,
5 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
.@tombrokaw, for a celebrated @NBCNews journalist who spent years chronicling American society you seem stunningly ignorant of the Hispanic community in this country. Unfortunate to see xenophobia pass for elevated political commentary @MeetThePress
@tombrokaw @NBCNews @MeetThePress To give some context as to why this matters, in Texas into the 1950s (and perhaps after) Spanish was literally beaten out of children. At many schools if you spoke Spanish you were hit by a teacher — spanked with a ruler or paddle.
Parents became reluctant to pass down the Spanish language and kids came to associate it with notions of shame and inferiority. That’s one reason
why I find it so ironic that often times Hispanics today are shamed if they don’t speak Spanish.
why I find it so ironic that often times Hispanics today are shamed if they don’t speak Spanish.
Yet another irony is the fact that many who prefer getting rid of “hyphenated Americanism” refer even to second, third gen Hispanic Americans as “Mexicans” - rather than Americans. It’s as if no matter how long you’ve been in this country you’re not ever really an American.
Final: All of this (and more) leads to a kind of self-hatred. In the neighborhoods where I grew up kids used to deride each other as “wetbacks” or “mojados,” an ethnic slurs against Mexicans.
