Opinion: Stereotypes, identity and language

Anna Lee Mraz Bartra / Peninsula 360 Press

When I was 5 years old I told my parents I was half Mexican, half American, and half Catalan. They laughed at my terrible math skills (to date) but accepted the core idea of my affirmation which is that I considered myself to be a part of all three cultures. 

My father is American, he grew up in California in the ’50s, met my mother in the ´80s in the US, and moved with her to Mexico City where I was born 5 years later. 

My mother was born in Mexico to Catalan parents who fled the civil war in Spain. 

I grew up listening to The Eagles, Joan Manuel Serrat and some Cuban salsa. My mother sang children's songs to me in Catalan and I listened to her talk to her mother, her brother and her cousins in this language. 

I don’t have a drop of Mexican blood in my body. I have blue-greenish eyes and yellow hair that I inherited from my Catalan grandfather. I don’t look “like a Mexican”, yet I open my mouth and can recite the entire swear-word alphabet in slang, sing-along to Café Tacuba and my accent is no different from any other accent of the south area of Mexico City.

I haven’t always understood that this came with privileges, white privilege. Although I don’t come from a rich family and my parents have earned with hard work every penny they own, they probably have had it easier than people who look indigenous, brown or black.

Every time I get into a taxi in Mexico City, the driver usually asks me where I'm from, I answer him with the truth "from around the corner", - "you speak with an accent"-, he reacts, I laugh and wonder what accent he is referring to, the conversation ends there. I understand that people see a white woman and that doesn't always match their description of what a Mexican is, so for them, there must be some other explanation. Yes, they charge me more in the market because white, in Mexico, means rich. 

But I understand that being treated differently also comes with getting a better job and having access to certain places that come with many benefits (a.k.a. privileges). Although I don't have many economic advantages, I know that I have more formal educational advantages than immigrants and people of color. I can only try to use those advantages to try to get out of their way and learn from disadvantaged people, to level the playing field. 

Language is not what makes me Mexican. It's my memories as a child in my parents' kitchen eating jicama, cucumber, and carrots-sometimes even tomatoes, which I learned from my oldest and one of my closest friend-with lemon, chili, and salt. 

I am an American not only because my father made an effort to speak to me in English, but because we cooked a turkey together for Christmas Day and often visited friends and family in the United States. When I went to live at the U.S. house in the Cité Universitaire in Paris, I asked my friends if they thought I had an accent when I spoke in English. They said it was more of a "twang" than an accent. Later that day I met everyone in the kitchen for dinner, opened the door excited with the news, and announced aloud: "Timothy and Julia say I have a big "WANG"! Everyone started laughing, of course. Then they had to explain to me what the word "wang" meant and the difference with "twang". This became a joke for years to come. 

I have always felt Catalan, as I travelled to a small village on the outskirts of Barcelona twice a year to be with my grandmother until her death and I kept up certain traditions such as caga-tiò, even to this day. But I understand that some Catalans don't find me... original, in a sense. The Catalans look somewhat down on the children and grandchildren of the Civil War refugees who spread around the world when they fled Spain. To begin with, our language is off. We learned a language that was in vogue last century and most of us look different because our other half probably got mixed up with some other DNA from another part of the world. I know this is the case for my whole family. After spending some time in Catalonia I would go home and teach my cousins the "correct" pronunciation of the letter "ll", the other day my cousin, who lives in Australia, reminded me of this when I asked him what they were talking about at home. "While my partner speaks Spanish to our daughter, I speak Catalan because it's part of who we are.

So, I understand cultural identity struggles. In a sense, I can understand the cultural identity struggles of some of the people in the latinx community in the US. Who struggle to navigate between the two cultures, never fitting completely into one or the other. I understand that language can be a sensitive topic for non-Spanish-speaking Latinas.

I agree with the author of "I'm Hispanic... but I don't speak Spanish" Nicole Stanley: 

"Although language is an important part of one's culture, it's not the only important thing. Culture is about your family and their traditions: food, stories, music and faith. Even if you don't know the language, you can participate in the culture and embrace it. You are part of your family and their history, no matter how good your Spanish is. 

I completely agree with this statement because not speaking Spanish doesn't make you less Latino and part of our culture; any more than my lack of melanin does. 

