"The cost of learning English depends on who you are."

A Conversation about language, learning, and identity with Dr. Ramón Antonio Martínez

Reflecting on how he ended up studying and teaching about language practices in schools, Dr. Ramón Antonio Martínez offered a frank reflection on his own family’s relationship with language loss. Currently an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, Dr. Martínez offers an in-depth look at the complex and racialized landscape of language learning in U.S. schools today.

Today we share the first part of this longer conversation about multilingualism, language learning, and schooling. Across our conversation, Dr. Martínez makes personal connections to family, his interests in teaching, and the kinds of research questions he explores in a pursuit of educational and linguistic equity.

Antero Garcia: We want to start with a bit about your background: why did you become a teacher? And why is language something you center in your work today?

Ramón Antonio Martínez: Language has always been interesting and important to me. Why I became a teacher is connected to that. I was a first grade Spanish-English bilingual teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District when I started teaching. I think that was a dream of mine for a while. I think it's related to intergenerational language loss in my family.

Alix Dick: Can you say more about that?

RAM: My father's father was Mexican and he came to California at the turn of the last century in 1900s. All of my father's siblings and my father grew up bilingual, but they lost Spanish eventually. I think that was sort of a shame in our family - that we had lost Spanish.

So, when I was born, my grandfather would speak to me in Spanish and I would respond. It was a totally physical response. I understood a few things, but I didn't speak it at all; I never spoke Spanish growing up.

I distinctly remember moments when we would go to Mexican restaurants when I was a kid, and the waiters would come up to my dad, dark skinned, and try to speak to him in Spanish. And I remember my mom would try to answer. My mom is white, mostly Czech, English, German, Irish.

I was more ashamed actually, not of my mom's broken Spanish, but of my dad's—that he had lost it. And I think for a long time I was embarrassed and ashamed, and I kind of blamed him before I understood the history of -

AG: You were ashamed that he was unable to speak the language?

RAM: Yeah, and embarrassed that my dad, who people expected to speak it. When people see me, they typically don't read me as someone who should speak Spanish. My dad has dark skin. Tiene el nopal en la frente. He has the cactus on his forehead, is the saying in Mexico.

AD: I love that phrase.

RAM: Yeah, my dad was more like my grandfather with like indigenous features, dark skin. They would expect them to speak Spanish but they don't expect me to. I escaped that. Even though I didn't have that pressure, I think I felt embarrassed for my father that he couldn't answer.

AD: So you never had that same pressure?

RAM: Well, people see my last name before they meet me a lot of times. Martinez. That makes them expect me to speak Spanish. And I decided really young that I wanted to learn Spanish. My grandfather would tell me, "You're Mexican." So I think I grew up, before I went to school, I thought I was Mexican.

And then I got to school and people were like, "No, you're white." People would make jokes about Mexicans. And I would say, "Don't say that. That's racist. I'm Mexican." And they’d say, "No, you're not." I go, "Yeah, I'm Mexican." They're like, "No, you're white." And I was like, "No. My dad's Mexican. My grandpa's Mexican, I'm Mexican." And they're like, "Yeah, but you're not that kind of Mexican." So that's when I understood what it is to pass. I would live a life where I wouldn't have to worry about these things. But my dad hasn't. My grandfather didn't.

I was like, "No … I'm Mexican." And they're like, "Yeah, but you're not that kind of Mexican." So that's when I understood what it is to pass.

AD: It's definitely a different experience because that's what happens with me and my sister.

RAM: Oh, really?

AD: So my background is Mexican, but I'm also German. For almost the same reasons that your father didn't speak Spanish, my grandfather carried a similar shame of being German. But my sister looks German if you see her: she's blonde, her skin is white. Often it happens where we’d be in a situation where people will be very racist to me and very nice to her. And I definitely felt that even though we were both immigrants,  the way we were treated was just so aggressively different. It was so bad. Just because people looked at her and with her accent, people think she's French or something else.

RAM: Her English accent?

AD: Yeah, her English accent. People will assume that she was white.

RAM: Yeah, that sounds similar. But it hasn’t been a pressure for me. People don't expect me to speak it necessarily, but I've always wanted to speak it. And because of my last name and because I believed my grandpa until I got to school that I was Mexican. He was the only grandparent who talked to me about anything like an ethnic self-concept.

And growing up in LA, going to school in LA Unified, having lots of Mexican friends: to me, it made sense to want to teach in communities that were multilingual. So, that's how I think how I got involved in teaching in the first place.

AG: One of the ways I've heard you talk about multilingualism is that coming into school being bilingual or multilingual is often seen as a negative thing and oftentimes in a way that becomes racialized. What are the ways that your research shows that to us?

RAM: First of all, I should say, I think it doesn't have to be this way. The cost of learning English, oftentimes, depends on who you are. It varies in relation to the racial logic of this country. But in general, if you are a person of color, then you are positioned as having nothing valuable on which to base that. And for many kids historically in this country, it has meant leaving behind your first language, your home language. You have to trade it in for the new one.

AD: So you fit into the new box.

RAM: Exactly. I think intuitively, organically, lots of kids and families are increasingly realizing it doesn't have to be that way at all. And with histories of ongoing immigration to this country, there are community patterns of settlement, and patterns of intergenerational language survival, language resilience, that now there are more and more multilingual communities. Whereas before, in my dad's time it was: “Which one do you want to speak, Spanish or English? Pick one. Because if you're going to be American, you’ve got to learn English.” I think it's changing slowly, but that has historically been one of the trade-offs: you have to trade in your first language for English.

AG: And that’s how things are shifting today?

RAM: I think more recently, you’re treated as if being multilingual or bilingual is not a resource to begin with. Such that you're learning from zero, having nothing, a blank slate, so to speak. Schools frame your primary or home language in pejorative terms as something that's not useful as a resource. It's at best, neglected or ignored, and at worst denigrated and framed as something that is harmful, and that you need to lose in order to learn English.

A lot of the kids that I've worked with are already bilingual and becoming multilingual. I've worked with kids who speak English, Spanish, Zapoteco, varieties of sign language. These are kids, many of whom are undocumented, living in central Los Angeles who are already tri-, quadra-, multilingual kids. So these are really amazing kids who were originally, initially, I guess, officially classified as English learners.

Propina

In the next part of our conversation, Dr. Martínez offers a deeper dive into the label “English Learner.” In the meantime, check out his interview on Stanford Radio, discussing language learning and families.

We’ll see you next week.