Article
Spanish not spoken here:
Accounting for the
racialization of the
Spanish language in the
experiences of Mexican
migrants in the
United States
Ethnicities
2014, Vol. 14(5) 676–697
! The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1468796814523740
etn.sagepub.com
Tiffany Y. Davis
Chicago State University, Williams Science Center, Chicago, IL, USA
Wendy Leo Moore
Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA
Abstract
For Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States, the Spanish language is a component
of identity that is often viewed as fundamental to their human experience. This deep
connection between language and identity becomes problematic as a result of what we
suggest in this paper is a deeply racialized attack on the use of the Spanish language.
Drawing upon ethnographic and qualitative in-depth interview research with
first-generation Mexican migrants in the US, we bring together the literatures on
race and ethnicity to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the ethnic and racialized processes involved in reaction to and treatment of the use of Spanish in the US.
Centering the voices and experiences of first-generation migrants, we are able to explicate their experiences with respect to intersecting mechanisms of ethnocentrism, language oppression, and racism.
Keywords
Race, racialization, Latino sociology, ethnicity, language
Corresponding author:
Wendy Leo Moore, Texas A & M University, 421 Academic Building, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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Introduction
In 1998, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 227, which aimed
to eliminate most bilingual education programs in the public school system initially
implemented to facilitate Spanish-speaking Latino children’s transition into
English-speaking classes (see Lipsitz, 1998 for discussion). Two years later,
during the November 2000 election, voters in Arizona passed legislation similar
to Proposition 227 (see Garcia, 2009 for discussion). At the national level, the
Bilingual Education Act of 2001, which at least provided low-income Spanishspeaking school children with access to bilingual education, was also eliminated
with the passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation (see Garcia, 2009). As
well, during the 1996 Presidential race, the House passed a bill that would have
declared English the sole national language thus eliminating all language minority
provisions of the Voting Rights Act. This would have left voters who did not speak
English without voting materials printed in their language. While the Senate did
not pass the bill, the strong support it received from the House and the passing of
bills in California and Arizona, as well as the subsequent passage of national
legislation dismantling the Bilingual Education Act, illustrate the depth of support
for ‘English Only’ policies in the United States (see Garcia, 2009; Schimdt, 2002).
In the vast majority of social science research examining nativist ‘English Only’
movements and the consequences for Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United
States, language is viewed primarily as a cultural component of ethnicity. As a
result, the majority of research on language is found within the literature on ethnic
identity, going largely untreated within the race literature. Correspondingly, the
ethnicity literature largely fails to adequately capture the racialized processes
involved in the denigration of and attempts to exclude the Spanish language in
the United States. In this article, we examine the racializing consequences of speaking Spanish for Mexican migrants. Phenotypical characteristics are the most commonly used racial boundary markers in the US and we argue that the use of
Spanish by Latinos functions as an additional marker which signals their subordinate racial status on the racial hierarchy. Through what is revealed by the data
collected in our interviews with Mexican migrants, we make the case that this is
specifically a racializing process because, not only is the language used towards
them by outsiders denigrating, but in response, Mexicans interpret these interactions for themselves through a racial lens. The culmination of their experiences
ultimately comes to serve as a racial compass, which they rely upon in order to
navigate the racialized structures in the US in similar ways to what is required of
African Americans and other racial minorities.
Why the racialization of Spanish?
We chose to examine Spanish for a couple of key reasons. First, Spanish tends to
have a somewhat longer ‘life’ across generations than do other immigrant languages. It has been found that by the second generation for most other immigrant
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Ethnicities 14(5)
groups, English is the primary language spoken and the use of native language
tends to die out. But for Spanish-speakers, the use of Spanish does not appear to
taper off until the third generation (Alba and Nee, 2003; Portes and Bach, 1985;
Rumbaut et al., 2006). Despite dying out in the third generation, Spanish remains
the second most-used language in the US with approximately 35 million US residents speaking it (US Census, 2011). A number of factors are at play in the maintenance and prevalence of Spanish. The fact that Latinos tend to reside in areas
with a high concentration of Spanish speakers allows for the continued use of
Spanish and commonality and acceptability in a larger number of public spaces.
A shared border makes the US the most accessible and logical location for resettlement, thus continually renewing the population of first-generation, Spanishspeaking immigrants. Finally, the growing presence of Spanish media in the US
also speaks to the fact that Spanish continues to carve out a space in the mainstream (Portes and Bach, 1985; Rumbaut et al., 2006). These factors combined
make it clear that Spanish use will continue to be present in the US indefinitely,
something that cannot necessarily be said of most other immigrant languages. In
examining how Spanish functions as a racial marker, we are then exploring a
process that we can assume a significant portion of the population will experience
in some capacity, given how many people speak Spanish in the country.
Second, we interrogate the connection between Spanish and racialization because
it has a unique resistance to the hegemonic force of English – not true for other
immigrant languages. This is an especially powerful phenomenon given the fact that
the coercive ‘English Only’ movements in the last two decades have been specifically
targeted at the Spanish language and Spanish speakers (Garcia, 2009; Lipsitz, 1998;
Schimdt, 2002). When the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Services Act (commonly known as the Hart Celler Act) abolished national origin quotas that had
limited access to migration and citizenship to non-white people or people from
outside of European countries, the numbers of migrants from Latin American countries increased exponentially (Garcia, 2009). By 1990, Latin American migrants outnumbered migrants from European countries (Garcia, 2009: 104). During this same
period, the Spanish language became both a predominant signifier of foreign and
outsider status, and a target of nativist hostility (Feagin and Cobas, 2008). As noted
above, in the arena of education and politics, vehement ‘English Only’ campaigns
were created with Spanish as their specific target. And, as Jane Hill (2009) has
documented, during this same historical moment we see a ‘veritable explosion’ of
‘Mock’ Spanish in popular media as well as in the dominant discourse – in other
words a linguistically inaccurate denigration of the Spanish language. Mock Spanish
in its very denigration, becomes connected to the racialized stereotypes of Latina/
Latinos and thereby reaffirms whiteness as American-ness (Hill, 2009: 188; see
also Cobas and Feagin, 2008 and Lopez, 1996). We suggest that there is an important connection between these explicit nativist attacks on the Spanish language
and the way in which Spanish becomes a central and important aspect of identity
for Latinos in this country. Moreover, we assert that a full understanding of this
connection requires an explicitly race-conscious analysis.
