Despite the frequency with which it is repeated, both quantitative and qualitative research has shown that the myth of Latin American immigrants’ refusal to learn English is just that – a myth. This myth actually consists of three interrelated notions, all of which are false: (1) they don’t want to learn English; (2) they don’t learn English; and (3) they don’t make sure their children learn English. Let’s start with the idea that immigrants don’t want to learn English. In fact, a Pew Center survey found just the opposite: nine out of ten Latinxs think learning English is important (Taylor et al., 2012). Like quantitative surveys, qualitative studies as well as memoirs have also consistently found that immigrants perceive learning English as valuable for both symbolic and practical purposes. For example, in DuBord’s (2014) ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants at a day laborer center in Arizona, participants told her of the language barriers and difficulties they had faced prior to learning English, such as having less access to employment, being unable to stand up to abusive employers and needing to rely on others to go shopping. For those that had not learned English, it was not because they had rejected it. On the contrary, they saw knowing English as way to get better jobs, to have better relationships with supervisors, to earn more money and, in the following example, to open one’s own company:
Yo no sé el inglés pero si supiera inglés ya anduviera en mi propia compañía porque hay muchos que no saben trabajar pero saben el inglés. Eso es lo que les ayuda a ellos.
I don’t know English, but if I knew English I would already have my own company because there are many guys who don’t know how to work but they know English. That is what helps them.
(DuBord, 2014: 69)
Although it is not at all clear in the context of DuBord’s research that knowledge of English actually confers the imagined benefits, the key point here is that Spanish-speakers want to learn English and they perceive it as valuable for professional reasons (we discuss this emphasis on the economic value of languages in Chapter 4).
In addition to practical and labor market considerations, many Latinxs also see English as a prerequisite for full participation and legitimacy in US society. For example, when asked if there are any positive aspects to speaking English, a female participant in Velázquez’ (2018: 74) research responded: ‘Pues la comunicación, el no sentirse, el no sentirse como una sombra en todo lugar’ (‘Well, communication, not feeling, not feeling like a shadow everywhere’). Another woman answered as follows:
Pues lo bueno de hablar inglés es para comunicarse con las demás personas de aquí […] O para entenderles también […] Para entenderles, eso es bueno porque […] Si no hablamos no somos nada.
(Velázquez, 2018: 74)
Well, the good thing about speaking English is to communicate with other people from here […] or to understand them too, that’s the good thing because […] if we don’t speak [it] we’re nothing.
Similarly, other scholars have also found that Mexican immigrants feel an obligation to learn English, as well as a sense of shame and/or emotional pain when they do not acquire it as fully or as quickly as they would like (García Bedolla, 2003; Relaño Pastor, 2014). Moreover, like many non-Latinxs, the US-born Mexican Americans in García Bedolla’s study shared the belief that immigrants have a moral obligation to learn English. Along the same lines, Ullman (2010) described the sense of failure and personal inadequacy of Mexican migrants who had spent hundreds of dollars on the language-learning program Inglés sin Barreras (‘English without Barriers’), but had not been able to master English as quickly as they had imagined (or been promised).
But it’s not just that Spanish-speaking immigrants want to learn English; with time, they do learn it and so do their children and grandchildren, which disproves the second and third parts of the myth. Indeed, according to the Census Bureau statistics, more than three-quarters (76%) of people who speak Spanish at home are able to speak English either ‘very well’ or ‘well’ (ACS 2017 Five-year estimates). The percentage is even higher (95%) for Spanish-speakers who were born in the US, a statistic that includes people born in Puerto Rico. And even among foreign-born Spanish-speakers, 55% speak English ‘very well’ or ‘well.’ In other words, virtually all US-born Spanish-speakers speak English well, as do a majority of the foreign-born. And regarding the foreign-born, it’s worth noting that this includes recent arrivals as well as people who came to the US as adults. Not surprisingly, childhood immigrants and people who have been in the US for many years are the demographic groups with the highest rates of English proficiency (ACS 2017 Five-year estimates; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Veltman, 2000), given that language learning tends to be more difficult for adults, especially for those with limited time and/or financial resources to devote to it.
Note that the statistics we have just presented are about the English-speaking ability of people who speak Spanish at home. But Brokaw didn’t say that ‘Spanish-speakers’ need to make sure that their children speak English; he said that ‘Hispanics’ do. This is a clear example of the phenomenon we described at the beginning of this chapter – people using Hispanic and Spanish-speaking as synonyms and/or assuming that all Latinxs speak Spanish (we discuss this further in Chapters 5 and 6). Although we said it earlier, we’ll say it again: not all Latinxs speak Spanish. In fact, 41% of native-born Latinxs only speak English at home (ACS 2017 Five-year estimates). And among all Latinxs (including both native- and foreign-born), more than three-quarters (81%) speak English ‘very well’ or ‘well.’ Brokaw’s concern that Latinx immigrants and their offspring don’t speak English – which is not unique to this newscaster but instead is representative of a broader public discourse that portrays Latinxs as a threat to English – is simply unfounded. English is not in danger. As we discuss in Chapter 4, the idea that people who speak Spanish don’t also speak English is rooted in assumptions about monolingualism being the normal state of affairs. In fact, the issue for concern shouldn’t be that the offspring of Spanish-speaking immigrants fail to learn English; it should be that they don’t learn Spanish.
The Desire to Maintain Spanish and the Sorrow of Language Loss
As we saw in the previous section, despite common portrayals to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence that speakers of Spanish (or Latinxs more broadly) fail to embrace or learn English. This does not mean, however, that they don’t care about maintaining Spanish. In fact, 95% of respondents in the Pew Center’s survey said it was important for future generations of Latinxs to speak Spanish (Taylor et al., 2012). The desire of Spanish-speaking immigrants to pass Spanish on to their children is also evident in qualitative studies of language maintenance and family language practices (e.g. Schecter & Bayley, 2002; Torrez, 2013; Velázquez, 2018). Sometimes Spanish is framed as valuable for future employment opportunities (Schecter & Bayley, 2002; Velázquez, 2018), but more commonly it is seen as important for ethnoracial identity and/or necessary for familial communication either in the US or with relatives abroad. For example, a Mexican immigrant in Torrez’s (2013) research explained her desire for bilingual Spanish–English educational opportunities for her children as follows:
Son perdidos porque no saben cómo hablar con sus familias. … Porque en primer lugar, nosotros, con nuestros hijos, nosotros hablamos puro español porque nosotros no sabemos mucho inglés y nuestra raza es de México y por eso. Y si ellos hablan puro inglés pues no van a entendernos a nosotros. Por eso queremos que puedan hacer eso, que puedan poner español y inglés. Y pues la mayor parte se comunica uno con ellos en español. Y en español, español porque es nuestro lenguaje de nosotros. Y ellos ya es diferente porque ellos es otro nivel