Thread by @Russian_Starr

One thing that many of us are missing about Stephen A. Smith's comments about Shohei Ohtani is that Americans are generally very monolingual and insular people. We don't prioritize 2nd language learning in schools and any effort to push Spanish is met with GOP-lead xenophobia.

Here in Ukraine, most folk can speak Russian and Ukrainian. In Europe, it is common for people to speak English and several others. For America, speaking in a second tongue is seen as a threat.

Black people aren't excluded from such xenophobia because they are Black.

How often do you hear people, regardless of race, in a nail salon or store scream SPEAK ENGLISH to folk talking in another language. Our lack of 2nd language skills makes every non-English communication a threat.

It also makes us extremely stupid.

If you listen carefully to Stephen A. Smith talk about Shohei Ohtani, he directly pointed to how his not speaking in English threatens the ambassadorial nature of the sport--even though Baseball is very much global.

English, if you think about it, is very a very colonial language. Most of the people who speak it outside of England have a history linked to settler colonialism and slavery.
It really pisses me off to see Black people engage in the ignorance of language policing.

American Indians had their own languages until European settlers killed them. Black folk know English because of slavery and millions of Africans know it because of colonialism.

I don't think Stephen A. and many Blacks who are brushing it off realized how racist his words were.

He apologized, which is good. But I also think we need--especially Black people--to be careful about carelessly embracing white supremacist mentalities about language.