Posted 5 years, 6 months ago mid-afternoon by oso
I wanted this to be my first post in Spanish … but, before I start writing in Spanish, there are a few things I want to clarify.
In one sentence, it is this: ethnicity, nationality, and language are three very different things.1
“Cutting Through the Bullshit”
So no. I am not a Latino. Though plenty have been deceived. (See Mitch, CJ, Elena, Gustavo, Soul Musings) And I think that this is great. Not only that I’m deceptive, but that it’s so easy. We assume that ethnicity is such a big part in defining who we are and that someone’s ethnicity is made obvious by how they look and how they act. But the blogosphere is doing a pretty good job of testing at least the latter.
Elenamary recently wrote a post admitting that, despite her amazing intuition, she has a tough time guessing the ethnicity and gender of bloggers:
For example until recently I thought Tortilla Sandwich was written by a male and Prentisis Riddle by a female. I’ve also been wrong about ethnicity. At first (long ago) I thought El Oso was Xicano and I hate admitting it but I questioned the intentions of his writing once I found out he wasn’t.
My intentions aside, I can’t help but think maybe we’re all a bit more human than we tend to believe. Nationality can be just as confusing. When I first started reading ICTlogy I thought it was written by a woman in England, not a Spanish guy in Barcelona. Meanwhile, WASABI I thought was written by an American guy living in Spain, but it took me a while to find out he’s actually Norwegian. And Julio … what the hell do we call him?
I’ve had this same conversation before with Joi on PressThink … is blogging a transnational culture? Or as Liza says:
And it says something either about me or the blogosphere : It’s either I am really immature or the blogosphere just crashes age, sex, ethnicity and race barriers and makes us cut through the bullshit much faster.
Like, What’s Your Chicano Fetish?
But some people ask me, if I’m not Latino, why do I read so many Latino blogs and why are so many of my own readers Latino?
Here is the story. I first started this blog two months after I had been staying in Mexico in a small rural village for 6 weeks doing a research project on immigration. Not only that, but I was on my way to Mexico once again to meet Laura’s family, stay in her hometown, and then travel throughout the entire country with her. My own life was becoming increasingly bi-national, bi-cultural, and bi-lingual.
I was dealing with questions like “how do I preserve my own identity while traveling back and forth between two very different cultures.” And in fact, I’m still dealing with those questions. So I sought out blogs of people dealing with the same issues. And the first one I found was Julio’s. Through his blog, I started reading others, and through theirs, others.
And happily and sadly, a sense of community started to form. We all found each other via each other. I started reading Xolo’s blog because Julio linked to it and Xolo started reading Wooj’s blog (I think) because I linked to it.
I say “happily” because in all honesty, I really value this sense of community. But I say “sadly,” because, the community of bloggers I recognize is almost identical to this list of Latino bloggers which Elena put together. DT also celebrates the clique of Raza bloggers. But I can’t stand it. Not because it excludes me, but because it excludes 99% of the blogosphere.
I will continue to read every blog I do now because they’ve changed from interesting people to actual friends. But I don’t like how homogeneous the “community” of bloggers has become. I think it’s time we start implementing a little affirmative action on ourselves.
Non Raza Bloggers I Love to Read
- Chris Nelson – who does a great job documenting what it’s like to live in America as a foreigner (still Canadian citizenship?)
- Wooj – almost enough motivation to sign up for Korean classes
- Elenita – updated once a month and well worth it.
- Legally Bored – love her or hate her, she’ll make you laugh.
- Karen – amazing photography, keen insight, and the occasional reminiscence about life in Turkey
- Thivai – a serious treasure trove of some of the best stuff on the net. And his personal reflections are a treat when they come about.
- ChandraSutra – one of my new favorites, fresh from B.C.
And many more, but I’d be lying if I said I read them on a daily basis.
