Dear Democratic candidates, U.S. Latinos are more than Spanish speakers | Opinion

The consensus after last night’s presidential debate — based on the Spanish-language interventions by Cory Booker, Beto O’ Rourke and Julián Castro — was that the candidates were addressing Latino voters.

They spoke to them in Spanish! went the Twitter posts and the NBC headlines and the memes. Did Beto beat Cory to it? Whose Spanish was better? Did anyone mess up? How were their pronunciations?

Why, I’m wondering, are we so easily wowed when a person seeking to run this country speaks un poco de Spanish when the United States has the second-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world? When Telemundo is one of the hosts and broadcasters of the debate? When presidential candidates, having graduated high school, probably know some rudimentary sentences in other languages? (Not to mention, have we forgotten the Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio conversation during a Republican presidential debate in 2016?)

If language were the key to appealing to Latino voters, candidates would merely have to pop in their Rosetta Stone tapes and have their way with us.

But, it isn’t. In fact, if you want to appeal to Latino voters, candidates and media alike need to stop thinking that Latinos are people you say hola to.

While it’s true that 13.2 percent of the U.S. population speaks Spanish at home — about 41 million U.S. residents — an estimated 22.5 million of those Spanish speakers also speak English “very well,” according to the 2017 Census American Community Survey.

So, thank you for being inclusive, but many of us can get what you’re saying if you just speak English.

And yet, even considering those who can’t, please remember that this is a multicultural and complex community. We are bilingual (at least). We are Asians, blacks, indigenous, whites, Muslims, Jews, feminists, conservatives, nonbinary, undocumented, legal citizens, impoverished, rich, oppressed, privileged. Some people have lived here forever; some of us are new to the place — despite being born here. Some of us are Latinos and Latinas, and some of us are Latinx, a word that tends to identify the younger Americans who want to acknowledge nonbinary perspectives. (For the record, on Wednesday night, only Elizabeth Warren used that term correctly.)

Language skills matter less than the perspectives the candidates favor. We care that issues are resolved — education tuition, the economy, health care costs, there are people dying crossing the Río Grande — not that words are perfectly pronounced.

To portray us as just people who speak Spanish is missing the point. U.S. Latinos are more than that. And we recognize Hispandering when we see it.

How about we examine Castros’s proposal to decriminalize the entrance to the U.S. of migrants without papers, Warren’s debt-free college proposal, O’Rourke’s stance on restricting some semiautomatic weapons and reinforcing universal background checks, Booker’s approach to close the racial wealth gaps in young adults?

So, Marianne Williamson, don’t stress. No need for the rushed Spanish class.

Just fix this mess. (De nada.)

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