Mi Patria es Mi Lengua

By: Stephany Batista

           In Benjamin Bailey’s article, “The Language of Multiple Identities Among Dominican Americans,” he explores how Dominican Americans use language to construct and make sense of their social identities. He focuses on boundaries that are created between in-group and out-group. He does this by studying and focusing on Dominican American teens living and going to school in Providence, Rhode Island. Bailey says that the boundaries created between the in-group and out-group are created at three different levels. The first one he identifies is how Dominican Americans use language to enact a specifically nonwhite identity. The second boundary that Bailey identifies is how Dominicans linguistically claim a distinct nonblack Spanish/Dominican identity and the last boundary he indentified was how Dominican immigrants situationally highlight boundaries among themselves.

            In 2009, CNN produced a documentary series titled Latino in America, which examines the increasing populations of Latinos living in the United States. The series sought to discuss the many different types of Latinos that are living in the United States. The series chose to touch upon the larger Latino populations living in the United States, which at the time was the Mexican population.  In this article, published in Diverse magazine, Soledad O'Brien, the host of the "In America" series, was interviewed. Maria Eugenia Miranda, the interviewer, asked O'Brien whether there was anything she regretted about the documentaries that had aired. Soledad O’Brien says that her one regret was not being able to include Afro-Latinos in the documentary. She says that her own mother is Afro-Latina and felt that that they had not been properly identified in the documentary. The video clips below are a few reactions from audience members after watching a preview of “Latinos in America.”

The clips below show a few reactions, both from people that identify solely as Latinos and those that identify only as black. In the first clip, we see a Dominican woman, who was born in the United States, but raised in both the US and the Dominican Republic, discuss her racial identification. She claims that she faces a double racism being a light-skinned Dominican. According to her, when she goes to the Dominican Republic, she is deemed too white to be Dominican, but in the United States she is thought to be too dark to truly be white. In the video, however, she recognizes that most fail to identify themselves as African American. In the second clip, however, we see a couple that both identify as black or African American.  In the second clip, the woman was born and raised in Panama, however she identifies herself as black. Her reasoning for this identification is that her ancestors were originally from Africa and that to identify as a Latina would be forgetting about her roots. When asked by the interviewer as to what they would be marking on the 2010 United States Census when it comes to their racial identity, the women who identified as Dominican said she would check the box that said “Hispanic.” The woman from Panama, who identified as black, said she would check multiple boxes including the one for the category of black. However, according to the woman from the Dominican Republic, only those from Dominican Republic and Haiti can identify as Hispanic because she believes that the term Hispanic refers to the island of Hispaniola, which is made up of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. However, the United States Department of Transportation (random, yes, I know), defines Hispanic to include persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or others Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race. Many other federal and state departments choose to include Spain and Brazil in the list of countries that make up Hispanics. On the 2010 Census, the category of Hispanic was changed so that it read “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.”

 

So what are Dominicans? Are they white? Black? Mulatto, as some like to say? And who is to blame for this denial of our African American roots, Trujillo?

(For those wondering, my family and I checked both the Hispanic and the black boxes on the 2010 Census.)

Asian Americans and the Model Minority Marking

Within any race or cultural grouping of people, there are social and linguistic standards to which members of that race are recruited to embrace. In my personal circle of friends there is a clear divide between Asian Americans whose language use marks them as FOBs or “Fresh off the Boat”,  “model minorities,” or those who are Asian American and linked with African Americans. Having developed friendships with individuals who fit within each of these categories, Shalini Shankar’s article “Speaking like a Model Minority: “FOB” Styles, Gender, and Racial Meanings among Desi Teens in Silicon Valley” provides a great opportunity to reassess the linguistic and social practices of one of my friends. Cho, an Asian American, lived in Korea for twelve years, then came to the US to attend high school. She was completely fluent in English and Korean upon her arrival and for many reasons, would constantly shift in and out of the “model minority” status.