My Spanish, Your Spanish, Our Spanish
Seyd is absolutely right. It’s not “en modo” it is “de moda.” That’s a mistake I’ve made more than once and I appreciate him pointing it out for me. And he did it in a way that’s not condescending or overly critical. I’ll be the first to admit that my Spanish is far from perfect. Then again, so is my English. But I have no problem communicating in either one. The point is, people understand me. Grammar, accent marks, o’s and a’s apart, I’m able to make my point (and more importantly understand others’) in both languages.
But I have to admit, it’s starting to bother me a little bit how possessive many bloggers seem about language. When a gringo tried translating this post into Spanish, someone left this highbrow comment:
There is a world of nuances separating pluperfects, preterits and imperfects. You might be overrating your Spanish a bit. Había estado hablando con mi profesora, for instance, should be “hablaba con la profesora de español.” ¿Qué estás pensando hacer?, “¿qué piensas hacer?” Le había visitado para sus consejos en cuanto a como mejorar mi español para uso en entrevistas con los medios. You do need consejos to improve that sentence, etc.
Give me a fucking break. Do you understand what the guy is saying or not?
Let me clarify a few things. I have not taken a Spanish class since I was 16 years old. Since that class, I have learned and forgotten Nepali and then taken a year of Japanese. During that time I completely forgot all Spanish and did not pick it up again until working in a restaurant where I learned by talking to my co-workers whose Spanish was far from perfect. Then with the help of Laura, my fluency in Spanish has much improved over the past two years.
But it’s still far from perfect … and it shouldn’t have to be. I’m going to start blogging in Spanish because I want to communicate with more people … especially other bloggers who live in the same city as I do. If I make mistakes, it’s not only OK to correct me, but I ask you to as a favor. That way we’ll all learn how to speak/write Spanish better. But the last thing the blogosphere needs is people dissuading other people from writing in other languages.
The Fine Print
Ethnicity is a social construct based on biological, cultural, and even religious differences. I think the best definition I’ve read of ethnicity came from a Nigerian writer who migrated from his home country to the U.K. and then to Los Angeles. He said his ethnicity has been called Yoruba, Nigerian, African, and finally Black even though his DNA has never changed.
Nationality is defined by where you are born or where you have naturalized. It’s also based on when you were born. For example, if you were born in San Diego two hundred years ago, your nationality would be Mexican, but if you were born in San Diego twenty years ago, your nationality is considered American.
You can share the same nationality with someone despite not sharing the same ethnicity nor speaking the same language. In fact, this is the norm, not the exception. (take a look at a this list of languages by countries and this one of ethnicity and race by countries – this map of geographic origins of languages is also interesting) India is a prime example of one nation, many languages, many ethnicities, and many religions. Hopefully Revaz will write more about this as he travels throughout the country with which he shares “ethnicity“, but neither nationality nor language.
Finally, language is a form of communication that is often related to nationality and ethnicity, but just as often not. Spanish, for example, is one of four languages spoken in Spain. But it is also spoken – in various adaptations – not just in Latin America, but also the Caribbean, parts of Africa, the South Pacific, and much of Southern California and New York City. English is another example of a language which started as one of several in Great Britain, but is now spoken in countries around the world from the United States to Singapore and Malaysia.
Other Bloggers’ Recent Posts About Blogging and Ethnicity
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Yo, ni de aqui ni de alla. I can’t I’m completely flawless in either Spanish or English. I too, find it irritating when people do something to dissuade others from speaking/writing a new language.
About the community: I’m glad there is a community, but I agree that we should implement affirmative action. I think, for the most part, most of us (even if we are part of a small community) do read non-Latino blogs. I read a good number of Political blogs and some really funny as shit blogs. Word.
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Still a Canadian citizen, but I am a US resident applicant. In 1-22 months (haha) we get interviewed, probably pay some more fees, and I get to be a resident.
I love this stuff. Anna helps my ignorance out, but your blog is a great resource for people like me – no prior experence with Latino/Spanish/Chicano/etc culture, and pathetic Spanish language skills.
