When Elysha O’Brien, a college professor in Las Vegas, decided to submit six words about her cultural identity, she knew exactly what she wanted to say: “Mexican white girl doesn’t speak Spanish.” Like many others who have written to The Race Card Project, she grew up in bilingual household but never learned the language of her elders.

O’Brien says she often feels like she has a foot in two worlds, but is never fully accepted in either. Whites often assume she is Greek or Mediterranean because her face is slightly angular and her skin fairly pale. But when she encounters others who share her Mexican heritage, they often don’t pick up signals that suggest cultural camaraderie.

“When I go into a community of Hispanics, they just assume that I’m white,” O’Brien says. “Once we start talking, sometimes they’ll say, ‘Well, why don’t you speak Spanish?’ And I say, ‘Well, my parents didn’t teach me.’ ”

O’Brien was raised in a household where both parents spoke Spanish — but not to their children. They are Mexican immigrants and made a collective decision to ensure the next generation mastered English without the hint of an accent. Spanish was the secret language they used when they argued or talked about Christmas presents.

O’Brien’s father is one of eight children, and among her 25 cousins, all but three speak English only. When she asked her parents, aunts and uncles why they didn’t pass on their native language, they all gave the same reason: They faced bias, or worse, when speaking Spanish outside the home. They were rapped on the knuckles at school or denied jobs and other opportunities.

Her family experienced so much prejudice in Fort Worth for speaking Spanish in school that they didn’t want their children to endure that, O’Brien says. “They didn’t want their children to get slapped on the wrist, they didn’t want their children to get shushed in the lunchroom. They wanted their children to assimilate into the culture.”

O’Brien absorbed that message, she says. At one point in her teen years, she would de-emphasize her heritage when other Mexican-American kids would tease her for not speaking Spanish, she says. “It was my parents’ language; it wasn’t my language. When you’re kind of rebellious and you’re trying to find your identity, I used to say, ‘Well, I’m not Mexican, my parents are.’ “

See: WKNO 91.1

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