In Shankar’s article Punjabi is used to distinguish between Desi and FOB teens in the Silicon Valley area. Desi teens are affiliated with the upper middle class where English is the primarily language, despite the variations of Punjabi that are utilized at cultural gatherings. There are “upper middle-class Desi teens who follow monolingual norms, while middle-class Desi teens construct heteroglossic “FOB styles” that incorporate Punjabi, Desi Accented English, California slang, and hip-hop lexicon” (268).  Middle class or FOB teens often come from homes where there are relatives who do not speak English fluently, and therefore, these teens speak Punjabi more frequently than English. Below are two videos of what I consider to be the faces of model minorities. The clips are from the trailer of a film about Asian Immigrants in the Silicon Valley.

Asian Americans have “easy integration into upper middle-class white society” because of their alliance to these characterizations in their daily lives, however, they are not completely accepted in white society (268). Those who embrace monologist standards are positioned higher in society and provided greater opportunities to succeed amongst white Americans. There are also “predispositions toward language use” which are shaped by class that establish Asian Americans as model minorities (270). Shankar notes that the language use of FOB teens is marked negatively, signaling that they are from a lower economic class and are not affiliated with the  “model minority” status. Desi teen’s language use is unmarked however, due to their normative usage of English and the minimal use of profanity. What’s interesting is that even though both FOB and Desi teens are marked racially, language use is what establishes who a person is, as well as who they are in the context of school. The article raises the question of “what is means to be a “model minority” linguistically” in the context of FOBs and Desi Teens in the Silicon Valley of California, primarily in a school setting (268). The model minority status is framed around the following characterizations:  “level of education, economic self-sufficiency, low crime rate and positive social contributions” (268).

 From my experience, Cho would not be classified as the typical “model minority” due to her lax academic performance, her normative use of profanity, and risqué social habits. Despite the fact that she didn’t excel academically, it is important to mention that she did excel artistically. In any artistic context, she would easily take on the  “model” student status, behaviorally, socially and linguistically. For her it was always a matter of choice.  Linguistically, Cho would commonly use a combination of AAVE and valley Girl English to separate herself from strictly Asian groups, allowing her to be incorporated in various racial circles. Her usage to these variations however, were not utilized in humor, but rather very seriously to position herself closer to other cultural groups, that is, in regard to stereotypical linguistic usages of various groups. In order to use stereotypes for cultural positioning, one has to understand what these stereotypes are, how the represent others socially and how implementing them into their linguistic register will position them socially. Since the high I attended was English dominant, all academic classrooms were public and students refrained from speaking in any other language. What’s interesting however is that with our art class, bilingual students were able to take more linguistic liberties. While in my graphic design class one day, Cho had to take a phone call from her mom.  As she answered the call, I heard her speak Korean for the first time. In a normal classroom, making and accepting phones calls is strictly prohibited, yet in this artistic bubble within the academic school, rules were reshaped to accommodate student’s need.  Here bilingual students were encouraged to utilize other languages they knew, especially during instances when we as a class would study artists of various cultures. Shanker notes that both Desi and FOB teens “understand classroom time to be public and are careful there to maintain the monolingual school code,” therefore refraining from using Punjabi in class (275).

Shankar also discusses “how gender differently shapes linguistic norms for these speakers” (269).  She gives the example of how FOB styles “affirm clique boundaries, but also test the limits of gendered expectations” (276).   It is stated that “for Desi teenage girls, using profane language is linked to improper comportment and even being sexually active in a cultural context where chastity is valued” due to the fact that "Desi girls are expected to display levels of chastity not demanded of girls of other ethnicities, [and that] using profane language is a potentially dangerous way of tainting one’s reputation” (278).  On the other hand, FOB boys use  "Punjabi to swear in ways that are not recognizable as transgressions by school administrators but communicate solidarity, humorous insult, and rancor among friends" (279). 

Overall, it is gratifying to know that marginalized social and linguistic standards are continually challenged by  young individuals across the U.S. and the world. 

Shemise Evans 

Coming Out: Is Full Disclosure a Choice?

