I take things personally. Logically, I know I shouldn’t. Logically, I know it’s not always about me, maybe the kid or the parent, or the person is just having a bad day and they are taking out their frustrations on whoever is right in front of them. Emotionally though, I feel what I feel. I’m overly sensitive and I do care what people think of me or worse, what I THINK people think of me.
Growing up in Miami, FL from birth to age 14, from 1967 to 1981 I went by my full name, Alfonso. In school I was Alfonso. When hanging out and playing with my friends, I was Alfonso. My parents are Cuban and they moved to Miami to get out of Cuba as Fidel Castro took over. They met in Miami, got married and had me so I was born in America. I am American but I identify as Cuban-American because even though I grew in America I was brought up Cuban. It was easy in Miami, Florida, to be Cuban American because I was surrounded by Cubans. The part of Miami that I lived in was known as Little Havana. It was predominantly Cuban. The shops were run and most of the time owned by Cubans. In my school I remember the one Asian kid was Cuban and even the seemingly Caucasian kid was Cuban. The black kids were mostly Cuban although fully African-American kids (non-Hispanic) attended our school as well.
It wasn’t until my mom took me to Glendale, California, that I came face-to-face with so many other cultures, and racism. We moved half way through my ninth grade year, in 1981. My parents were separating and my mother wanted to get as far away from my father as she could. A friend of hers offered her place for us to stay until my mom could get settled and find work. It was California that I experienced my first real taste of racism. I am fortunate to have white enough skin that I think I could pass for a White man. See, when I’m going through my life, I don’t feel any strange looks and stares and that’s why I think I can get around benefiting from the white privilege, the privilege of not being judged by my skin color. But I can’t hide my Hispanic roots when I give my name. Alfonso, especially with the f and not the ph, is not white. I felt the disdain when I would give my name. I felt looked down upon when I would give my name. When in public speaking Spanish with my mother, I felt the eyes, the looks. And then it would come, so often, “well, you’re Mexican,” You know, there is nothing wrong with being Mexican, their culture is amazing and beautiful.
But I AM NOT MEXICAN. I’M CUBAN-AMERICAN.
I am Hispanic, a Latino man, I share that in common with all Latin American cultures but we are all so different! I mean, really different. Just try having some Cuban food and you’ll see that it’s NOTHING like Mexican food! And living in southern California I also thinks it’s sad that the only work my Cuban mother with a green card could get was first a seamstress sowing her heart out for little money in Los Angeles and then as a housekeeper and nanny to a rich, White family. I mean it couldn’t get any more stereotypical than that!
So what changed? I am not brave. I am not confrontational. And I knew that I couldn’t convince people to like me or to stop judging me. So I did what I thought was what an introverted, shy teenage boy would do: I stopped going by Alfonso and I stopped speaking Spanish in public. I became ashamed of my mother when she would speak Spanish loudly and proudly in public. And I never outgrew those feelings. I still go by Al instead of Alfonso. Part of it is that I like Al. Part of it is that I like Al because it feels so less formal than Alfonso and I am such an informal guy.
But it’s a constant reminder of what I chose to give up to be WHITE. To FIT IN.
The story of how I went from Alfonso to Al is quite funny actually. I started high school at Hoover High in Glendale, CA, in 1981. One of the first people I met there was a Korean and a Cuban. The only other Cuban-American kid in the whole school! And it was he who started calling me Al and it stuck. He was just calling me Al as a friendly nickname and I took it on as a shield. No, not a shield. A shield evokes images of a warrior. More like something to hide behind. I have been very much a coward all these years.
This shame for my own name and my own language has remained a part of me to this day. I can’t shake it. I am still uncomfortable speaking Spanish. I still feel judged. I just don’t speak Spanish, ever, and frankly I haven’t spoken Spanish in so long that I’ve forgotten it. I can’t hold a full conversation in Spanish without needing to revert to English when I can’t think of a word in Spanish. I was fortunate that I learned English before starting school because my parents didn’t speak English. My mother tells me that I learned English by watching Sesame Street! So when I speak English, I think in English. I used to think in Spanish when I spoke Spanish, but now I can’t hold a full thought in Spanish without going back to English. So yeah, my parents didn’t need to speak English, much less learn how, because everywhere we went in Miami there were Cubans speaking Spanish. So I grew up speaking Spanish at home and my first teaching gig in South Central Los Angeles was as a bilingual Spanish teacher!
Yes, I got my Bilingual Spanish Certification in Los Angeles along with my teaching certification in 1991 after being hired to teach predominantly Spanish-speaking students (back when CA HAD a bilingual program – I’ve never understood why people fear when others speak a foreign language!). The idea was that as non-English speaking children are learning English in school, they should still get to learn content in their native language to get the best of both worlds, English Language instruction AND learning new content in their primary language! It was a decent policy. I mean have you ever tried to learn something new when the teacher and your classmates were all speaking a foreign language that you didn’t speak?? Since I had grown up speaking Spanish at home, I took French in high school to learn a third language so my Spanish grammar skills were so lacking that I had to learn the grammar and writing of Spanish before I could pass the test to get my bilingual Spanish certification! LOL At least I did it and I worked there teaching in Spanish for most of the day as well as teaching English as a second language from 1991 to 1996.
When my wife and I moved to Washington state during the summer of 1996, I no longer needed to teach in Spanish so I would only speak Spanish when I called my mom. And she had learned English by then so I got away with speaking what we call Spanglish, part Spanish and part English. That’s what we kids spoke back in Miami because we were bilingual and it was okay.
So here I was, living in WA state with no need to speak Spanish. And believe me, I NEVER ADMITTED TO ANYONE THAT I COULD SPEAK SPANISH – I DIDN’T WANT TO ADMIT IT. I still to this day can’t believe that stuck with me. And yet it did. So even though my wife took Spanish in high school I won’t even speak Spanish with her. WITH MY OWN WIFE, even after 25 years of marriage.
The effects of racism don’t go away.
I regret not being able to speak Spanish with my wife. My daughter is now 17 years old and she doesn’t know any Spanish. And that’s all my fault. That 14 year old boy who was so afraid to speak Spanish in CA, afraid to be outed as a Latino, has made it so that my daughter missed out on being bilingual. And like her old dad, she wants to take French as her foreign language in high school. I tried to talk her into taking Spanish but it was for selfish reasons. I was hoping her taking Spanish would force me into re-learning my first language and make it safe for me to speak it at home. I wasn’t about to force the issue and she is taking French.
So those feelings of being judged because I speak a different language and belong to a different culture, a culture that is looked down upon and even hated, cost me my name, my language, and my culture. That’s just one example of what racism can take from people. But at least I can breathe, at least I can hide because of the color of my skin, and at least I can live to tell this tale.