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The racialization of Latinos
In our research, we focus on recently arrived Mexican migrants as a way of investigating how processes of racialization are experienced and how they proceed to
shape how this group understands and negotiates their position with the US racial
hierarchy. This is not to imply that these new immigrants arrive in the US without
prior experiences with, and conceptions of, how race works. Colonialism in Latin
America left a legacy of racial and class inequalities that mirror those of the United
States in many ways despite each region’s distinctly different histories. The creation
and solidification of racial categories in many regions in Latin America was complicated by the mixing of indigenous, African and European populations (see
Dávila, 2003 and Wade, 2010). Yet the fact still remains that today, ‘the overall
tendency is virtually everywhere in the Americas more European looking groups
discriminate against less European looking groups’ (Van Dijk, 2005: 96). As a
result, Latinos are all too familiar with the consequences of race and racism.
Much as in the US, whiteness in Latin American countries grants social,
economic, and political privileges and systematically denies the extension of
those same privileges to individuals who are excluded from that society’s particular
conception of what and who is white. In most Latin American countries, even the
most surface review of television, politics, and the business sector would reveal that
these arenas are often dominated by individuals with skin tones significantly lighter
than those who comprise the service, agriculture, and other low-skill sectors. As
such, Latin American immigrants arrive in the US well-versed in negotiating racialized structures. They learn, however, that there are some stark differences in how
race works in different contexts.
In the context of the United States, the Spanish language has long been recognized as one of the primary forces leading to a pan-Latino identity (Padilla, 1985).
Within the US, ‘Latino’ is often thought of as an ethnic identity and ‘Hispanic’ (a
term created by the US census administration) is defined as an ethnic and not racial
classification on the US census form. However, the concept of ethnicity alone does
not capture the dynamics of pan-Latino identity, or the realities of the racial structure in the United States that affects Latino communities (Feagin and Cobas, 2008;
Valdez, 2009). When Spanish-speaking Latin American migrants come to the
United States, they enter a society that is already fundamentally organized along
racial lines, what Bonilla-Silva (2009) describes as a racialized social system. Since
the time of its colonial origins, the United States has been racially organized with
race and racism structuring all major economic, political, social, and cultural institutions since this country’s inception (Bell, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2009;
Carmichael and Hamilton, 1977; Feagin, 2006, 2010). Furthermore, the racialized
social system in the United States has been specifically characterized by white
supremacy manifested through white accumulation of unearned power, privilege,
and wealth resulting in the oppression of people of color. Indeed, the very construction of ‘whiteness’ as a racial classification occurs through historical and contemporary processes of defining who has a right to possess and control resources
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versus who should be excluded from such resources (see e.g. DuBois, 1920;
Feagin, 2006, 2010; Harris, 1993; Jacobson, 1998; Lopez, 1996; and Roediger,
1991, 1994).
As a result of the racialized structure of the US, external racializing forces
operate upon Latin American migrants coming into the United States as well as
upon Latinos already in this country (Valdez, 2009). Those external racializing
forces come from the dominant white gaze (Cobas and Feagin, 2008; Mutua,
1999; Powell, 1997), or what Joe Feagin has called the white racial frame (2006,
2009). The white racial frame is ‘an organized set of racialized ideas, emotions, and
inclinations, as well recurring or habitual discriminatory actions, that are consciously or unconsciously expressed in, and constitutive of, the routine operation
and racist institutions of U.S. society’ (Feagin, 2006: 8). It is a dominant rhetorical,
ideological, and emotional frame that normalizes structural white power, privilege,
and wealth and rationalizes racial inequality. The white racial frame works as
an all-encompassing racial logic laying out the foundation for processes of racial
formation (Omi and Winant, 1994) and simultaneous racial oppression. It is
through this logic that race, ‘functions as verb before signifying as a noun’
(Powell, 1997). In other words, in a racialized social system characterized by
white supremacy and a dominant white racial frame, race and racial identity are
imposed upon us through the lens of a pre-existing racial logic – we are raced in the
verb-action sense before we even self-identify racially in the noun-signifier sense
(Mutua, 1999).
Most often, the process of racialization in the United States takes place through
a phenotypical association, or as Omi and Winant (1994) note, a connection
between physical and behavioral characteristics. Similarly, as Cobas et al. (2009)
note, ‘U.S. Latinos are stereotyped as having a particular physical appearance
characterized by olive or brown skin and dark, straight hair. Their body type is
ambiguously located by whites as somewhere between the dominant images of
whiteness and blackness’ (2009: 8). In fact, when Feagin (2010) asked 151 white
college students to identify, from a long list of racial-ethnic groups, those groups
that fit into the categories of ‘white’ or ‘not white’, the vast majority (86–100%) of
them labeled Latin American groups (including Mexican Americans and Puerto
Ricans) as not white.
What we suggest here is that the racialization of Latinos is more complex than
a mere phenotypical association and that this complexity offers important
insights into both the manner of racialization for groups other than African
Americans in the US, as well as the varied and nuanced mechanisms of white
supremacy (Mutua, 1999; Perea, 1997). Within the deeply racialized context of
United States society, we suggest that the Spanish language becomes intricately
connected to Latino-ness for both US citizens and non-citizens. This racialization
of the Spanish language becomes an important mechanism by which white racial
power and domination can be asserted upon Latinos in the United States often
hidden under the pretext of non-racial concerns for shared national communication and identity.