Katrina Dalton

In “Tacit Subjects,” Carlos Ulises Decena discusses the idea of sexual subjectivity and the possible circumstances that may surround a subjects’ reluctance or active refusal to “come out of the closet.  According to Decena, increasingly, American society has carved out a place of legitimacy for white, middle class gay men and lesbian women. These wealthy, gay whites have taken on certain characters in popular media and public imagination.  In Will and Grace, the imagery of impeccable taste in apartments and shoes had every teenage girl with a television on the hunt for a fabulous gay best friend.  And Queer Eye for the Straight Guy showed that even straight men could not only coexist in the world, but benefit from the assistance of these miracle tastemakers.   The Second City Network has even produced a series of videos in which the unfortunate demises of a series of historical and literary characters could have been avoided had they had the advice of a “sassy gay friend.”  Below, the stereotypical tough love expertise of the sassy gay friend character saves Juliet from her suicidal fate:

Sassy gay friend, Juliet 

This relative comfort American society feels in the presence of these characters as normal, functioning members of society is by and large predicated on their full disclosure.  At some point, it is thought that there must be an act of confession, or a “coming clean.”  You are in a sense normal, as long as you define to the world around you exactly “what you are.”

In the first thirty seconds of the clip below, we see just how expected this action of “coming out” has become.  Jack from Will and Grace is being pressured from his friends to come out to his Mother.  Although the intention is obviously humor, it is representative of the “conventional views of coming out in contemporary queer communities” that Decena discusses:

Decena discusses the way that for his subjects, homosexual, Dominican, immigrant males, coming out does not represent the “liberation” this clip promises but rather represents a sort of rupture to the relative peace they have enjoyed as “tacit” or implied subjects. 

Cultural and ethnic differences can certainly change the dynamic of the “coming out” experience.  In the clip below, a 19 year old Indian male living in the United States shares his coming out story on youtube.  He discusses the challenge he faced coming out to his Southeast Asian family and the way they took him to the doctor to try to “cure” his homosexuality:

Our society has ritualized “coming out” as part of a normal homosexual existence to the extent that this young man felt that telling his parents was in a way the necessary last piece of the puzzle.  He also felt that the capital of his intelligence, the fact that he had a 4.0 GPA would somehow soften the blow when he admitted to his parents that he was what they would perceive as “flawed.”  

The idea that a sort of social capital could give his subjects room for legitimacy within the contexts of their own families was a very pronounced in Decena’s text; he calls them “power dynamics that shape how individuals negotiate information about their sexual identites, (341). 

One of the most puzzling aspects of “Tacit Subjects” was that several of the subjects’ associations and activism in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender community would have made them abundantly aware of what “normative coming out models looked like,” (347).  But perhaps for some, like Desena’s subject, Parades, not “coming out” in a conventional way was a more important assertion of sexual ownership than coming out would have been. 

Decena explains that the right not to tell is a luxury that not every one of his subjects was afforded before they immigrated.  Rogelio Noguera, another subject was outed after police raided a bar that was known to be a gay hang out.  His name was published in the newspaper, and the public acknowledgement of his private life resulted in an estrangement from his father that lasted for years.  This state driven “shaming” of his homosexuality broke the absence of dialogue that allowed him a certain sense of belonging in his private family life.     

Another issue the Decena reading deals with is the difference between his subjects’ intentional expressions of their sexuality versus the unintentional ways that their gayness might be signified.  Intentional expressions often occurred within the context of their own families, but often they wanted their public and private lives kept separately.  For some, an effeminate self-presentation was not necessarily a choice, but a natural stance.  Parades claimed he was lucky to have the ability to pass as a heterosexual male. 