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Nice post.
You know that my research and personal experience has taken me down the long road that touches on the issues you bring up here. I have long thought about the catergories we are put in and those we put ourselves in. They are all so arbitrary and, if I may say from an academic persepctive, so artificial. Yet they seem so real and they become the core of who we are or are seen to be.
This new venue of communication just peels away another layer of the social construction of identity (perhaps it replaces it with a different one), yet through the examples you cite, we see people constantly trying to reassign the categories. “We are Latino Bloggers”, “you should not post in Spanish if you cannot understand the nuances”, “I thought this person was white/female/older/younger/richer/etc.” The beauty of doing what we do is that we can transcend all these categories and even ignore them at times. I read what I enjoy and if I don’t enjoy what I am reading, I stop. I don’t read to fill my quota of a certain ethnic category/gender/religion/political affiliation.
I am not sure if what we have here is a community or a communication network (don’t ask me what the difference is because I am not sure). It is certainly a new phenomenon and it has fun exploring it (and I hope it will continue as well).
Thanks for the food for thought. Y espero con entusiasmo tu nuevo “post” en espa~ol.
[Sorry for the long comment]
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First things first: welcome back.
Second, my apologies in advance if this isn’t particularly thoughtful or well-written. I took another dose of cold medicine before your trackback landed in my inbox, and now have too many thoughts running around my head to spend the rest of the evening in bed like I probably should.
One of the things I love best about the blogosphere is the incredible and generally unrestricted access to other people’s thoughts, ideas, impressions, perspectives, stories. It’s a medium that allows people to share their deepest, most personal, most meaningful insights and confidences, bypassing so many of the real world limits that prevent people from connecting on multiple levels. Do they always? Of course not. But often, they can. Blogs therefore are capable of–and often do–transcend more than the practical limitations of geography and time zones and who knows what else; they can also sidestep our mental distances, the unspoken propriety that might stifle a first (or sixth or 92nd) conversation, the things that can limit people from getting to know each other while the immediacy of the real world intrudes.
Basically, if the writing is honest and sincere, each reader of a website can have their own personal front-and-center seat to the core–the heart, the soul, substitute your preferred word here–of another human being. That’s an amazing, precious thing. Hell, that’s something many people seldom get to experience as they go through their daily routine, even if they see the same people five days a week for years at a time.
That’s why I wanted to cheer at the end of your post. Because, the way I see it, creating fault lines based on language or race or whatever in a medium where the most accessible thing is the humanity of each and every participant is fucking depressing and a waste of energy besides. There are plenty of reasons why lots of groups around the globe really can’t talk to each other–why are we choosing to invent new ones?
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m trying to say that identity isn’t important, because it is. But the most–some would argue only–important identity is one that an individual chooses for his or herself (or a group choose for itself). Insisting that a person cannot claim an identity or identifier because they fail to meet some (usually arbitrary) standard, or freaking out over how someone chose to (not) present an identity is counterproductive at best for me.
Idealistic? Naive? Clueless? Perhaps All I can say is, I’m finding it hard to worry about realistic while being legally drugged out on over-the-counter cold medication.
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Osito,
Because I am your sweet dear Elenamary, I will only focus on the tiny part I disagree with. I have to say my blog community is not only Latino bloggers. In fact 4 out of the 7 non-Latino blogs you listed I read as soon as they are updated. As DT, points out we are reading other blogs. I subscribe to and read 111 rss blog feeds. I leave comments on all of them.
The “Clique” of bloggers, the community we have formed, is not just Latino it is however the majority and I don’t know why this has happened. When I sent out an email looking for guidance to my blogeros, I called my blogging community “mi raza” included in that email were you Oso, Wooj, and Prentisis. You guys may not be Latino but you are still my raza. ¿comprendes?
However, what we do need are more single, attractive, stable, politically aware, heterosexual, men who live and blog in Ohio…yeah!
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Y DT, pinche guey robaste mi “Ni de aqui ni de alla”. ¿Que pedo?
