalized sexist mothering notions, not only by allowing guilt to completely consume me but also by being highly critical of other mothers. I attempted to liberate myself from the shame and guilt that suffocated me by condemning other mothers, as if obstructing their airways would help me breath. I sought liberation, not by destroying my shackles, but by placing them on someone else. This is perverse. “Being female doesn’t stop us from being sexist, we’ve had to choose early or late at 7, 14, 27, 56 to think different […] act different […] to change other women’s minds, to change our own minds, to change our feelings, ours, yours and mine […] The basis of our unity is that in the most important way we are all in the same boat, all subjected to the violent, pernicious ideas we have learned to hate, that we must all struggle against them.[5]” Sexism is the norm; it is how we are socialized. However, God did not create us to be oppressors of each other; our prosperity as God’s children is not based on how much suffering and punishment we inflict on one another. On the contrary, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NRSV). We must labor daily against our own social conditioning that incites us to endorse and perpetuate sexist ideals.

In order to overcome our conditioning, we (men and women) need to become aware and be intentional. We should, for example, examine the ways in which our daily expressions unconsciously sustain sexist assumptions. Mi esposa me ayuda con los niños (My wife helps me with the kids) is a phrase that I have never heard in my life. Mi esposo me ayuda con los niños (My husband helps me with the kids) is one that I hear often. The message that we transmit is that fathers “help” mothers while mothers simply fulfill their “motherly” duties. In the church, women are overrepresented in children’s ministry and vacation bible school and underrepresented as preachers and teachers. This rigid division of labor based on gender disadvantages everyone by restricting individuals from utilizing the fullness of their spiritual gifts.

Perfect mothering does not exist and “good mothers” come in many different shapes and sizes. The same can be said about fathers. Humans have an innate desire to be socially accepted but this approval should not cost us our livelihoods. One of my father’s parenting strengths was that he himself rebelled against cultural scripts that commanded him to place his two daughters in a gendered box. He refused to “play his part” and by doing so, allowed us to flourish and taught us a valuable lesson: to question and vigorously resist toxic gender scripts. About two years ago, I was in the car with my dad on our way to our favorite restaurant and I don’t recall the full context of our conversation but I vividly remember him saying something that no one had ever said to me explicitly, “Itzel, you’re a great mom.” A tear rolled down my cheek and I believed him.


About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] The Mexican National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra las Mujeres) defines machismo as, “certain behaviors and beliefs that promote, reproduce and reinforce various forms of discrimination against women. It is constructed through the polarization of gender roles and stereotypes that [strictly] define masculinity and femininity. Its main characteristic is the degradation of the feminine; its major form of expression, violence in any of its types and forms against women” (2016).  

[2] In Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified and Marginalized Women of the Bible, Sandra Glahn states, “In addition to maligning some Bible women, we have marginalized others wrongly downplaying or even ignoring their contributions” (15).

[3] In many Latin American or Hispanic cultures, an idealized traditional feminine gender role characterized by submissiveness, selflessness, chastity, hyperfemininity, and acceptance of machismo in males” (APA Dictionary of Psychology).

[4] I use “formally employed” as opposed to “working mothers” because the latter term erroneously implies that mothers who take care of the home are not, in fact, “working.”

[5] Rosario Morales, We’re All in the Same Boat (1981).

El Español in the US: Memoria and Resistance

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Me inculcaste el odio hacia mi idioma. El español lo rechazaste, como peste lo valoraste. El inglés lo alabaste, como lengua suprema lo elevaste. I don’t need Spanish, I told my mother and it pierced her heart. I’m American, le repetí, American, le grité. Mr. Smith’s words echoed in me: “English only, Juan. Spanish will deform your lips and rot your tongue.” Petrified, el inglés abracé y solo a él, me aferré. Now, I’m in Spanish class undoing the trauma and writing en español.[1]  