Other times however, self presentation is about the way one dresses, acts and consciously carries oneself, and even in a nation where being openly gay is seen as less deviant in a way than being closeted, these overt displays of ones homosexuality are still a point of contention.  Below is a link that New York Magazine publishes entitled, “Ten Things that Look Too Gay.”  While the tone is clearly tongue is cheek, I think it is constitutive of a lived and experienced anxiety.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/gay/features/4534/

The English Only Movement: Language as a new venue for racism

Katrina Dalton

In his text, “The Colonialism of the English Only Movement,” Donaldo Macedo discusses the “ethnic and cultural” war presently being waged in public education.  He believes that the language surrounding the movement, including the very term  “ethnic and cultural war” is very telling about American society’s attitude towards racism.  He refers to it as ideologically coded language that serves to veil the racism that has throughout its history come to characterize the United States, and “perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes that devalue identities of resistance and struggle,” (15).  He believes that the English only movement in the United States has carved out a new outlet for racially charged discourse and policy that operates under the guise of being a linguistic, rather than a strictly appearance or ethnically based issue. 

            Macedo argues that there are two distinct types of racism that are often inextricably linked: language based racism and experienced racism.  He demonstrates the way one can directly influence the other, using the example of the way in which Patrick Buchanan’s call for the end of illegal immigration (a display of linguistic racism), resulted in the outright violence, loss of dignity and denial of humanity felt by immigrants trying to cross the Mexican border.  The racist language resulted in the lived experience.

            Macedo cites Proposition 187 in California as the beginning of a “pattern of linguistic assault” on subordinated groups; one major element of this pattern is the attempt to dismantle bilingual education.  He finds it extremely problematic that when it comes to the expanding culture of xenophobia in the United States, the general population has reacted in one of two ways: remaining silent, or supporting legislation that essentially legally institutionalizes discrimination.  In public opinion, subordinated groups are held responsible for financial issues, drops in test scores and drug problems. 

In the following news clip, from WLWT.com the debate over English only is covered.  One of the issued discussed is whether driver’s tests should be given in English only.  Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino argues that obtaining a drivers license is a crucial ingredient to being a contributing member of society in the United States.  She says that Latino immigrants want to work, they want to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they want to be part of the American dream, but this would be impossible in legislation prevents them from being able to work.  In that respect, we are able to see the cyclical nature to Macedo’s claim that subordinated groups are held responsible for financial issues and low test scores, but if we as a country make it difficult for immigrants to work and do well in school, they will continue to be blamed for these issues.

DEBATE RAGES ON OVER ENGLISH ONLY (embed was disabled)

http://youtu.be/cHVRDay8UEk

Macedo writes that according to Patrick Buchanan they are “a generation of children and youth with no fathers, no faith and no dreams other than the lure of the streets.”  Increasingly, this attitude is visible not just in border states, but across the country.  With thirty states that have already declared English as the official language and an additional nine states with legislation in the works, it is clear that the agenda of the English only movement is not merely being advanced by a conservative minority.   

In the following clip, a man in Carpentersville, Illinois addresses a local court about the need for English-only legislation.  He complains of being called a “gringo” by a couple of local Hispanic children.  In form, true to Buchanan’s quote above from the Macedo piece, this man questions the way these children are being raised.  “What have the Hispanic people in Carpentersville been teaching their children to say to strangers,” (3min50sec).  If the children had been Caucasian rather than Hispanic, and the insult had been a familiar English dig, there is no question that the issue would not have been, “what are white people in Carpentersville teaching their children.”  Somehow, because the word was in Spanish, he feels entitled to call the moral standing of an entire ethnic group into question for their moral inferiority and improper parenting.  This attitude perpetuates Buchanan’s idea of “a generation of children and youth with no fathers, no faith and no dreams other than the lure of the streets.”

CLIP CARPENTERSVILLE MAN DEMANDS ENGLISH ONLY

Macedo argues that this type of thinking is proof that the assault on bilingual education programs is fundamentally political.  (Although poor performance of linguistic minorities is cited as evidence that the program is a failure, this information is removed from the context of an urban public education system that is failing is a whole). He believes that the English only movement is not simply an issue of linguistic education, but evidence of a deep colonial legacy of cultural, racial and linguistic discrimination. 

