Illustration by Alex Charner
For this seventh installment of #LatinoRebels10 in celebration of Latino Rebels’ 10th anniversary, we look back to a story from 2018 when attorney Aaron M. Schlossberg just lost it. For more installments, click here.
At first, we called him “some white dude in midtown Manhattan” who literally went ballistic when he heard other people speaking Spanish at a lunch spot back in 2018.
Soon enough, he had a name and Internet infamy. What Aaron M. Schlossberg did three years ago has already been chronicled enough, but also obvious was that over the years, actions like those of Schlossberg’s were more common that you think.
Here is just a sample:
Sheriff’s Office Fires Racist Georgia Man Caught on Video Cursing at Young Latina to ‘Speak English’
Houston-Area Elected Official Apologizes After Telling Harris County Judge to ‘Speak English’
Add Another Racist ‘Speak English’ Viral Video to the Genre: This One’s From Oklahoma
Non-Latino Media Suddenly Discovers That There Are ‘Speak English’ Racists in the US
Idaho Bus Driver Fired for Pouring Water on Latino 8th Grader and Telling Him to Speak English
Woman Telling Spanish Speakers to Talk English Gets Shut Down by Another Woman
Gene Simmons Needs to Step Away from Immigration Debate: ‘Learn to Speak Goddamn English’
How best to respond to all this? We will leave to the New York Daily News, who published the following cover during the Schlossberg mess:
For the life of me I’ll NEVER understand why on earth some folks in the U.S. (monolingual English speakers no doubt) go ballistic whenever they hear others speaking Spanish. They can hear Korean, Portuguese, German, French, Russian, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi or Yiddish being spoken and not raise an eyebrow but the minute they hear Spanish something just clicks AND THEY COMPLETELY LOSE IT. Any ideas anyone? PLEASE ENLIGHTEN THE REST OF US ABOUT THIS LINGUISTIC/CROSS-CULTURAL CONUNDRUM.
In 25 years Asians will be the largest minority in the USA.
The greatest irony for me is: America has no official language!! Spanish has just as much claim as English. White lawyers probably just assume that English has some legal supremacy or something but NOPE
I know its insane, its just another indo-european language and people should stop claiming its something else when its not. Silly humans…