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The racialization of the Spanish language
It is not a coincidence that the most extreme ‘English Only’ movements have
developed in states that border Mexico and that also rely heavily upon Mexican
migrant labor. States like California, Arizona, and Texas have a long history of
both economic dependence upon Mexican migrants as a labor force and organized
racial discrimination against Mexicans and the Spanish language (Crawford, 2000;
Fan, 1997; Fernandez, 2007). In his analysis of race and language, Ronald Schimdt
(2002) makes the argument that ‘English Only’ policies are fundamentally racializing in nature and traces the historical connections of racist ideologies that emerged
alongside Anglo-Americans’ efforts to make the US an English-speaking country.
Schmidt notes that language is as much about race as it is about culture and
politics.
Languages carry and transmit much more than merely words. Indeed language
shapes cultural ideas, ways of thinking and logic frames, and sets of values (Hill,
2009; Nieto, 2007; Schimdt, 2002). Through the use of language, one develops the
ability to interact with and make sense of the world. Being able to engage in these
cognitive processes on one’s own terms creates an element of freedom that is taken
away when language use is restricted. This is particularly true when minority languages have to be abandoned in exchange for the language of the oppressor
because it causes ‘a process of forced adherence and identification with the oppressor’s version of the world’ (Nieto, 2007). Thus, at the root of the conflict over
language use in the US is not language per se, but rather identity – specifically
racial identity (see also Feagin, 1997).
The contestation over the preservation of ‘American identity’ (often explicitly
connected to ‘English Only’ movements) is fundamentally about the maintenance
of white cultural hegemony and the racial dynamics of US structure – a racial
structure which is organized around white privilege, power, and wealth (Bell,
2000; Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Feagin, 1997). Therefore, it is not surprising that an
analysis of California survey data on whites’ opinions of the state’s 1986 official
English initiative found that ‘negative sentiments about cultural minorities (i.e.
Asian Americans and Latinos) are associated consistently with opposition to bilingualism and approval of the hegemony of English’ (Citrin et al., 1990).
Cobas and Feagin (2008), documenting Latinos’ experiences with language
oppression in the US, have made this connection explicit. A key element to the
language oppression these authors document is the racialized nature of the incidents they delimit. They illustrate the ways in which whites actively attempt to
‘delimit or suppress Spanish’, and they note these actions take place as part of
white efforts ‘to protect or enhance the reach and power of English speakers vis-àvis Spanish speakers’ (2008: 392). In other words, the denigration of Spanish by
whites in the United States becomes a mechanism for the maintenance of white
economic, political, social, and cultural power and domination over Latinos
(See also Lippi-Green, 1997). Moreover, as we discuss further below, the Spanish
language becomes a signifier by which whites identify Latinos as a racial group
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(whites do not differentiate between Spanish-speaking ethnic groups; Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc.), and on the other hand, Spanish gets used as a
means by which Latinos can be ‘othered’ whether or not they speak Spanish (for
example in the deployment of Mock Spanish [Hill, 1998, 2009]).
Underscoring the racially charged discourse around the use of Spanish,
Americans have appropriated components of the Spanish language and have distorted it into a derogatory Mock Spanish (Hill, 1998, 2009). Hill argues that whites
appropriate presumed linguistic characteristics of Spanish and use them unconsciously in everyday casual encounters in ways that caricaturize the language in
addition to invoking Latino racial stereotypes. Mock Spanish is a form of linguistic
racism as its use depends on the speakers’ and listeners’ shared understandings of
racist stereotypes of Latinos and the inferiority of the Spanish language itself. This
then covertly and casually constructs the language and its speakers as inferior
reinforcing the notion that they are outsiders to the (implicitly white) mainstream,
which in turn, serves to reproduce and ‘elevate whiteness’ (Hill, 1998). Hill highlights that Mock Spanish is not only spoken, but is consistently used in the media
and is printed on advertising billboards, t-shirts, greeting cards, and other highly
visible places.1 This demonstrates the power and pervasiveness of white hegemonic
culture as the use of Mock Spanish has, for the most part gone unnoticed and
unchallenged. Hill points out that the linguistic incorporation of other languages
into English has occurred but none to the same extent or with the same level of
derogation as is the case with Spanish.
The use and recognition of minority languages runs counter to the dominant
ideology that minority groups are supposed to assimilate into the mainstream
culture. Thus, to speak a language other than English is perceived by the majority as being ‘un-American’ which runs the risk of compromising ‘American’
culture (Cervantes-Rodriguez and Lutz, 2003; Leeman, 2004). As such, the
debates about ‘English Only’ policies were merely window-dressing for a
larger discourse on the threats that racialized groups pose to white cultural
hegemony. Through a white racial framing (Feagin, 2009) of the Spanish language in the context of the racialized social structure of US society, the language has been constructed, and more specifically, has been raced in a way that
no other non-English language has. Moreover as a consequence of Spanish
being raced, it has, in turn, the power to race its speakers in the same way
their Latino phenotype can.
In examining the experiences of first-generation Mexican migrants in the United
States, we find that their experience is not fully captured without attention to the
intersecting mechanisms of ethnicity, language, and race. Spanish language usage,
often essential for these new migrants in their transition into United States society,
connects its speakers to a specific racialized identity, which becomes a source of
both overt and covert discrimination and oppression. Moreover, as our data illustrates, the connection between the Spanish language and a racialized Latino identity results in a flattening and an obscuring of the nuances of ethnicity – even among
only Mexican respondents.
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Method
This article comes out of a larger project that examines the processes of racialization, ethnic identity reconstruction, and assimilation as they are manifested in and
through Mexican migrants’ daily experiences. Also of interest are the purposeful
adaptive strategies developed in an effort to navigate racial and ethnic boundaries
in the context of the US. The study was conducted through the use of ethnographic
research and 31 in-depth interviews with first-generation Mexican migrants in
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota from 2004 to 2006.