In the following clip, Patrick Buchanan displays the manner in which that deep colonial legacy can manifest itself in the face of very modern issues.  He argues that Judge Sotomayor should not be appointed to the Supreme Court, essentially on the basis that she is not a white male and white males founded this country and wrote the constitution:

“What Men Want” (And why society insists that we care)

Katrina Dalton

In Gloria Anzaldua’s text, Borderlands: La Frontera, chapter five is entitled, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”  In it, she deals with the notions of what constituted women over-stepping their bounds in her Mexican upbringing.  She discusses her natural inclination to speak and question, and how it was perceived as improper and out of turn.  She describes and array of derogatory terms that meant gossip, liar, and big mouth, that she had only ever heard aimed at women.  One example of this culturally enforced male/female inequality that she gives is the use of nosotros, a masculine pronoun to mean we, whether the speakers were male or female.  It wasn’t until she was older that she heard two women of different origin using the feminine nosotras.  She explains: “Chicanas use nosotros whether we’re male or female.  We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural,”-- her conclusion: “Language is a male discourse,” (76).    

What I find so striking about Anzaldua’s text is that while it is meant to describe the inequalities rooted in her class-specific, ethno-specific, racially specific experience, it is representative of a more general, gender-based inequality, present in language and communication that transcends all of those categories. 

A few weeks ago, in class, we embarked on a mission to identify biological presumptions about men and women the social implications of those presumptions.  The discussion was inspired by one of our classmates’ blog posting on about a book called Code Switching: How to Talk so Men Will Listen, in which two Ph.D.’s illuminate their audience about the biological obstacles and deficits that plague communication between men and women.  In the interview we watched with one of the authors, she cited patterns of early and high volume language acquisition as proof positive that we, (as women), are biologically destined to tell stories when we are asked a simple question.  Additionally, the size and development in different regions of our brains provided “biological proof” that men are more logically and literally driven. 

The problem with this argument is that it presumes a direct relationship between biology and its social effects, without accounting for the thousands of years of social roles projected on to the respective sexes.  Masculinity and femininity are highly cultural concepts—concepts that have historically called for women to accommodate men.  We see this both is the way it is natural for both men and women to use the masculine “we” in Anzaldua’s text, and the premise for the book, Code Switching, is that women need to learn the proper way to approach talking to a man.  

I think that this concept of accommodation is also very pronounced in the reportage of many women’s magazines.  Their websites have become virtual self-help books, instructing women how to look, act, and especially, speak to men.  On the Glamour magazine website, every article receives a series of tags at the end.  These tags are designed to help readers find article that would interest them, for example: marriage, dating, beauty, relationships, fashion and style are all tags that appear quite often.  One other tag, however, seemed to be present on nearly every article written.  It read : “What Men Want.”  The simple phrase embodied the over-arching need to please that penetrated each of the articles it touched.  Whether hairstyles, first date conversation topics or sex tips were the writings’ main focus, “what men want[ed]” seemed to be their driving force.  Scrolling down the list of articles that received this tag, it became clear that popular media outlets continue to perpetuate the ideology of accommodation as a one way street from female to male. 

Some of these informative articles are, “What Men Want: 13 Reasons He’s Psyched that You’re His Girlfriend”  In it, the author cites getting to eat of his girlfriends plate at restaurants and the validation that being lazy and watching a movie is investing time in their relationships as two of the greatest merits of female companionship.  Other favorite titles from the “What Men Want” tag include, “6 Really Unattractive Things That Women Do When They’ve Had  Little Too Much To Drink” and “Hooking Up: Turns out Men Think About Food and Sleep Just as Much As Sex.”

Below, I’ve included one that speaks especially to the communicative inequalities I’ve been discussing in this post.  It is titled “How to get a Guy: Talk about Technology.”  This article recounts a Glamour writers experience in a bar getting guys to like her by talking about her ipad.  She claims they told her usually girls only talk about superficial things, but she sounded smart.  Enjoy!

http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2011/04/how-to-get-a-guy-talk-about-te.html

Whose Miami?

