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 wo
men running for governor of Texas planned to debate entirely in
Spanish on March
1st.
At the last
minute, one of the candidates involved, Dan Morales, decided to
translate
his answers into English because "the vast majority of the
citizens of our state speak English," including "a significant
number of Hispanic Texans."
Morales's opponent,
Tony Sanchez, accused him of being "very ashamed and very embarrassed
to be Hispanic." He added that it was a "slap in the face
to seven million Latinos that live in Texas when you tell them that
you do not want to communicate with them in the language that they
prefer."
After the debate,
the Spanish-language press asked Sanchez to detail how "Mr.
Morales had insulted Hispanics" by asserting that English was
the primary language of Texas.
That same mentality
was displayed during an Olympic press conference last month, when
the goalie for the Russian ice hockey team, Nikolai Khabibulin,
began to answer a question in English. The New York Times
reported that a Russian press aide snapped: "You are from Russia.
Why don't you try answering in Russian?"
Contrary to
the belief of people like Mr. Sanchez, the Spanish language is not
somehow hardwired into every Hispanic's DNA. Even militant Chicano
activists of the 1960s varied widely in their Spanish fluency, as
Jose Angel Gutierrez's memoir, The Making of a Chicano Militant,
demonstrates:
Corky [Gonzales]
asked me for our support to elect him as the national chairman
of La Raza Unida Party. [Reies Lopez] Tijerina immediately expressed
displeasure at this notion. He asked Corky, en espanol,
if this was a plan to run for President of the United States,
as some people had suggested. The question in Spanish was a double
insult to Corky because he barely understood it . . . [Corky]
barely spoke Spanish.
This game
of "I'm more Hispanic than you are" benefits no one.
Sanchez, the ferocious fighter for a bilingual Texas, was forced
to publicly deny that he had shaved off his mustache in order
to look less ethnic.
While the Democrats
held their Spanish-only debate, there were undoubtedly folks in
Republican circles kicking themselves for not having thought of
the idea first, if the GOP's January meeting
in Austin, Texas, is any indication. At that meeting, the new GOP
chairman, Marc Racicot, announced a new program to provide "Spanish
lessons for party leaders in key states."
This unfortunately
bipartisan view that Spanish is the only proper way to communicate
with Hispanic Americans relegates them to a linguistic cul-de-sac
well off the superhighway of American political debate.
This Spanish-only
debate also set a poor precedent. Inevitably, there will one day
be "advocates for the Vietnamese community" in Houston,
themselves fluent English speakers, demanding a candidates' debate
conducted entirely in Vietnamese.
And given the
problems we already have holding politicians accountable for campaign
promises made in English, opening the door to yet another excuse
— "the translator made a mistake" — seems hardly
likely to improve matters.
There are far
more constructive ways for politicians to court Hispanic voters
than to bombard them with condescending Spanish-language materials.
Treating Hispanics like other Americans,
instead of as Spanish-speaking foreigners within our borders, would
be both better politics and better for our national unity.
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