Minnesota proved to be an interesting site for this research as it is not considered a
traditional receiving site for Mexican migrants. Shortly before we began our research,
however, the Twin Cities area experienced a boom in the number of Mexicans who
were migrating there. Between 1990 and 2000 the Latino community increased in
Minneapolis and St. Paul by 269% and 98%, respectively (US Census Bureau, 2000).
The relative newness of the community in the area allowed us to capture the dynamics
of the adjustment period for both the immigrants and the native residents of the area.
In this way, the experiences of Mexican migrants in the Twin Cities area may look
different from those who settle in other parts of the country, as each region has its
own particular local history of immigration. Differences in individual experiences,
however, do not belie the fact that, as racial minorities in this country, the process of
racialization of their bodies and language will inevitably occur.
In this research, we focus on first-generation Mexican migrants because their
experiences provide a fresh lens through which to understand the racialization process for several key reasons. First, it is newly arrived migrants who are often the
focus of, or rather blamed for the ongoing phenomenon of the ‘browning of
America’ (Santa Ana, 2002). Latinos are often in the spotlight because they are
the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in the United States. In 2000, there were an
estimated 35.3 million Latinos residing in the US. Over the course of just one
decade, this number grew by 43% bringing the total to 50 million (Passel et al.,
2011). Although Mexican migrants are not the only Latin Americans migrating to
this country, the influx of Mexican migrants specifically has been sensationalized in
the media, resulting in endless racially charged debates, the creation of restrictive
immigration policies, and racial profiling. Despite this clear targeting of Mexicans in
these racialized politics, many scholars interrogating the experiences of
Mexican migrants have largely ignored the racial context into which these
migrants come (see, for example, Jimenez, 2010). Second, this is a group that has
the highest likelihood of having little or no English proficiency. As a result, the issue
of language negotiation will inevitably be a central component of how they come to
view and experience US society. By focusing on the experiences of first-generation
Mexican migrants, we reveal the nuanced connection between ethnicity, language,
and race – or more accurately, the interconnecting mechanisms of ethnocentrism
and language oppression within the maintenance of the racial social structure.
We formally interviewed 31 first-generation Mexican migrants. Participants
were recruited through a social service agency that provided services to the Twin
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Cities’ Latino community ranging from job training to mental health counseling.
The interviewees ranged between the ages of 20 and 51 and had lived in the US only
from as little as six months to as much as 3 years, with the exception of three
individuals who had lived here for 10 years or more. Only four spoke English
fluently. Of the interviewees, 21 were male and 10 were female. On average, the
interviews lasted between 1 and 4 hours, with some taking course over multiple
days. All but six participants reported being employed in labor and service
occupations.
We draw heavily upon interview data in our analysis herein but we draw upon
the over 200 hundred hours of participant observation at the social service agency
to provide nuance and context. As a result of the methodological use of ethnographic data and the in-depth interviews, we are able here to center the experiences
of first-generation Mexican migrants through their own voices. This provides a
unique opportunity to both explicate the nuances of their experiences with ethnicity, race, and language while challenging dominant narratives concerning use of
the Spanish language (Delgado, 1995; Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Williams, 1991).
Spanish as a marker of a racialized other
In her work on language use among Puerto Ricans in New York, Bonnie Urciuoli
(1996) examines their strategic use of Spanish in public in response to the stigmas
attached to it. Similar to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans maintain the use of Spanish over
multiple generations, even though second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans are
more likely to be bilingual. Despite their English abilities, Urciuoli found that
Puerto Ricans are very conscious of their use of English. In a social, political,
and racial context where English is the valued language and Spanish is less
valued, indicators of Spanish such as accent and grammatical mistakes are devalued and interpreted in ‘race and class terms’ (1996: 2). Therefore, Puerto Ricans
make an extra effort to speak ‘proper’ English, so as not to be judged on the basis
of their accent or language abilities. This supports the idea that it is ‘not all foreign
accents, but only accents linked to skin that isn’t white, or which signals a thirdworld homeland, that evoke . . . negative reactions’ (Lippi-Green, 1997: 201).
Furthermore, they opt to avoid using Spanish altogether in most public spaces.
Since most of the newly arrived Mexican migrants that we interviewed are not
bilingual, they unfortunately often do not have the option of only speaking
Spanish in private or speaking English without a Spanish accent. As a result, the
overwhelming majority of migrants in this study related countless incidents where
they felt the sting of discrimination as a result of their Spanish language or accent.
We interviewed Leo, who is an appliance delivery and repairman for a large
department store. As an in-home appliance repairman, his job requires him to enter
clients’ homes, which puts him in regular contact with individuals of various racial
and ethnic backgrounds. Leo has very fair skin, hair, and eyes, which do not fit the
stereotypical Latino phenotype leading many people to initially believe he is white.
He speaks fluent English, but with a strong accent. Yet, as Leo recounts, when his
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white clients in particular, hear his heavy Spanish accent their treatment of him
changes:
Well this was one time that I was working and we took a washer and a dryer to the
client, who was American of course . . . First, we took everything in [the house] and
connected it. And, well, later, after hearing me speaking in English, this man said to
me, ‘Where are you from?’ And, I told him, Mexico and then he said, ‘Oh, so then you
don’t speak English?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m speaking in English to you now!’
The client, initially unaware of Leo’s racial or ethnic difference from himself, was
willing to engage in a conversation with Leo until he spoke with a Spanish accent.
