Browsing through various social media, it is not uncommon to find several videos of how Americans (mostly white) attack people when they hear them speaking Spanish, arguing that they are in the United States and therefore must communicate in English. This action has a name: Hispanophobia.
According to the Royal Spanish Academy, Hispanophobia is the irrational fear or aversion to things Hispanic or Spanish, including the language, which has become the second most spoken in the United States.
The Hispanic Council It states that 57 million people speak Spanish in the United States, and the number of Spanish speakers in the country is growing by around one million annually.
In 2018, the number of Spanish speakers was 53 million; by 2020, it rose to 55 million, while in 2022, that figure exceeded 57 million, reflecting that the Hispanic community is the group that grows the most at the population level each year.
An analysis by Ana Celia Zentella of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Iztapalapa, Mexico, suggests that the initial formation of national identities is based on language and it is much easier to focus on language or identity than to explain complicated issues of political or civil rights.
“Where old social relations have become unstable, amid rising general insecurity, belonging to a common language and culture can become the only certainty in society, the only value beyond ambiguity and doubt,” he says.
From that perspective, he says, Americans who do not speak standard English are deficient, and those who speak other languages are even less equal; those who do not speak English are not worthy of equal protection under the law.
For various analysts, nationalist exaltation was widely promoted during the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump, who among his promises was to deport immigrants, build a wall on the southern border of the United States, return the jobs that industries had taken to Mexico, renegotiate the Trilateral Free Trade Agreement and expel Muslims.
The Republican appealed to a sense of nostalgia for a mythical era when the country had been “great.” At that time, he called on the electorate to recover that greatness, which, he said, had been lost because immigrants, African-Americans and other minorities, including Latinos, had taken over the country.
Trump won, and made the phrase Make America Great Again (MAGA) a banner for many who already had racist behaviors. Empowered, they demanded that immigrants speak “American,” often without keeping in mind that America is a continent, not a country and much less a language.
Just a few months ago, a video on Tik Tok went viral. In it, a 55-year-old woman attacked employees of a pizzeria, arguing that there were Spanish-language programs on the establishment's television.
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“…you are in America, you are supposed to learn English,” said the woman who demanded her payment back, because “she would not give her money to an illegal immigrant.”
Speeches like this are repeated across the country on a daily basis, but many of them are not recorded, much less reported.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 53 percent say the biggest problem is that people don't see racial discrimination where it actually exists.
The same research institute points out that the proportion of Latinos in the United States who speak English fluently is growing.
In 2022, he points out, 72 percent of Latinos aged 5 and older spoke English fluently, compared to 59 percent in 2000.
The share of U.S.-born Latinos who speak English fluently increased by 9 percentage points over that time, compared with a 5-point increase among Latino immigrants. In total, 42.3 million Latinos in the United States were fluent in English in 2022.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, ayou administeredred by the CaliFornia State Library.
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