“Speak English, we’re in America!” he told my aunt in a demanding tone. He was a passerby and her Spanish words were not being directed at him. “Y usted, ¿qué le dijo?” I asked my aunt incredulously. “Nada, mija. Hay muchos como él,” she replied. She was right. English-only discourses have been disseminated for centuries in the U.S. In the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt stated, “We only have room for one language in this country, and it is English.” In 1998, California passed the infamous Proposition 227 that would eliminate bilingual education. Despite the fact that California has one of the most abundant populations of non-native English speakers in the country, it took almost twenty years for Proposition 227 to be repealed. In 2015, Donald Trump criticized former Florida Governor Jeb Bush for speaking in Spanish: “He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.” The direct implication of President Trump’s assertion was that monolingual English speakers are nice and Spanish speakers are, well, not nice. The ease to which people can record everything on their smartphones has exposed numerous incidents across the country of individuals berating others on the basis of language use and the demand that only English be spoken. In 2019, a substitute teacher in Texas was caught on camera as she told a student, “Speak English. We’re in America. Give me your phone.” In West Virginia, a customer told the manager of a Mexican Restaurant to “get the f*** out of her country” and demanded for him to speak English while in America. In Wisconsin, a woman verbally attacked a Puerto Rican family for listening to Spanish music while barbequing at a park. In New York City, where 48% of the population speaks a language other than English at home[2], a lawyer threatened to call immigration after he heard two women speak Spanish at a restaurant. These incidents are not uncommon occurrences caused by deranged individuals – they are the fruit of our nation’s racist history against brown people.

The insistence that Spanish should not be spoken in the U.S. is driven by anti-immigrant and racist beliefs that are historically inaccurate. Anti-Spanish language policies, discourses, and behaviors cannot be examined in isolation from white supremacy. The fact that English is the most commonly spoken language in the U.S. is indisputable, but the U.S. does not have an official language at the federal level. Anti-Spanish-language views are prompted, in part, by incorrect assumptions that Spanish is the language of foreign invaders. Spanish is not a foreign language, and in many parts of the U.S., it has a longer history than English.[3] In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe ended the Mexican-American War and the U.S. took over 55% of Mexico’s territory, which included present-day California, Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. In 1898, the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-Cuban-American War, making Puerto Rico a U.S. territory, and in 1917, the U.S. granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship through the Jones Act. Spanish is a U.S. language. There are currently close to 53 million Spanish speakers in the U.S. There are more Spanish-speakers in the U.S. than in any other nation in the world, except for Mexico.[4] “Speak English, we’re in America” is, at its best, an ignorant declaration and at its worst, a hateful attempt to deny our existence.

You told me that if I spoke a little less Spanish you would love me, that if I looked a little more white, you would hug me. I masked my brownness, buried my language and still, you despise me. Jesus is light, Jesus is white! You color-coded my existence. Now, I’m in a dark place, a brave space.[5]  

english only.png

“With your head facing the wall, you would bend down and he [the teacher] would get a paddle and hit you in your bottom and it was hard enough that your head bounced against the wall,” recalls Irene Tovar, Executive Director of the Latin American Civic Association and alumna of Pacoima Elementary School in Los Angeles. The violation? Speaking Spanish, whether it be in the classroom or on the playground. This was not an isolated case in the 1960s-70s or one that created public outrage or civil suits. It was a common and accepted form of punishment for teachers to wash the mouths of their Spanish-speaking students with soap, hit them and verbally abuse them for uttering words in their home language. Latina/o children were explicitly taught through violent measures that Spanish was dirty, undesirable, unworthy and transgressive. The message communicated to them was that the language that their parents spoke was inferior and should be forgotten. The U.S. public education system taught Latina/o students to be ashamed of the Spanish language, literally beating it out of them. Traumatized by the abuse they had endured, when those students became parents, many of them made the conscientious decision to not pass on the language.    

Despite the staggering amount of evidence that supports bilingualism, many well-intended teachers and administrators promote English monolingualism and discourage parents from speaking to their children in other languages. Fearing that their child will be confused, develop a stutter or language disorders, some families opt to not teach their children their home language, and by doing so, unknowingly, disadvantage them. Some of these myths were initially propagated by seemingly reputable studies that were deeply flawed. These studies compared the performance of monolingual students from privileged backgrounds to bilingual students from disadvantaged groups. Researchers concluded that the use of multiple languages was harmful and ignored socioeconomic vulnerabilities as a factor; they saw bilingualism, and not poverty, as the problem. Though these studies have long been debunked, they have persisted as truths, largely, because they support anti-immigrant and racist ideologies that believe brown bodies, and their languages, to be inferior.   

