Discrimination In The Spanish Language

I am no immigrant. I have been living in this country ever since I was born. My brother, sister, and I are all first generation citizens. Both of my parents were born in Mexico, and at an early age came to the United States. They are now living happily in the U.S as citizens. Growing up I only spoke one language, Spanish. Being Mexican this was the only way I could communicate up until kindergarten. Although it was such a long time ago, I remember how hard it was for me to adjust. I know I had a strong accent, and I was sometimes ashamed of it. On occasion I remember accidentally speaking Spanish to my classmates. “Did you finish your homework?" “Si, todo esta-”. “I mean, yeah, all done.” I often got these confused looks on their face whenever this happened. The next year in first grade I became accustomed to English. I no longer spoke spanish to my parents. When the realization that I could no longer speak Spanish hit my parents, they were shocked. Personally I was also disappointed. Especially today, in a school with a general population of Hispanics I would love to be able to converse with them. I often get people asking if I speak Spanish and I tell them why I can’t, but can understand what the words mean. All because I did not want to look different in a school where people were primarily white back then. I don’t recall many people of my race at this school at all.

Growing up in a Latino household is hard. My parents only spoke Spanish therefore my first language was Spanish. For the first few years of my life this was not really a problem, I enjoyed life as any normal little girl would. I got to talk to all of my cousins and all of the neighbor’s children. It wasn’t until I got to school that it became real that I was going to learn English. Don’t get me wrong I always knew I had to learn English my parents always talked to me about school and helped me as much as they could. It was also around this same time where I started to understand that it was not only hard for me it was hard for them as well. My parents had to live in this country not knowing the main language spoken.

My parents came from Mexico to the United States for a better life, like many other families. My parents were not privileged enough to make it past a middle school education. They worked very hard so that my siblings and I could succeed in America. Therefore, I felt bad whenever I asked for help on homework because what if they couldn’t help me? I never wanted to make them feel bad for not knowing English. Instead I struggled through it on my own because I was going to be the one they could depend on, later in life due to my education. Instead of letting my parents go through the struggle, I did everything on my own. I struggled so that they could later depend on me.

My entire family was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. After three and a half years of living there my family decided to seek a better future in The United States. My father would go to the United States back and forth to work and earn money to send to us in Mexico. Eventually my mother was able to get a visa and my brother along with my little sister had an alternate way into the United States. We lived in Dallas Texas and Atlanta Georgia before settling in Howard county Maryland in a very small apartment. Luckily we were doing pretty well with my dad being the only one knowing English at the time. My father was working two jobs and I was getting ready to start kindergarten. I was very excited because the education we would have received in Mexico was nothing compared to the education in Howard County. I was excited for what was to come, but there were disadvantages of knowing only Spanish. Being bullied because of my poor English had an impact on me. I was in completely separate classes learning things that were simple compared to the regular course. I was excluded from certain activities, field trips and assemblies. I was clueless at first though as I slowly learned the language I understood things a lot more.

Spanish is my native language, however, my mother advised my siblings and I to speak only English. This was because she was afraid that we would be rejected from professional careers if our English wasn 't unaccented, fluent, and similar in refinement to the working class whites. With time, I became a fluent English speaker with a developed Central American accent but like, any other young girl, I thought nothing of it. That is until one event, in particular, occurred that would cast a shadow of embarrassment onto my Spanish language. This event not only led me to desert my entire native language but a sense of my cultural identity, as well.

I am a U.S. born citizen. My parents moved to the United States in 1984 without knowing anything about this country. Looking for a fresh start and new opportunities, my parents settled in Houston. With hardly knowing any English, my parents knew this was the place to make dreams become a reality. Luckily, I had older siblings to look up to whenever I needed help. Like Lahiri, I was trapped in between two different cultures while I was growing up. At home, I only spoke Spanish, but in school it was English. My habits and customs were different than others. Life as an immigrant’s offspring can be very difficult. As I grew older, I allowed myself to open my eyes and see the beauty of being an American from Hispanic descent.

