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Any ordinary African, Asian, Latinx toddler is multilingual but y’all don’t call our kids geniuses. Label them “limited” language speakers, slowtrack them in school, shame their heritage out their mouths. Now praising basic ass Mayor Pete for conjugating verbs in Norwegian. FOH.
You can be impressed by Mayor Pete for other reasons, but his multilingualism is basic. A regular thing for billions around the world and millions in the US whose accents you mock. Folks out here doing the shaku shaku, but a rich white man walking with two feet is a whole genius.
African Americans who masterfully slide and flex in 5 different home, school, clique, work varieties of English get told they sound ghetto. White teachers who can’t understand them fail them, others steal their language innovations making bags selling “on fleek” merch at Target.
When we get excited seeing Mayor Pete speak different languages, do we have that same energy for little Vijay, Mei Ling, Ayo, and Maria Dolores quarantined in side trailers at the back of school being told by their monolingual ESL teacher they’re wrong to do what Mayor Pete does?
The US has shamed, oppressed, "educated" multilingualism out of millions (Native Americans, enslaved Africans, colonized populations, immigrants, etc.). Today, robust school English-only programs still exist to devalue and strip multilinguals of their language practices.
The thrill at Mayor Pete doing what schools train multilingual children out of doing is not about admiring multilingualism itself, it's about admiring certain multilinguals. Cuz we love to see a white man walk on water while wondering why POC dancing next to him can't swim. /end