Katrina Dalton

In her essay, “Whose Spanish? The tension between linguistic correctness and cultural identity,” Bonnie Urciuoli describes the ways in which elite liberal arts schools’ desire to achieve ethnic diversity can create difficult environments for bilingual Latino students.  She explains that “the linguistic identity that figures into the ethnic identity that supplies the institution with symbolic capital in the form of diversity ranking becomes a problem of symbolic capital in the form of diversity ranking becomes a problem of symbolic capital for students in terms of personal presentation of being taken seriously,” (Urciuoli, 2).  She explains that in the context of the “overwhelming whiteness” of the elite liberal arts college environment and its vision of Spanish that is driven by literary correctness, students who grew up in say, urban Dominican and Puerto Rican households increasingly tend to identify as Latino, (Urciuoli, 6).  In a way this emergence of a generic Latino identity that does not map one to one on to a nation, a region, or a people relieves some of the anxiety about the hierarchical nature of a linguistic identity being equated with an ethnic identity. 

            While this emergence of what Urciuoli describes as a Latinidad in college life may serve as an advantageous social equalizer in some specific urban, Latino experiences, I would argue that the same principles could be applied to other socio-economic ethnic groups who desire opposite outcomes.  My evidence is by no means the result of a carefully conducted study such as Urciuolis’ so I request the reader’s generosity in recognizing that I am not trying to draw conclusions about entire ethnic groups or perpetuate stereotypes, but rather, I seek to use Urciuoli’s text to make sense of my own very specific observations about language, ethnicity and race in the context of elite, liberal arts education.  I suspect that these observations may represent a larger pattern.

 Over the past five years that I’ve lived in New York, I have become close with a group of several dozen students and recent post-graduates from Miami, Fl.  They have been friends since early childhood, are by and large of Cuban descent, (almost all first generation born in the United States), and all attended the same network of Jesuit prep schools, (a Cuban school that was exported to Miami).  Their English is “unaffected”--what Urciuoli would describe as “monoglot standard English”, (plagued only perhaps by the overuse of “um” and “like” which the majority of our generation suffer from). Spanish was very much a part of their home life as well as their private school education, making it the “unproblematic” type of bilingualism as far as Urciuoli is concerned, because it is “uncomplicated by culture,” (Urciuoli, 4). They attend/ed a range of elite universities including but not limited to Brown, Yale, Notre Dame, Duke, Vanderbilt, NYU, Emerson, Middlebury.

This particular group of young people occupies a unique cultural, racial, linguistic and social space in popular imagination.  They paradoxically hail from a community of exile that historically came to be when their families fled Cuba, not because they did not have the means to survive, but because their extreme wealth was threatened.  It is in that vein of thinking that the particular Cuban immigration experience tends to carry a different connotation than that of other Caribbean, Latino immigration experiences.; there is not an imagery of social deviation or economic drain.  These students’ linguistic “unmarked-ness” allows them to navigate the world easily, academically and professionally with their bilingualism viewed as proper and advantageous. 

I believe it is partially because of this historical uniqueness, that this particular group of people generally identify as “white” or “Cuban” and specifically not as Latino.  For the same reasons that the subjects of Urciuoli’s study tended to identify in a communal way so as not to be ethnically isolated, these wealthy Miami Cubans seek to separate themselves from that community.  In their case, it becomes beneficial to assert in very specific ways, both who they are and who they are not.  Several of these students and young professionals are contributors to one of two online blogs that they created since moving to New York.  They serve as a public space for them to display and comment on their specific Miami-Cuban experience.

