Careful: Speaking Spanish could kill you?
Stories like the one from the Bee, last updated on Wednesday January 31, disturb me. First of all, this story started out with a negative stereotype:
“Alejandro Villalobos wasn’t killed over a drug deal or for flashing a gang sign, according to his family. He wasn’t killed for wearing the wrong colored shirt on the wrong block, they said, nor for disrespecting somebody’s girl.”
Okay, well, it drew my attention. I mean, a person with a Mexican last name was shot and killed and there was no gang involved? Note sarcasm in my tone. Is that a parallel to DWB = Driving While Black …KWM = Killed While Mexican…KWM = gang death?
The guy was 23 and somebody’s father. Wrong place, wrong time–someone said something in Spanish. But what? They said they were Mexicans? What’s wrong with being a Mexican? California was once “Mexican”–it was not always American territory. Read your history books.
Heck, I speak Spanish every day. I live in Sacramento, in California. I was born in San Francisco. My kids like burritos. Does that give someone a licencia to kill? I don’t think so. There’s got to be more to the story, but all I hear is silencio.
Interesting article…. and timely. I just read a blog post where a lot of comments had been left by people raging about schools becoming increasingly bi-lingual: Spanish and English. Many people it seems feel angry that Spanish is being “forced” onto them.
Let’s not forget that throughout history the English language has been forced onto many cultures without their consent.
What confuses me most is that one of the individuals arraigned in the shooting was also a Villalobos.
It’s easy to figure out what would make a white kid named Pruit hate something he doesn’t understand. But what could make a kid named Villalobos hate himself so much that he’d shoot someone for speaking the language of his ancestors?
Why is it okay for a white person to hate a Mexican, but not okay for a Mexican to hate a Mexican? That doesn’t sound right to me.