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To focus on just one small part of this thought-provoking piece, namely language:
If I understood the comment about “pluperfects, preterits and imperfects” she wasn’t trying to say that the guy couldn’t communicate. She was trying to say that maybe his Spanish wasn’t up to the professional level he thought it was. I don’t know whether she was right about his Spanish or not, but I do think it’s perfectly legitimate to expect professional journalists, broadcasters, teachers and communicators in any language to meet more than a minimal standard of basic communication.
That makes me sound like some reactionary prescriptive grammarian when I’m not. I think it’s great when anyone undertakes to learn a language at any level or attempts to communicate with whatever language skills they’ve got. But I don’t think it serves communication or intercultural understanding well to pretend that a little bit of Spanish is all that’s necessary for any task. I wouldn’t want to read a newspaper in English that read like the reporters and editors hadn’t finished high school; why should consumers of Spanish-language media be happy with anything less?
(And don’t get me started about the dismal state of US Spanish in other domains; in hospitals, for instance, people regularly die because insurance companies and hospital administrators won’t fund professional translation, leaving the job to the patients’ school-age kids, to the cleaning staff, and to any intern who once ordered a beer in Cancun. My modest proposal? Put Spanish on the MCAT!)
Again, none of this is intended to imply anything about the skills of the particular guy in question. He sounds like my kind of gringo.
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I don’t know if I ever assumed that you were Raza. I think what kept me reading your blog was the fact that you wrote about topics I was interested in. Plus, you gave me some pretty good advice on stuff to do and see while I was in Guanajuato.
For a long time, I only read a handful of blogs by Latinos. I didn’t start reading more until quite recently. I have a pretty diverse group of bloggers I read, so I’m happy with my own form of blog-reading affirmative action.
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What, you’re not white?!?!?!
j/k…I knew from the beginning you weren’t Latino. I just thought you wanted to be like us, so I didn’t say anything. But now that you came all public with your ethnicity/nationality etc and all, be prepared for the white jokes…cuz I got plenty of em.
On a serious note, and to be a bit partisan, I see this as being a big deal primarily on your side of the political isle, not mine. For example, I have some Mexican liberal friends who will create divides if you didn’t grow up poor, or if you don’t speak Spanish, or if you are half white, etc… all those people aren’t “real” Mexicans. Some of them even tell me I am not Mexican anymore because my website is “Hispanic” Pundit. I find this ironic because, by their standards, I am more Mexican than all of them. Both of my parents are immigrants from Mexico, I am the first person in my family born in the USA, I speak fluent Spanish, I grew up the poorest compared to everybody else and I have a huge ‘nopal’ right on my forehead…yet I’m not Mexican enough. Ruben Navarrette even wrote about this a few weeks ago.
If you talk to a conservative minority, almost universally, you will notice that they focus a lot less on racial/ethnic/national divides than liberal minorities do. I think all of us minority conservatives subconsciously adhere to, as Thomas Sowell described it, The Brotherhood of Men (or, “Family Of The People”, for you sensitive liberals).
And if you spend anytime in LA, especially the ghettos, you will immediately notice that we need to hear a little less chicano studies, and a little more brotherhood of men studies.
Oh and…screw affirmative action, I am colorblindly picking blogs I read.
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Doh…The above should have read “What, you’re not white Latino?!?!?!
I blame it on my ESL classes!!!
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Yo peco,
You fucking read my mind hombre… I was planning on doing a little segment, first distinguishing between ethnicity, race, nationality, & culture…and then proceeding to tell a few stories, because as you can imagine my experience has been interesting in regards to the identity thing. Nothing else has been interesting of course haha.
Leaving Pushkar for Jahsalmer today with some facial experimentation- hopes of breaking the Amitah Bachan look that everyone tells me I have, but I never knew. And in the words of oso, “keep on keepin.”
I gotta figure a way to get that cool picture man.