It was at that point that the client recognized Leo as a foreign ‘other’ and more
specifically, as Latino, leading the client to assume that Leo did not speak English,
despite the fact that the entire exchange had taken place in English. The homeowner’s incorrect observation of Leo’s language abilities, or lack thereof, reflects
the prominent false assumption that Mexicans cannot and do not have the desire to
speak English (Dowling et al., 2012). Once his white client heard him speak with a
Spanish accent, Leo was immediately racialized as Latino and thus, a racial subordinate. After the client became aware of his Latino racial status, he ceased
making small-talk and Leo felt as though he had begun to hover over him and
his partner while they worked.
Leo reported that in response to several customer complaints, the company
instated an ‘English Only’ policy, which forbade the use of Spanish by employees
while in clients’ homes – despite the significant number of Latinos who were
employed by the company. Some customers had reported that they felt uncomfortable when the employees would speak Spanish while in their homes. Leo said that
he did his best to follow this policy but it becomes problematic when he is assigned
to work with employees who spoke limited English, if any at all. In Leo’s opinion,
the company’s English-only policy is clearly related to white power and control:
They [whites] think they own the world and want to be in control. If they can’t have it,
no one can. And, they are always suspicious of us [Latino employees] and probably
think we are making plans to rob their house right in front of them, but they can’t
understand what we are saying (laughs).
When asked if this made him feel uncomfortable entering the homes of white
customers, he said it did.
It’s, how can I say it? It’s a burden. Sometimes, I get nervous going to their house.
Because you know what, if they complain we get a notice and after three notices they
can fire you. Only three. That causes a lot of stress.
Breaking the ‘No Spanish’ policy was added to the list of infractions that could
result in workers receiving a notice. This policy creates an addition burden that
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Ethnicities 14(5)
only Spanish-speaking employees have to bear. Making a conscious and continuous effort not to speak Spanish significantly increased the amount of stress already
related to Leo’s job. Moreover, as is made clear by the interaction between Leo and
a customer presented above, Leo’s Spanish accent can sometimes create an ‘otherness’ in the eyes of white customers that lead them to assert that he ‘doesn’t speak
English’ even when he is, in fact, speaking English, making the level of pressure
even more burdensome. The fact that Leo recounted this incident in response to
one of the opening ice-breaker questions in the interview, which simply asked
about the participants’ place of employment, demonstrates how Leo independently
interpreted that incident (along with others that he discussed later in the interview)
through a racial lens. Regardless of whether or not that was the intent of the
homeowner; it nonetheless had a racializing effect.
Angéla lived in the US for nearly eight years at the time of the study and worked
for a non-profit organization in the Twin Cities. Although she speaks almost perfect English, her accent has had negative consequences for her. Angéla recalls an
experience she had as a student worker when she was an undergraduate at the
university she attended:
This was at the university and I received this phone call from this man and he was
looking for someone and I didn’t understand the name so I asked, ‘who are you
looking for?’ and he said the name and, well, I said, ‘this person doesn’t work here
anymore’, and I guess he got mad or something and he said, ‘Well, can I speak with
someone who speaks English!’ I said, ‘well I’m the only one here so you better speak
with me or speak with nobody’.
Upon hearing even her accent, Angela was completely dismissed and the caller asked
to speak with someone who spoke English – or more accurately, English without a
Spanish accent. When asked how this made her feel, she said she was ‘used to those
kinds of things’. Those ‘things’ she explained were people regularly dismissing her
because her accent or treating her unfairly because she is Mexican. She went on to
provide several examples of discrimination she had experienced. Similar to Leo,
Angela linked what happened on the telephone with the issue of race without
prompting. She understood her accent as having functioned to ‘race’ her.
Carmela arrived to the US less than three years prior to our interview. She had
worked hard at mastering English by taking a number of English as a Second
Language (ESL) classes and worked as a receptionist at the time. Her English
fluency helped her to successfully earn a paralegal certificate and she was in the
process of looking for a job in that area. She shared an experience she had while
waiting to be interviewed for a position with a law firm. Having arrived to her
interview early, she was waiting outside of the building and she had a conversation
with a friend on her cellphone in Spanish. She recalls:
I was talking and there was a [white] man standing a little to my left, smoking his
cigarette. Right before he went in the office his friend walked up and they
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began talking. I moved over a little because they were talking and laughing really
loud. Before they went inside, I heard one of them say, ‘No hablo Español!’ Well, he
had to be talking to me because there was no one else there. I don’t know if he was
telling me not to speak Spanish or if he was saying the he doesn’t speak Spanish
because he said ‘hablo’. Or, maybe he thought since I was speaking in Spanish that
I don’t speak English. I don’t know, I guess it didn’t really matter.
Carmela was confused about what he was trying to say as what he said translates
as, I don’t speak Spanish. If he was trying to tell her not to speak Spanish, he
misused the verb tense. Either way, similar to the users of Mock Spanish analyzed by Jane Hill (1998, 2009), this man utilized a linguistically inappropriate
(and therefore confusing) Spanish phrase to openly mock Carmela. His derogatory use of Spanish, along with his openly hostile and emotionally charged comment directed toward Carmela is illustrative of the white racial frame. This is
particularly true because his derogatory use of Spanish combines the privilege of
whiteness that assumes as its own, the power to openly derogate another (a stranger, at that) with a nativist sentiment that relies upon the widely recognized
derision of the Spanish language (Cobas et al., 2009; Feagin, 1997; Feagin and
Cobas, 2008).
Cristóbal had lived in the United States for four years and discusses the serious
consequences that the white racial framings of the Spanish language can have as he
recounts a run-in he had with the Minneapolis police:
C: If you get stopped by the police and you don’t speak English they don’t treat you
the same. The police stop you and you don’t know what he’s saying and the police
gives you papers, takes your car, takes you to jail.
Interviewer: They treat you different from whom?
C: The white people.
Interviewer: Do you think this happens more because of the language or your race?
Or, is it more or less equal?