“I don’t want my kids to speak with an accent,” was commonly said by Latina/o parents who did not teach their children Spanish. This statement was usually followed by, “because I don’t want them to be discriminated against.” In reality, we all have accents. Linguists define accent as a particular way of speaking distinctive of a specific nation, location, or individual. Therefore, it is impossible to speak without an accent. To Californians, individuals from New York, Texas and Chicago have accents, and vice versa. Irish and Australians might note the American accent of tourists and city folk will allude to the accent of rural people. Non-standard or undesirable accents in any given group are contextually determined. Jesus himself had a non-standard accent[6]. Despite the fact that everyone has an accent, not all accents are perceived to be equally acceptable. In the U.S., British and French accents are usually thought of as being sexy or sophisticated whereas Indian or Nigerian accents are discredited. The concern that children will be discriminated against for speaking with a non-accepted accent is valid and well-grounded. However, Latina/o children will also be discriminated against for looking brown, having a Spanish last name, or living in a certain neighborhood. We stopped teaching Spanish to our children as a protective strategy, as a survival mechanism disguised as choice. We sacrificed our descendants’ ability to speak with their own family in service of racist ideologies. We forcefully traded our ability to communicate with our familias in exchange for a little bit of acceptance from a system that does not recognize us as image-carriers. Acceptance that is based on negating parts of our identity, that asks us to hate ourselves and that demands us to sever ties with our communities is not acceptance, it is oppression.  

Assimilation is a frail lifeline created by a racist system that confuses uniformity with unity. Assimilation demands us to inflict pain on ourselves as a rite of passage. Assimilation defies God’s creativeness and rejects the heavens described in Revelation: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (7:9, NRSV). We are united by one true God, integrated into God’s kin-dom[7], but our differences are not erased, they are God-made, welcomed and celebrated.    

Quería decirte sana, sana, colita de rana pero para protegerte te murmuré, everything will be ok. Quería darte un apapacho but instead, I gave you a hug. Quería que supieras que a Dios le hablamos de tú, que ‘extended family’ es inexistente y que el ‘si Dios lo permite’ y ‘con el favor de Dios’ forman parte de nuestro andar. Quería que el español no fuera background noise to you, como un eco atrapado en el olvido. They held a gun to our head and said, “give us your children’s Spanish or we will kill them.” Mijito, I couldn’t see you die. I gave them what they wanted. Quería que entendieras las palabras en este poema, quería que no te sintieras como foráneo en tu propia familia, quería que el abuelo te contara sus historias, pero también quería, quería que sobrevivieras…[8]   

Visualize the following scenario: A Spanish speaker is walking to the store. She buys milk, hurriedly walks back to the house and answers a phone call. Who did you imagine? More specifically, what was the ethnic background of the person that you envisioned? It is highly likely that your visual reference was that of a Latina/o person. If you are Latina/o, you might’ve even pictured yourself or a family member. Languages are intrinsically associated to people groups and Spanish in the U.S. is immediately linked to Latin-American immigrants. The notion that a country has of a people group will directly impact their perception of the language spoken by that group of people.

When white people speak Spanish, it’s a global skill. When Latinx people speak Spanish, it’s a threat to the country
— Dr. José Medina

It is estimated that 50-70% of the world population is bilingual or multilingual.[9] In many parts of the world, including Asia, Latin America and Europe, multilingual education is the norm and the importance of languages is highly stressed. Many wealthy families even pay private language tutors and yet, in the U.S., where we are blessed to have the opportunity to be in community and learn from individuals of diverse linguistic backgrounds, we discourage bilingualism. However, bilingualism is not discouraged equally amongst all ethnic groups. People of color, specifically, are punished for their linguistic skills while white people are praised for their abilities. “Kylie La Gringa King” recently became a TikTok sensation for making videos in which she appears speaking Spanish, specifically a Mexican colloquial variety, while performing daily tasks. Her efforts are publicly applauded, and her Spanish is admired. Learning a new language is an arduous task and a profound undertaking. It takes dedication, humility, and courage to learn a new language and Kylie should be praised for her efforts but so should Alejandra, Natalia, José, and Ernesto. Instead, Latina/o people are discriminated against for speaking Spanish but also vilified by their own communities for not speaking it.  