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Osoman,
I’m sad to disappoint you by not being a blonde british beauty – hope you’ll forgive me ;DD
You know, I do understand you when you talk about “crosslanguage” blogging. It’s difficult to feel confident and comfortable when you try and communicate with others in your non-native tongue
BTW, you really made my day by saying I might be English!!!
))
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Sorry to spam you, but does this Gravatar thing really work? I have this irrational fear of being hit on by every guy who likes a cute vaquerita…
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Hell, I was going to point out that Ismael from ICTlogy might be also described as a “Catalan guy in Barcelona”, but seeing as he’s posted above & is obvioulsy not bothered or offended (as is his right)……I’ll just point out on behalf of other Catalans that lots of people in Barcelona and the rest of Catalunya (not to mention the other Paisos Catalans) might not personally like being called “Spanish”.
“I don’t know whether she was right about his Spanish or not, but I do think it’s perfectly legitimate to expect professional journalists, broadcasters, teachers and communicators in any language to meet more than a minimal standard of basic communication.”
And I do agree with the above. I don’t think that that means people doing things like blogging in other languages should be dissuaded: hell, I want that to be encouraged, but I do think if it is something like a newspaper, book, etc., someone–even if it’s an editor/proofreader and not the actual writer–ought to clean it up a bit. In a way, I feel that if it’s put out as something “official” or of a certain level of professionalism, it’s kind of showing lack of respect not to adhere to the standards.
What would people’s reaction be to a newspaper article in an English-language paper that was full of second-language-learner errors? If it were a letter to the editor, they might be more sympathetic, but an article?
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I’m gonna have to make this response sorta short, but you guys bring up some really good points. I didn’t mean to in anyway criticize or imply that people in our “network of communication” (I like that) only read latino bloggers. It’s true, we read what interests us and a sense of community starts to form around those interests.
Also, I agree with both Prentiss and Crys T about a certain level of competence and professionalism necessary when working in the media. I have come to appreciate the consistency of style at the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. I was probably just being defensive because I had to google the word “pluperfect.”
Crys T,
You bring up the fuzzy line between nationality and ethnicity (and language). When I referred to Ismael as Spanish, I was talking about his nationality, not his ethnicity (which I didn’t know). It would be nice if the word for Spanish (nationality) were different from Spanish (ethnicity). For example, I can call two people British (nationality) even if one is Welsh and the other English.
Also, forgive my ignorance, but is it possible to distinguish Spanish, Catalans, Galicians, and Basque by appearance alone or do the differences really come down to language and culture?
Finally, I really appreciate the voice mails. It’s amazing how many different accents the United States has. Can’t wait to put them all together in one podcast. Please keep them coming – the number is 206-984-9581
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yep american english variances. ‘cept you know what Oso? you sound like me except prehaps a little less girl-y, no?
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Oso:
A blog with footnotes! Great piece. I would just like to add to discussion the definition of “citizenship.” Citizenship in the U.S. is determined by birth or through blood. In many countries, it’s determined by blood only. And, most always, citizenship is not politically meaningless. It took a slave to sue the U.S. before the 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, thus finally recognizing slaves as U.S. citizens. The Univision gig went well. Thanks for asking. Safe travels, Y.
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Please keep them coming – the number is 206-984-9581
Comment by oso
Do you want us to speak in Spanish when we leave voicemails?
lol
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Dios mio, the very idea that you wrote Like, What’s Your Chicano Fetish? made me skirm … Brrrr, how could you.
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Did I mention I like my northern cali accent
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Julio, I am in love with your picture.
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First off, I know it’s squirm and not skirm, must be some swedish interference there somewhere. This kind of typo usually comes out like a cucachara when I turn the lightswitch off …Elena, why, thank you.
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It’s rare that I regret writing a post on here, but for some reason this one isn’t settling well with me. I feel like I didn’t really articulate well what I was thinking … or trying to say.
I blame it on not speaking English anymore. Seriously … it’s starting to get more difficult to write in English.