C: It’s the language. When we run into the police they are angry and they treat you
bad, this has happened to me. I was stopped by the police; he went through my wallet;
I felt bad.
Cristóbal makes the connection between language and race when he starts out by
saying that he is treated differently from white people, but with further questioning
he says that it is his use of Spanish that causes the police to become angry and treat
him differently than they would a white person. Cristóbal is phenotypically racially
identifiable as non-white, yet he perceives hostile treatment from the police as a
product of his inability to speak proficient English. Cristóbal understands the
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privileges attached to English and thus whiteness, from which Mexican migrants
are exempt. Cristóbal also understands that the white police officer, in a position of
power both formally and informally, took advantage of the fact that he did not
speak English.
Marco, who has lived in the United States off and on for over 12 years, shares a
similar perspective. Marco attended high school in San Antonio, Texas, and is
fluent in English but still has a strong Spanish accent. When asked if there is a
difference in the treatment one receives based on having an accent, he replied:
M: Yeah, I think it makes a lot of difference if you have an accent. You know people
can tell where you’re from. And some people are, you know, well, even though if you
don’t have an accent, if you have a last name that tells you or tells them that you are
Hispanic they think like ‘‘Ramirez’’, whatever all the last names, they’re going to treat
you like a Mexican. You know, I mean there’s no changing that.
Interviewer: What do you mean when you say, ‘‘They’re going to treat you like a
Mexican’’?
M: Well they’re going to treat you like a Mexican, Hispanic, or whatever, like you’re
from Latin America, you know they’re not going to treat you as an American, as one of
them. It’s just no changing that . . . How can I say it, well I mean for instance, I know
there’s people here that they’re born in the United States and some of those people they
don’t even know how to speak Spanish and all they speak is English. Even though they
don’t have an accent, but they have the last name and because of the color of their skin,
whatever, you know, they still treat them like a Mexican, there’s no changing that.
Marco’s comments provide an excellent articulation of the complex nature of the
racialization of Latinos in the United States. The Spanish language, as well as Latin
American (Spanish origin) surnames, is interconnected with phenotypical characteristics that distinguish Latinos from whiteness. This results in a complex form of
racialization and racial discrimination which is both similar to, and distinct from
the racialization of African Americans. Marco clearly understands that ethnicity
alone cannot explain the racialization process or racial oppression faced by
Latinos. When he says, ‘They’re going to treat you like a Mexican . . . there’s no
changing that’, he denotes ethnic identification – Mexican (though he includes all
Latin Americans). This further demonstrates that a key aspect of this racialized
identification is the trans-ethnic use of the Spanish language. Additionally, his
comments allude to the fact that whites generally do not differentiate between
distinct Spanish-speaking ethnic groups and often deploy particular nationalities
(such as Mexican, particularly in the Southwest) as racial signifiers.2
The experiences of Marco and the other respondents discussed in this section
reveal that there is a connection between the racialization process for Latinos and
the racial signification of the Spanish language. The experiences of these Mexican
migrants illuminate the nuanced process of racialization undergone by Latin
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American migrants and Latinos in the US, a process in which language is clearly a
more salient racial marker than it would be in the case of racialization of African
Americans (see Mutua, 1999). The Spanish language is racialized and racializing
both in the sense that individuals who possess the phenotypical characteristics
identified as Latino or Hispanic are assumed to speak Spanish, while those who
may look phenotypically white but speak Spanish or English with a Spanish accent
are assumed to be Latino (see Garcia, 2009). As a result, understanding the consequences of the racialized social system (Bonilla-Silva, 2009) for Latinos, both in its
similarity to, and distinction from, that of other racialized groups requires an analysis of the racialization of Spanish. Thus, this analysis creates an important nuance
for dominant race-based theories. Moreover, as we discuss in the next section, we
find that this racialization of the Spanish language and its power to racialize Latino
people in the US cannot be reduced to only ethnicity (as separate from race and
racial hierarchy) but actually functions to erase intra-ethnic distinctions.
Racialized Spanish as an ethnic erasure
In comparing the processes of racialization and ethnicitization, Smith (2005)
argues:
Racialization and ethnicitization are two side of the same coin. The first refers to the
process of being pushed into and adopting a social location similar to stigmatized or
oppositional groups, with similar constraints on life chances. The second refers to
being allowed into and pursuing social locations approximating those of higher status
groups, with correspondingly greater life chances and the presumption of moral
worth. (2005: 222)
Thus racialization is a structural process, while ethnicitization is an internal process. According to this line of thought, racialized groups evoke their ethnicity in
order to negotiate their subordinate racial status and by doing so, can experience
some degree of social mobility. Similarly, Bonnie Urciuoli (1996) views ethnicization as a ‘kind of mediating discourse: if the chief polarities are white, middle-class
Anglo versus non-white, poor and culturally/linguistically deficient, then being
ethnicized is a way to mediate these extremes’ (1996: 16). The mediating role ethnicity plays in racialization and assimilation has proven to be instrumental to
Mexican migrants’ negotiation of these processes but it still must be contextualized
within a larger framework of race and racial inequality.
While negotiating and adapting to their new racial identity, Mexican migrants
simultaneously reconstruct their ethnic identity. An ethnic group can be understood as ‘a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common
ancestry . . . and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the
epitome of their peoplehood’ (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007). How ethnicity gets
constructed or reconstructed is largely dependent upon the surrounding social
context. Within the context of the US society, race is the most dominant social,
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political, and economic stratifier and its power to impact the amount of access and
privilege groups have supersedes that of ethnicity. In some instances, ethnicity can be
a mitigating factor in this process. For example, Mary Waters (1999) found in her
research on West Indian immigrants and African Americans on the East Coast that
West Indians were able to reap some material and social benefits when they highlighted their ethnic identity and distanced themselves from African Americans. This,
however, did not prevent them from experiencing a great deal of racism on the basis
of their skin color. As such, we found that for the migrants in our research, ethnic
alliances were often traded in for racial ones. We recognize that this process may
look different in various regions of the country where there are larger populations of
Latinos from various ethnic backgrounds. However, we assert that what we found in
our data demonstrates the power of the common use of Spanish in its capacity as a
racial marker can, to a degree, ‘erase’ ethnic divisions.