Born in the state of California to two Mexican parents my primary language was Spanish. My parent believed that learning English would be second nature because of the environment around me. It was extremely important to them as their first born to know the language that was inherent to me by the blood that runs in my veins. Therefore, when the time came to get enrolled into school my mother opted out for English only thought classes. It wasn’t until Mrs. Ledezma my third grade teacher suggested to my mother that it would be a benefit to transition into in all English class. She specifically said “A Spanish class such as mine is for children that are just arriving from other countries and do not know the English language, your daughter was privilege to be born here. Don’t take away an opportunity to

Does it matter what we are called: Latino or Hispanic? Does it change who we are as people? To an extent, most people do not know the difference between either. Typically, people group both terms as one singular item. However, Hispanic and Latino racial classifications are more than a broad category for people from Spanish-speaking countries. The words connote and represent a history of colonial terminology that based its success on the failures of innocent, historically peaceful, cultural groups. Hispanic and Latino terminology are political and economic in every sense. This paper will show that colonial leanings to control and govern people’s lives have yet to culminate, even though the era of imperialism ended a century ago. The United States, although far from its heyday as the singular house of power, still manages to achieve control and influence over the imperialized minds of groups of people, specifically Hispanics and Latinos.

Racial discrimination commonly refers to unfair or unequal behavior upon on individuals due to their race or ethnicity. Racism has been practiced for decades. Exerting superiority or supremacy over a race of individuals is the attempt of racial dominance. Despite the increasing population in the United States, Hispanic Americans find racial discrimination a reality in their lives. Migration rates have been on a dramatic climb over the past several decades resulting in a significant growth in diversity being experienced. The migration of the various cultural groups, including the Hispanic cultures,

Deaf Latinxs communities in the U.S endure negative judgments, low lack of empathy and understanding in many cases. In addition, deaf Latinxs experience institutional discrimination among peers, friends, coworkers and even loved ones. The Latinx-deaf community are more likely to experience stigma and discrimination due to cultural barriers, customs and overall differences. Additonally, the Latinx community in the U.S, especially those who are undocumented are part of oppressed and marginalized groups, thus stigmatization and instances of discrimination are higher. According to Social Work with Latinos: A Cultural Assets Paradigm, a book by Melvin Delgado, Latinxs tend to associate their stressors with three aspects which include overall discrimination, their legal status in the U.S, and of course language barriers that prevent them from communicating with the outside world.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. By the 1970s, the south became the nations most integrated region. In 1976, 45.1% of the souths African American students were going to majority all white schools, compared to 27.5% in the Northeast and 29.7% in the Midwest. School integration have increased since the 1980s. Several court cases helped enforce the Civil Right Act.

Initially, I was an Ecuadorian girl that had a Christian family, I grew up surrounded by my family and loved ones. My cognitive development was in progress, and I had created fundamental bonds in Ecuador. Provided that my dad is an American citizen and due to his work in America, he could not spend too much time with us in Ecuador, so, my mom, my little brother, and I immigrated to America. After three years of my life, our family reunited, and I became an Ecuadorian-American. Since I was very young, assimilating the changes came to be unnoticed, if it weren’t for the fact that during the next years I spoke Spanish at home and English at school. As a result, my translations of these languages affected my communication, creating slow comprehensive

When I arrived to the United States I faced a challenging situation in my life, I didn’t know English. This challenging as I didn’t know how to communicate with any of my teachers or classmates, and I wasn’t able to do any of my work. Not being able to participate in class upsetted me because in Mexico I was use to doing all my classwork and homework. Therefore, I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to learn English quickly. So, when the my ESL teacher announced to my parents that they were going to have to take to school during the summer, I didn’t mind at all. When I was in summer school I learned a lot of English due to my determination and my hard work. Looking back I wouldn’t do things differently because I know that

My father is Mexican, and my mother is White. I was born in California, however, when was 4 yrs. old we moved to Mexico. We did not returned to the United States till I turned 15 yrs. old. Although my first language was English, once I moved to Mexico, I became fluent in Spanish. Life coming back to America was hard, I did understand English perfectly since my mother always spoke to us in English, however, and I could no longer speak it. I was placed in ELL classes, and although I was very smart in many subjects, because I did not speak English, I was placed in easy classes, where we did nothing. They focus so much on learning the language that they fail to teach you. I survived; however, I knew the other classmates looked down at us. They would not speak to us, and they will make rude racial comments when referring to any of us.

Discrimination toward genders has been put on a repetitive cycle throughout history. In developing countries around the world, discrimination of women is evident. “In China, the role of women changed drastically during the Mao Zedong era (1949 – 1976). Communism allowed women, who had previously been mostly limited to existence inside the household, to become social beings” (nobullying.com). Shortly after that time period, the continent of Africa went through issues with gender discrimination. The percentages of women being victims of domestic violence in Africa were extremely high. Other impactful issues the continent faces are forcing arranged marriages, female circumcision, and depriving woman from the ability to produce offspring. Latin America also struggled with this issue around the same time as Africa. Countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, and Argentina have had widespread issues of sex trafficking.