But I will also argue that language shapes the mind in ways that show you a different perspective on life and ways of looking at it. This is why some words are not translatable. Like saudade in Portuguese, for example. O wabi-sabi in Japanese, even sakura in this same language. Words that, if I start to describe, I would need several paragraphs for the meaning to be understood. I will say that "bittersweet" is a middling translation of saudade. That wabi-sabi is a way of life, and sakura is not just a flower, but a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life. 

Besides, learning a language is a lot of work. Like most things that are worthwhile in life, and involve a fruitful and rewarding experience in the end, like dancing or cooking, it requires patience, discipline, interest, and curiosity. 

When I was 18, my parents and I lived in Rio, Brazil. When my parents saw me dance they looked at me with embarrassment, then pointed fingers at each other, but still couldn't understand how the hell they had produced a child with such a poor sense of rhythm when both of them considered themselves good dancers. 

I myself questioned my lack of rhythm, being a Latina and all, I set myself the immediate task of retrieving some Latin steps. It was work. I started with samba, and of course, I loved it so much that I took on Forro and Capoeira later. When I returned to Mexico I took belly dancing lessons and added salsa, then merengue, bachata. I got so into dancing that I became a teacher, and then we won a college contest. Now it's as much a part of who I am as language and food. It was hard work, but in the end, it was worth it. 

My husband grew up in Mexico but moved to the U.S. in his twenties, speaking no English at all. He took ESL courses and when he was able to communicate, he decided to go to an accent course at the University of SF. Yes, this is something. 

He learned to pronounce the words better and eventually began to lose his Latin accent, that's when he stopped going. He understood that being Latino was an important part of his identity and decided he didn't want to lose that. 

I recently saw a video on YouTube that questioned Sofia Vergara's accent... Is it fake? Well, the video argued that Sofia went to an accent school when she moved to the U.S., but then got her role in Modern Family that required it, so she dropped the lessons and went on to exaggerate, in a way, her accent for the role. We'd have to ask him, but I'm willing to bet that it's now become part of her personality and well, it sells. 

This doesn't bother me in Sofia Vergara's case because she is, in fact, a Latina. She can talk however she wants and in whatever language she wants, as far as I'm concerned. However, I am concerned about the fact that some people ride, or try to ride, the minority train in order to get something out of them. One example is the now well-known case of Jessica Krug, the George Washington University professor who claimed to be an Afro-Caribbean from the Bronx and was, in fact, a white Jewish woman from the suburbs of Kansas City. 

A colleague of his told the Washington Post that he had defended Krug in the past against suspicious colleagues. In hindsight, he recalls clues to the deception including his "obviously inexperienced salsa dancing" and his "awful New York accent.

My great-grandmother, who was a white woman from somewhere in Oklahoma, told my father's Indian friend, Robert Chakanaka, that she was 1/8 Cherokee. Robert, who was Cherokee, laughed and said "yes, everyone is or wants to be part of Indian culture now". 

It can be an endearing story when the old lady wants to be nice and committed to her grandson's friend. But when cultural appropriation is used for personal gain, political interests, or even to accuse people of similar ethnic backgrounds of being racist for political reasons or martyr tendencies, it becomes a problem. 

I'm proud to be half Catalan, half American and half Mexican. All my cultures have traditions to be happy about and all of them are part of what constitutes me. I would not be who I am today without them. I understand the pros and cons of all my cultures, the privileges and struggles of each one of them, and I take it all. 

People might tell you that you're not really American or not really Hispanic, but don't put yourself in that box. People are curious and questions are not used as a means to attack you, they could just be inquiry. Accept to be what you are, and work to be the best version of what you want to be. 

As I said, work. Don't you like something about yourself? Whether you weren't spoken to in a certain language growing up, or have lost the rhythm in your Latin steps, work to change it. It's not about who's fault it is; it's about who's responsible. 

It's not just language that makes someone part of a culture. It's the different perspectives on food, music and traditions they bring into their new home what´s important. 

As we move towards a more hybrid world we need to be open to erase old stereotypes on language, color, and ethnicity in general. We need to accept that diversity is what really constitutes us, and makes us stronger as a society.

Anna Lee Mraz Bartra is a doctor of sociology and a university professor. She lives in Redwood City.