For Humberto, living in California, Texas, Wisconsin, and the Twin Cities for
over three years, has given him the opportunity to experience a wide range of
different Mexican and Latino communities across the country. When Humberto
left El Paso and moved to Wisconsin, he was shocked that there were so few other
Mexicans in comparison to the cities he lived in previously.
H: There weren’t many of us in Wisconsin, but we made do. Most of us were from
Guadalajara and many families were from the same towns, but the rest were from
Morelos. Now, my best friend is from Morelos (he spoke earlier about how people
from Morelos are stereotyped as poor and should be avoided) . . . and I can’t say he’s
poor because he has a better job than I do now (laughs).
Interviewer: So, what did you hear about them other than they were poor?
H: I don’t really remember, but almost every state [in Mexico] is known for something. I don’t know if you know what a ‘chilango’ is, do you? It’s a person from DF
[Districto Federal or Mexico City].
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
H: So, you know how those people are. They’re muychingón [an expletive for gutsy or
brazen].Well at least that’s what they say (laughs). [M]y wife is a chilanga and now
I have a lot of friends through her and her family from DF. Some are chingón and
some are not . . . I guess it just depends on the person.
Humberto points out that the ethnic differences that exist in Mexico are no longer
significant in the US. For his family in Mexico, these differences still matter and
they were worried when he married his wife because she is from Mexico City. In
addition, he notes that having a best friend who is from Morelos is something he
never would have imagined because growing up in Guadalajara, he was taught that
people from Morelos were poor and ‘tramposos’ (a loose translation would be
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‘dishonest’), making it common for people from other states to look down upon
them. Yet, in the context of US structures of racialization, Humberto’s previous
views concerning what were at one time important ethnic designators took a back
seat to merely appreciating having a friend and wife with whom he had a shared
understanding of oppression as a Mexican migrant in the US. In part, this erasure
of the significance of ethnic differences by region revolves around locating a shared
community based upon language.
Octavio shared his experience with a white instructor from the ESL course that
he had recently taken at the social service agency in Minneapolis. He noted that the
instructor did not allow students to use Spanish in the classroom, which was not
unusual for English proficiency classes, but Octavio felt her enforcement of this
policy was a bit extreme. Octavio said that this instructor would become outraged
every time a student used Spanish in the class:
O: That lady was crazy. She told us to only use English and when we were tempted to
speak Spanish, to think of cancer.
Interviewer: Cancer? Why cancer?
O: You wouldn’t believe. She said to think of cancer and how it kills people, so of
course, nobody wants cancer, right? So, I don’t know, I guess Spanish is bad like
cancer. Or, maybe if I keep speaking Spanish, I will get cancer. I don’t know what the
other students were thinking, but I was offended. What, English is the cure for cancer
or Spanish?
The equation of the Spanish language to a disease as a pedagogical method for
teaching English proficiency is a vulgar example of the white racial frame and the
racialized denigration of the Spanish language. Perhaps it is the vehemence and
vulgarity in the rejection of Spanish by this teacher and society at large that leads
Spanish-speaking migrants to seek one another out and utilize the language as a
form of resistance (see e.g. Urciuoli, 1996). Yet, it is this same process that leads to
the thinning out of ethnic identifications. When Octavio was asked whether he had
complained to the program director about what this instructor had said. He replied
that he had not, and he said:
O: I just didn’t want the problems, you know? Spanish is my culture, who I am, and I
know that . . . Okay, it is hard with all the problems with immigration, but I’m proud
to see how many Mexicans have made a life here in America. Mexicans are strong,
Spanish is strong.
Interviewer: How is Spanish strong?
O: Mexicans are strong and we speak Spanish. It’s hard here so sometimes we help
each other. I don’t want to see one of my ‘compadres’ suffer. In Mexico, Mexico City
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is the capital, and we call the people there ‘chilangos’. They think they are better
than people from the countryside. They have no idea how to live in the countryside.
But, when we come over here [the US], that doesn’t matter – chilangos are
just Mexican. We may joke about it, like José, he’s a damn chilango, but where we
work, there are maybe 6 Mexicans and the rest are white and black and everybody
sticks to their own. So, I have to talk to José, who else am I going to talk to? (laughs).
To counter the instructor’s degradation of his native language, Octavio asserts the
pride he has in his language and culture. In the process of resisting the derogation
of the Spanish language in the US, Mexican migrants reconstruct their ethnicity in
a way that transcends regional divisions that formerly mattered in Mexico. This
reconstruction and emphasis on a broader identity, one fundamentally connected
to the Spanish language, is important because the construction of a collective
identity allows them to ‘help each other’. It is highly unlikely that Octavio and
his co-worker José would be friends were they in Mexico. But in the context of the
racialized social system of the US, they are both just Mexican. The ethnic and
racial differences between themselves and other racial/ethnic groups are so stark
that they far outweigh any intra-ethnic regional differences that would have mattered to the two of them in Mexico.
At the time of the interview, Maria Luisa was a 57-year-old widow from Morelos,
who had been living in the US for close to five years. After her husband passed,
Maria Luisa decided to join her two sons who had already been living in the US for
several years. Her eldest son, Rodrigo, was 30 years old at the time and had married
shortly before Maria Luisa’s arrival to the US. Maria Luisa talked about her initial
concern regarding her son’s decision to marry a young woman from Guatemala.
ML: I didn’t know she was from Guatemala until I arrived here. Rodrigo never
told me.
Interviewer: Was he hiding it from you?
