This is how much I rejected my culture as a kid: One day when my mom, who is fully bilingual, asked me yet again to practice my Spanish with her, I defiantly responded, “No. I don’t want to speak Spanish. We’re in America!”
Where did I learn contempt for my parents’ native language? I blame the Dick Lamms of my day who told me – via TV, radio and newspaper reports – that my culture was inferior.
By internalizing that viewpoint, I became self-destructive and dropped out of high school. My parents didn’t know because something that actually was inferior – the public school I attended – had no mechanism for notifying them.
Once I realized what I was doing to myself, I got back on track and remade myself from a C student to an A pupil.
Because I didn’t learn Spanish at home, I would struggle years later to master it as an adult.
I tell this anecdote because my story is the story of many Latinos, proven by countless studies that support these facts:
1. English is the dominant language of the majority of Latinos who are born in this country. (In fact most first- and subsequent-generation Latinos can’t speak much Spanish.)
2. Becoming fluent in a second language takes years of work, especially as an adult.
3. When influential people speak pejoratively about a minority group, the message can sink in over time. If one internalizes it, self-destruction begins.
These three realities collide with beliefs former Gov. Lamm outlines in his controversial “itty” book, “Two Wands, One Nation: An Essay on Race and Community in America.”
I say itty because the palm-
sized book, at 76 pages, is tinier than TV Guide. He makes some good points, but sadly he goes the Bill Cosby route: He lays lots of blame and offers superficial solutions.
Lamm also makes sweeping generalizations that a man of his stature and education should be embarrassed to say aloud, yet alone print: He purports that African-American and Latino cultures are to blame for our alarming high school dropout rates.
He implies that we come from “progress resistant” cultures.
In reality, the biggest contributing factor to dropping out of school is growing up in a poor household with parents who are not educated. Other factors include attending substandard schools, being bombarded with the message that you are inferior and dropping out to work because your parents, with their low-wage jobs, are struggling to make ends meet.
Lamm should know that most well-educated African-American parents produce children who are successful. Ditto with Latino parents.
In his book, Lamm touts Asian culture for producing educated children in America. But if Lamm were to delve deeper he would find that the majority of children born to Cambodian, Hmong and Laotian refugees have even higher dropout rates than Latinos. Why is that? It’s because the majority of parents who came as refugees from those countries were not literate.
In his book, Lamm writes stereotypically about Latinos holding onto their language and culture as if they don’t learn English and adopt American customs. But a 2004 Pew Hispanic Center survey found that by the second generation, 93 percent of Latinos speak English fluently.
If it appears Latinos aren’t learning English, it’s because a large wave of immigrants has arrived the past decade. Anyone who has ever tried to learn a second language knows it takes years.
This can’t be news to Lamm; surely he must know all this. But it’s easier to disregard the forces that cause poor children to fail and play the blame game. It absolves people like him from putting any real thought into finding solutions.
That might explain why he has none in his book.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
