Imagine this: you're giving a presentation and no one there speaks English. All you can do is helplessly point to your screen to try to show what you want and hope that they understand you. They look at you with disgust because you dared to go somewhere with a different language than yours without learning it first. You are treated like an idiot although you know you could explain yourself exquisitely if only they could just understand you. You are the outsider and you aren't welcome here.
This past weekend, I was volunteering at an event where a company donated computers to children across the area who didn't have them at home. Family after family came through with their winning children and most were overcome with excitement to get their prizes, except for one. A father and daughter are completing the stations and only the father is speaking. The girl seemed distant and unmoved by what was happening. She shied away from every adult who spoke to her and was treated as if she were personally insulting them.
When the pair make it to me, the daughter was latched onto her father's shirt and was obviously ready to leave. When I hear her father's broken English, I immediately start talking to him in Spanish and saw the little girl peak out from behind his waist for the first time. We walk outside to load up the computer and I wait with her while he brings around the car. She couldn't stop talking once she got started. This little girl, who everyone thought of as rude and vacant, had so much to say and knew so much for an 8-year-old. She just couldn't express that in English.
This is what Spanish-speaking families go through every day in the United States. When no one in the family speaks English, maneuvering in a predominately English speaking country becomes near impossible - especially when every other person believes that you "should learn our language or go back to Mexico." These people don't care that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world and that not every Latinx person is Mexican. They also somehow forget that this country has no official language, not even English.
We were lucky to be born and live in a country that speaks our language. We can expect everyone around us to understand what we say without having to guess and hope for the best. If that were suddenly taken away from us, we would drown in misunderstanding.
Everyone deserves to be heard, even when that voice carries a different language.