ML: I think he was. He says no, but he was hiding. He didn’t want to disappoint
me . . . He knows they [Guatemalans] are different. They aren’t like us and I know he
was worried . . . She is a pretty girl, but yes, I was worried. They are different, they
don’t have the same culture, like food and they don’t have the same morals. Mexicans
have a lot of morals. It’s hard when people are different.
Albeit from a slightly judgmental perspective, Maria Luisa draws an important
distinction between Mexican and Guatemalan culture and morals, which are
important aspects of ethnic difference. Later in the interview, she reexamines the
importance of these ethnic differences in the context of the US:
ML: I will have my first grandbaby next month. I am very emotional. But, this child
will be American in a lot of ways. I hope it is not confused, Mexican, Guatemalan,
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American, everything! It will be Mexican and American. Xochitl [her daughter-in-law]
is like us Mexicans, she speaks Spanish and there aren’t so many differences between
us because Americans think we are all Mexican. After so long, I think Xochitl now
feels Mexican too in some ways.
When asked why she believed her daughter-in-law ‘feels Mexican’, Maria Luisa
explained that Xochitl, ‘looks Mexican and speaks Spanish. When you speak
Spanish, you are Mexican anyway’. Maria Luisa’s analysis highlights the racializing effect of Spanish that transcends and thus undermines ethnic boundaries in the
context of the structure of race in the US.
Although our interview and ethnographic data was limited to only Mexican
migrants to the US, other researchers have noted that the same type of ethnicityerasing phenomenon that occurs here with our respondents also happens more
broadly in multi-ethnic Latino communities (Padilla, 1985). White people (specifically), and the white racial frame (more broadly), do not differentiate between
Mexican Spanish-speakers, Cuban Spanish-speakers, or Puerto Rican Spanishspeakers. As a result, the language, combined with phenotypical markers, signifies
the ‘racial other’ in a white-dominated society. While some scholars have discussed
this phenomenon as a pan-Latino ethnic identity, what we find here is that ethnically based cultural differences, even at the micro-level of locality within one nationstate (Mexico), get blurred and erased as the external racialization of the Spanish
language is deployed in dominant discourse. The result is that language becomes a
source of collective identity that unifies and cross-cuts ethnic differentiations and
begins the formation of racially marked identities.
Conclusion
On 21 April 2005, the Spanish version of the U.S. national anthem, ‘Nuestro
Himno’, was released. The release of the song was timed to coincide with the
week Congress was to return and continue the debate over immigration reform.
Adam Kidron, president of the entertainment company that produced it, said the
song was intended to be an anthem of solidarity to honor the millions of immigrants across the US participating in the numerous demonstrations that were
taking place at the time in support of immigrants’ rights. Kidron told one news
source, ‘I wanted to show my thanks to these people who buy my records and listen
to the music we release and do the jobs I don’t want to do’ (Wides-Munoz, 2006).
The song’s release added fuel to the fire that was already burning out of control
around the immigration issue. So much so, even President Bush felt the need to
weigh in on the debate: ‘I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English.
And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English,
and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English’ (Baker, 2006). With
the knowledge that the majority of Americans still hold strong assimilationist views
and would stand behind him, the president did not hesitate to publicly express his
disapproval of the song.
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Those who argue in favor of ‘English Only’ policies and oppose the use of
Spanish in public spaces, often take the position that linguistic assimilation is
actually more inclusive and egalitarian than allowing for the incorporation of
minority languages (Schimdt, 2002). Proponents of these policies believe that
since the US is an English-speaking country, speakers of minority languages
who shift to English will be more likely to experience socio-economic and political upward mobility. As such, many have taken the position that English language assimilation is actually inclusive and egalitarian. However, this argument
can only be made by taking the English language out of the larger context of
cultural hegemony and the unequal power relations that structure the US.
Linguistic assimilation is actually exclusionary and will not result in upward
mobility for immigrants of color because language is only one marker of difference
with which they have to contend. As a racial marker, the Spanish language connects to phenotypical racialization and vice versa, resulting in a process of racialization for Latinos that is both similar to, and distinct from, the processes of
racialization for other racial groups like African Americans. As demonstrated in
the above examples, even when Mexicans speak English they are penalized for
having an identifiable accent or not speaking ‘perfect’ English as perceived by
whites. As a result, the racialization of the Spanish language becomes a tool in
the political economy of race – a mechanism by which whites can tacitly signify
Latinos as racial others (irrespective of their language proficiency in Spanish,
English, or both).
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank all of the people who helped us in the development of this work,
including our interview participants, as well as Kay Sarai Varela and the anonymous
reviewers who gave us extremely helpful feedback.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial,
or not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. Note, for example the new (2012) advertising campaign featuring Ellen DeGeneres and
Columbian actress Sophia Vergara in which Vergara protests that Degeneres has stolen
her line, to which Degeneres responds ‘that’s because no one can understand you’.
Vergara then mumbles something incoherent with a thick rolling of her Rs, a central
element of the Spanish language, and Degeneres says ‘see’. This ad clearly mocks the
Spanish accent as not ‘American’ and, indeed, not ‘white’.
2. The complexity of race, the social construction of race, and white supremacy has
throughout history been illustrated by the problematic process of identification of
‘racial’ groups via the white gaze. The failure of whites to differentiate between peoples
from distinct cultural and national contexts (for example Costa Ricans versus Mexicans)
is one illustration of this problem, but another example comes from the way in which
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nationality gets sometimes deployed as a generalized racial term. For example, ‘Mexican’
was designated as a racial classification on one, and only one Census form in 1930 (clearly
connected to the process of repatriation occurring at that historical moment – further
revealing the political economy of racialization). And particularly in border states, like
Texas and Arizona, Spanish-speaking people and brown people are often labeled
‘Mexican’ by whites, regardless of their actual nationality.
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