Anyway …
YLC,
Very good point. I think most people assume that citizenship and nationality are one and the same, but you bring up a good point … what was the nationality of a slave prior to the 14th Amendment? I’m glad your spot on Univision went well … wish I coulda seen it.
DD,
Lo que sea. I’m going to try to do one podcast a month in English y uno en español. Solamente depende which podcast you wanna be on.
Julio,
There are supposed to be quote marks around “Like, What’s Your Chicano Fetish.” As in, someone else asking me why I’m so interested in the experiences of a group of people which I’m not a part of. I don’t want to make you squirm. If it’s still offensive, you’ve gotta explain to me why. And agreed, great picture.
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Umm, I almost forgot.
You asked: “is it possible to distinguish Spanish, Catalans, Galicians, and Basque by appearance alone?”
Short answer: no, it isn’t.
Long answer: mainly, and quoting yourself, “the differences really come down to language and culture”. On the other hand, as you would distinguish a German from a Spanish because the former “is” tall and blond and the second short and black haired, there are some features that might give you evidence on the origin of a person. But there’s blond and tall people in Spain that are not German at all, and the features amongst spaniards are much more subtile, as Spain is quite little and people have moved a lot around the country, specially during the sixties.
So, if you believe in topics you can try and guess, but I wouldn’t bet. It normally happens the other way: you’ve been introduced to someone, you ask him or her where’s he/she from, he/she tells you he’s i.e. Baque and then you say “that’s just what my believe was”.
Basques surely have the major number of topics (tall, sharp faces, athletic, strong). Southern girls are usually described as having a very black hair and very dark eyes and their men are short and picnic. Rest of spaniards… ummm, well, I’d surely find some topics but so hard to recognise one from another.
BTW, these all are topics. And as topics, you can use them to laugh on them, to make fun on people, to hurt someone, to discriminate, etc, etc, etc. Quite a bad thing
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Interesting. I’ve been amazed by just how much Regios (people from Monterrey, Mexico) differ in appearance. Seriously, every day I see people who look much more American than I do (and I’m pretty Howdy Doody) and then others who look like they could be West African. There are chaparritos as well 6 foot 6ers who tower over me.
Ethnic relations in Mexico are really interesting. I think I’m gonna write a post on Mestizaje and Nationalism in Mexico.
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When you write about it Oso please remember you are in Northern Mexico. The USA influence (food, language, ethnicity, customs) on Monterrey is HUGE, much more so than even a few hour south of Monterrey.
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[...] tizenship), and focuses more upon the connection to a perceived shared past and culture. Oso, talks about ethnicity and defines other commonly misunderstood terms briefly on [...]
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“how do I preserve my own identity while traveling back and forth between two very different cultures.”
At the risk of seeming un-pc, I think that this business of preserving one’s identity is kinda bunk. Hopefully, identity is a dynamic construct that is fully influentiable by experience, not some archeologic (anthropologic?) relic for the soul’s museum. Some things stay, some things go, some things taste better with chimichurri. So mix it up hermano!
BTW, fancy tooltips does not work with Safari (which I only use from work, of course). A little “?” appears that goes nowhere.
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HOLA OSO
Dudas con su idioma? yo le ayudo. Me encanto su blog.
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I get you! Bicultural (or multicultural) lifestyles are becoming more and more common, and if people continue insisting on tagging people ethnically,, they’ll end up with a mouthful of hyphens. Someone posted in a comment about the arbitrary rules for being considered “latino”. Hm. I was born and raised in Latin America from Latin American parents… however, because my english lacks an accent and I’m white, I’m not considered part of the demographic. My brothers? Born in the US from LatAm parents, raised in South America, move back to the US and get the “you are not latino enough” spiel. It’s never good enough for some. My take on it? More the power to anyone if they can skip over the border issues and speak in any and all of the languages they know, feel part of the culture, absorb it, digest it and go with the flow.