The first, a blog called Miami Nice focuses on luxury.  Hotels, music, couture, art, fashion, parties and cultural events that celebrate this glamorous perception of Miami life are it’s main focus.  In the “about” section, a dedication is extended to those with hundred thousand dollar convertibles blasting Will Smith’s “Welcome to Miami.”  The reference to the song, in and of itself conjures images of Miami as a place of wealth, beaches, glamour and exoticism.  The second blog, (which will remain nameless due to some potentially offensive content), focuses rather on what it’s writers feel is wrong with their hometown.  We’ve spoken in lecture about how sources of anxiety can be rooted in things that represent similarity rather than difference and I think that is true for this blog.  They post videos of drug busts and violent arrest on South beach with captions that comment on the ignorant mob mentality of the “random Spanish” being thrown around and claims of “abuso” towards the arresting police officers.  The premise of the blog is basically to illustrate things that are not part of “their Miami.”  I think this mentality relates to their reason for identifying generally as Cuban rather than Latino, as Urciuoli’s subjects do.  There is an anxiety about the discrete differences that afford them such a high degree of social mobility that others are not so lucky to share that drives them to publically display these differences.

Below, I will post a link to Miami Nice, and the Will Smith video to show the luxurious and glamorous image these “Miamians” so value, and one of the videos posted on the second blog that displays the Miami they wish to separate from their own.  The second video contains some violence and expletives, so please don’t click on it if you will find that offensive.  I am including it only because I think it shows clearly, the contrast, which they are trying to navigate. 

Miami Nice http://www.miaminicepopup.com/p/what-is-miami-nice-pop-up.html 

Welcome to Miami

 

Will Smith

South Beach Police Confrontation from second blog:

¡Tequila! ¡Burritos! ¡Sombreros!: Covert Racism of Cinco de Mayo Celebration

(((By Ilene Palacios)))

Before this year I had never celebrated Cinco de Mayo. I am one of those obnoxious Chicanas that wants to preach to everyone the historical and cultural significance of the holiday and how it has been appropriated and in many instances desecrated in the U.S. like St. Patrick’s Day, but at least people kind of know what St. Patrick’s Day is about, blah, blah, blah.

There are a lot of reasons why I usually find myself annoyed beyond belief around this holiday, some of which are addressed in this excerpt from an article in the Seattle Times from last Wednesday, May 4^th:

“Unlike Mexico's Independence event [on September 16], May 5 is not a big deal south of the border [i.e. in Mexico], save for the state of Puebla [where the Battle of Puebla this holiday commemorates took place], where festivals and parades are common.

The first Cinco de Mayo celebration was in California in 1863. But the holiday didn't really take off in the United States until the 1960s.

Cinco de Mayo saw a boost in popularity in the 1980s, partly fueled by Mexican beer [such as Corona, which was exported to the U.S. beginning in 1979 – e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6OAOPG0D4Q] and tequila firms pumping up the event as another St. Patrick's Day, historians say…” (notes added).

(Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014963786_cincodemayo05.html)

The reason that I decided to celebrate this year is that I can deal with that it was appropriated by Mexicans and those of Mexican descent as a sort of fulcrum of heritage and national pride. I understand what the stipulations of the Battle of Puebla were and what the symbolic and practical significance of that battle was, not only for Mexico, but also for the U.S., who Napoleon III’s regime was attempting to dismantle via establishing Mexico as a satellite/puppet government at that time, blah, blah, blah, etc. The above article sought to demystify misconceptions about the holiday as well as its history in the US and lack of celebration in Mexico as compared to in the U.S. – perhaps aiming to enlighten the American people without moralizing.

However, what seemed kind of counterproductive and out of place in the article was the end, a part about drunk driving, which included Spanglish and a form of Mock Spanish.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA] has taken note, coining the slogan "Amigos don't let amigos drive drunk." They also warned in an advertisement: "Drive impaired on Cinco de Mayo and spend seis de Mayo in jail."

