Friday, August 31, 2012

Black American Playing with Spanish-Speakers' Minds

 


I was recently in a pizza parlor near my house in Oakland, CA, staffed by mostly Spanish-speaking employees. As I was eating at a table, a gentleman walked in and got into a Spanish-speaking conversation with one of the female staff members. He kept emphatically asking her ¿tu los conoces? (Do you know them?). After eating and as I began to leave the facility, I couldn't resist saying to the gentleman, yo los conozco tambien! (I know them too). First he looked at me stunned and was about to take me seriously before he burst out laughing realizing that I was just playing with his mind. He asked me where I was from; I told him New York City. He then began to compliment me on my Spanish.

I've always found it irresistible to play with the minds of Spanish-speakers who assume, because of my color, that I don't speak or understand their language. A lot of native Spanish-speakers, especially Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, seem to assume that there are no black folks who can speak, or at least learn Spanish.

I'll never forget the time at a company-wide staff meeting where it was brought out that I work with Spanish as well as English speakers. One Spanish-speaking woman who did not believe I could speak Spanish demanded in a feisty tone of voice that I sing a song in Spanish, which she seemed to have felt would have been an impossible task. I happily sang a few lines and a chorus from my all-time favorite salsa song, Pastorita tiene gurararé, which invoked a nice, hearty applause from all the Spanish speakers, including this feisty woman. She was both shocked and impressed.

Why did it take all of that song-and-dance to convince her? Why did she make an off-handed assumption,considering that she doesn't know anything about me? I asked her these questions and she lied telling me that she didn't know why. In other words, she did not want to admit that she was judging me by the color of my skin.

The interesting thing is that I never experience such doubt and astonishment when I'm visiting Spanish-Speaking countries; only here in the United States of America. Why?

6 comments:

  1. On the flip side, in Latin America you will have a hard time convincing them that you are not a local.

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    1. LOL, Sharif :-) My accent is a 'dead' giveaway! One day in Perú, a black security guard stopped me to shake my hand because I was wearing a t-shirt representing his hometown. I didn't get past two words before he burst out laughing saying, u ain't from my city, u from another country, and shook his head! He was pleasantly surprised when I told him I'm from the USA.

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  2. Those are priceless moments. I wish I didn't stop my classes.

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    1. K.D. Isaacs,
      If you had at least a year of Spanish, I'd be willing to bet you all the money you can beg, steal, or borrow that if you put yourself in an environment where you can't fall back on your English, LOL, you will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly all that you've learn will rise to the surface. It's all buried in your sub-conscious, which leads to my next comment.

      If you go to a two-week to a month immersion school in the Spanish-speaking country of your choice, you will not only regain your past knowledge but surpass it.

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  3. I have been studying Spanish for about 3 years now. I have experienced many of these priceless moments with Spanish speaking people. They are always so shocked to meet an African American who can speak their language. I can speak and write in Spanish, but I have trouble understanding Spanish when it is spoken quickly. Did you also have this problem? If so, how did you overcome it?

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    1. Hammad, first of all, thanks for becoming a follower on this blog. It's been my experience that the educated Spanish-speakers are easy to understand because they are trained to enunciate they way they should. However, I'm usually around the less educated, especially when I travel, because I prefer to be in the hood (barrios) verses the fancy hotels and tourist areas.

      In the barrios, people talk to fast that they chop their words For example, instead of saying “no hay,” they say “noy.” How do I handle it? It takes getting used to. LOL. People complain about Cubans talking to fast, they should hear Venezuelans for they are simply off-the-chain!

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