I was riding the bus with my best friend one afternoon when I asked a girl, who clearly looked Latina, a question in Spanish. “I don’t speak Spanish,” she responded, with a tone of exhaustion in her voice. My friend and I laughed at her and murmured, “esta quien se cree, si tiene el nopal en la frente.”[10] I vividly remember feeling annoyed and offended that another Latina girl would dare to pretend she didn’t know Spanish. Years later, as I sat in a college class unearthing my history, I felt the desperate impulse to find that girl on the bus and ask for her forgiveness.

Shame has persistently burdened the Latina/o community in the U.S. We have been put to shame for speaking Spanish and have also shamed each other for not speaking it or not speaking it as well as others think we should by virtue of the brownness of our faces. Humiliation is a terrible pedagogical strategy. If you are a Spanish speaker who desires to encourage other Latina/os to learn the language, do not humiliate them. Twenty-seven percent of the U.S.-Latina/o population does not speak Spanish at home (Pew Research Center 2015). Poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva, describes her relationship with Spanish as an “itchy phantom limb” that “is reaching for words and only finding air.”[11] Many heritage learners[12] are working tirelessly in Spanish classes and elsewhere to reconnect with the language. For U.S.-Latina/os, Spanish is not simply a global skill or a resume booster – it is the opportunity to reconnect with their loved ones in a deeper way; it is the possibility to understand the stories that shaped their families. Black U.S.-Mexican poet Ariana Brown expresses the emotional turmoil felt by Latina/o learners in Spanish class in a powerful poem titled, Dear White Girls in my Spanish Class: “What is it like to be a tourist in the halls of my shame? To not be expected to speak better than you do? How does it feel to take a foreign language for fun? To owe your history nothing?”[13]       

El español es resistencia en este país. Learning or speaking Spanish while Latina/o is an act of resistance. Proving one’s Latinidad should not be the motivating factor behind learning Spanish. Teaching Spanish to future generations cannot be tied to issues of cultural authenticity or legitimacy and “linguistic ability should not be held against the diaspora’s children.”[14] However, speaking Spanish allows us to form deeper bonds with our communities; it enables us to explore parts of our heritage that can be illuminated more clearly under the light of the Spanish language and makes it possible for us to learn from our abuelitas’ theologies.        

Me inculcaste el amor hacia mi idioma. El español abrazaste, como agua lo valoraste. El inglés lo aprendiste, como lengua adicional lo quisiste. I love learning Spanish, I told my mother and it warmed her heart. I’m a child of God, I said. Un hijo de Dios, I smiled. Yahweh’s words echoed in me: “All languages are beautiful, Juan. Spanish will give you wings and help you fly.” Excited, el español usé y el Spanglish también lo adopté. Now, I’m in my home, tomando café con pan y leyendo la historia de Rut con mis nietos.[15]  

About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel


Footnotes

[1] “El español crucificado” (2020) by Itzel Reyes.

[2] Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2019).

[3] See Dr. Rosina Lozano’s book titled, “An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States” (2018).

[4] Instituto Cervantes (2015). For full article, click here.

[5] “Burying my Language” (2020) by Itzel Reyes.  

[6] Galileans were peasant farmers who were bilingual in Aramaic and Greek, as explained by Dr. Robert Chao Romero in Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology and Identity (2020).

[7] A term used by mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz.

[8] “Our Spanish is Hostage” (2020) by Itzel Reyes.

[9] Grosjean, Francois. Bilingualism’s Best Kept Secret (2010).

[10] Translation: Who does she think she is, she’s obviously of Mexican descent. Con el nopal en la frente is a derogatory Mexican expression that literally translates as, with a cactus on your forehead.

[11] My Spanish (2015).  

[12] A person who has a cultural connection to the language they are learning.

[13] Dear White Girls in my Spanish Class (2017).

[14] Emanuel Padilla. Too Much or Not Enough (2020)

[15] “El español resucitado” (2020) by Itzel Reyes.