While obviously drunk driving is an important issue to address, the manner that the NHTSA chose to address the issue was by ‘playfully’ using Mock Spanish, using Spanish vocabulary words that many non-Spanish speakers would recognize (e.g. “amigo”, “seis”). Whereas it appeared that the article was attempting to enlighten the general American public about the significance or importance of Cinco de Mayo to Mexicans and people of Mexican descent living in the U.S., in this last excerpt Cinco de Mayo (and St. Patrick’s Day) is established as a ‘drinking holiday’ that is at once fun, but potentially dangerous. The author finds nothing wrong or to demystify and enlighten the public about while referencing institutionalized use of Mock Spanish, at least not beyond reminding people to not drink and drink. Instead the author seemingly makes this reference to end the article on a ‘lighter note’.

In the article “Covert Racist Discourse: Metaphors, Mocking, and the Racialization of Historically Spanish-Speaking Populations in the United States” Jane Hill defines Mock Spanish as a form of covert racism, one that is used by Whites in a largely ‘invisible’ or unnoticed yet subsequently common manner (119).

Around Cinco de Mayo I saw and experienced many cases of Mock Spanish. For instance, I got invited to a Cinco de Mayo party on Facebook that used this image as its logo:

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/211058_143624225709330_4766700_n.jpg)

In this case Mock Spanish is accompanied by an image that utilizes stereotypes about Mexicans for humorous effect. Sombrero? Check. Boozing? Check. Fun/partying? Check. Big butt/”culata” (does people actually use that term?)? Check. Perhaps needless to say, I did not attend this party. I saw enough people in straw sombreros with drawn on Pancho Villa-style moustaches shaking maracas in my face and saying “Ay yay yay!” just walking down the street and at cafes I went to on the 5th.

Mock Spanish and using actual stereotypical imagery were not the only ways of appropriating. Another way language related to imagery and physical practicing of stereotypes that I saw on was in Facebook statuses in which people discussed the kinds of things and behaviors people were going to indulge in on Cinco de Mayo, for example, "Tequila means never having to say you're sorry for tequila, Chipotle and sombreros".

Perhaps needless to say, I posted an obnoxious comment on this status and on others. No one responded to my comments. I didn’t say sorry.

Both of these examples show the playful nature in which Spanish language and stereotypical images of Mexicans and Mexican culture are used and allegedly practiced on Cinco de Mayo – ironically around a day that is supposedly to celebrate Mexican culture in the U.S. They exemplify the way that practices like Mock Spanish, disseminating stereotypical images about a group of people and partaking in celebrations based on such stereotype on holiday are examples from a set of tactics that Americans use to “appropriate symbolic resources” from not only from the Spanish but also Mexican culture and history, (“Linguistic Appropriation”, Hill,128).

In the most recent Hill reading, the history and implications of use of Mock Spanish in the U.S. are delved into. He writes that its use (as well as other forms of ungrammatical Spanish use) is symbolic and reinforcing of stereotypes about and devaluing of Spanish speaking populations. In the context of Cinco de Mayo use of Mock Spanish and dissemination of stereotypical images/icons of Mexicans (i.e. sombreros, tequila, Corona/Mexican beers, moustaches, etc.) all index a sense of humor and playfulness – because Cinco de Mayo is perceived to be a holiday about fun and partying. It is not taken to be a “serious” holiday about a “serious” event or a “serious” culture. The language, imagery and practices surrounding the holiday exemplify the mentality behind it. Hill notes that the ‘mocking’ part of Mock Spanish and its implications about Spanish-speaking people is what makes it racist.

This is not to say at all, however, that it is only White Americans that partake in this and that some Mexicans do not also partake in these processes as well – but perhaps it is in those cases where the line between being non-White and being American is blurred. Whereas Hill seemed to imply that it was only (or mostly) White Americans and institutions largely run by them who partook in processes of Mock Spanish and stereotyping, in the case of Cinco de Mayo it seemed that any American, even Mexican-Americans, could possibly partake in the tequila, sombrero-wearing drunken revelry.

Ok, I’ve got to go. This evening I’m watching the Kentucky Derby and sipping on a mint julep while wearing a big floppy hat and talk in a bad Southern accent about America and horses, but not about how most jockeys participating in the race are Latino. I think I might go for “Mucho Macho Man”.