Picture two Latinas with our hair teased into towering volcanic Aqua Net eruptions that defied gravity and declared our presence on the Ivy League campus like urban crowns. Yes, it’s the mid-80s. Our last names—Hernandez and Jiménez—grant us membership in the “EZ Club” along with all the other Latinos whose last names end in “ez.” We’re both big city Midwesterners—she from Chicago, I’m from Detroit. We both also have English first names that didn’t roll off our grandparents’ Spanish-speaking tongues. Her name is Michelle, mine Nanci.
Michelle and I had so much in common.
When we were in meetings or at events with other Latines, I would notice how uncomfortable she felt when our classmates slipped into Spanish or Spanglish. She was too embarrassed to ask for translation. I found myself judging her, pointing out to her and anyone around us, that she didn’t speak or understand Spanish. “She’s not a real Latina.” I’m pretty sure I even used the label “coconut” (brown on the outside, White on the inside) to describe her and other “no sabo”* Latines.
Michelle and I shared something else that I didn’t want anyone to know about me.
I couldn’t speak Spanish either.
We were both #nosabo kids.
How did I pull this off? I pretended. Since my parents spoke to each other in Spanish and I had studied Spanish in school since 8th grade, I knew enough words and phrases to “pass.” The deep shame I carried about my inability to speak Spanish left me isolated, living in pretense, and feeling like a fraud as a Latina.
The Hurt We Cause Each Other
Fast forward to the mid-90s when I met my mentor and friend, Lillian Roybal Rose. She would often say: “The ways we are targeted with racism by other groups is painful. But what we do to each other, entre raza, that tears us apart.” It’s only other Latines who can decide whether you are Latine enough, whether you belong.
Finally, I had a framework and language to understand my behavior toward Michelle and a path to heal my own pain.
My personal experience goes back generations to the colonization of the Americas, with its elimination (and attempted elimination) of countless indigenous languages and peoples. Losing a language under the threat of violence and death became a pro-survival behavior under Spanish imperialism. In my own lineage, I lost at least three indigenous languages before Spanish. Yet the pattern of language oppression and loss continued.
My mother was born in Detroit to Mexican immigrant parents who spoke only Spanish. As a child, she became their interpreter. She would negotiate, read and write letters for them, explain bills, and help them manage interactions with the English-speaking world. She did all this without any formal Spanish education.
She felt neither “smart enough” nor that her Spanish was “good enough” for my sisters and me to learn from her. You see, even Spanish speakers can carry the internalized oppression of not feeling “Latina enough.”
She avoided teaching us Spanish because she genuinely believed we would have a “better” life—easier, less stigmatized, with fewer barriers—if we didn’t speak English with an accent. (Of course, everyone speaks with an accent of one kind or another, but it was Mexican-accented English my mother was self-conscious of.) My first-generation mom sincerely believed being monolingual English-speakers would help us succeed in the US. The message she conveyed was that economic security and access required assimilation.
And she wasn’t alone. Michelle’s mom and countless other immigrant parents had internalized these same messages.
What I initially believed was my personal experience, I came to understand as a collective response to institutional oppression. Internalized oppression affects everyone in our communities.
Healing-Engaged Leadership
After facilitating racial healing for more than 30 years, I’ve observed that healing in community helps us recognize our struggles as systemic rather than personal or familial failings. Healing from oppression collectively breaks isolation and eliminates shame. We organize. We come together authentically and unapologetically.
This learning and my own personal experience have informed the framework for Healing-Engaged Leadership that guides our work at the Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation.
When we commit to these practices, we show up in solidarity to transform the system from a place of healing instead of blame—towards ourselves or each other.
Through my healing journey, I’ve grieved the painful and significant costs that came with losing Spanish, such as not being able to talk with my abuelitos. Because I didn’t know Spanish, I couldn’t understand their stories in their heart language. I was never able to know how they experienced the world.
Using this Healing-Engaged Leadership framework, I’ve reclaimed Spanish—embracing my Mexican, Boricua, Pocha accent with all its imperfections. I’ve accepted that my accent and the way I speak Spanish reflects my authentic Latina experience. My identity as Latina remains complete regardless of Spanish language proficiency.
Invitation to Never Again Rank Each Other
You might think this experience is unique to me as a #nosabo kid or something only Latines experience, but you’d be incorrect. This dynamic of internalized oppression around language loss is present in all communities who emigrate and are forced to assimilate for survival. The pressures to assimilate and the ways we blame each other within the targeted group for the patterns we adopted to survive—this is universal. And it’s likely something you know intimately in your own life.
What are the areas where you felt you could never “measure up?” When were you convinced (by others and eventually yourself) that you didn’t belong, weren’t authentic “enough,” and couldn’t be part of the group? This dynamic of ranking each other’s (and our own) authenticity in a group is internalized oppression. It’s an unhealed hurt from oppression and every group targeted by systemic oppression has their version of it.
And it’s a hurt we can heal.
The pain of what we do to each other within our group can and must be healed if we are going to be authentic and effective leaders. It is necessary if we are going to reclaim our full humanness.
Since we know internalized oppression impacts us all and only serves to divide us, what if we made a commitment to never again rank each other’s authenticity? Not ever again.
I invite you to make this commitment with me and watch the highlight video from my keynote at last year’s Hispanic Heritage Month Summit presented by PODER. The video showcases these stories and valuable lessons about healing from internalized oppression that can transform our leadership and our world.
Despite how my unhealed hurt targeted Michelle, she forgave me. Understanding and healing the roots of this hurtful behavior, I eventually forgave myself. Over the years we have stayed connected to each other by forging a path back to ourselves and each other through authenticity and healing.
*The term “no sabo” is a phrase that refers to U.S.-born Latinos who don’t speak Spanish fluently or struggle with Spanish grammar. It comes from the incorrect conjugation of the Spanish verb “saber” (to know). Instead of saying “no sé” (I don’t know), someone with limited Spanish proficiency might incorrectly say “no sabo.”
This phrase has evolved into a cultural term and sometimes a meme used to describe second or third generation Latinos in the United States who have limited Spanish language skills due to assimilation. The term highlights the complex language dynamics that occur through immigration and assimilation, where subsequent generations often lose fluency in their heritage language. While sometimes used pejoratively, it has also been reclaimed by many in the community.
References:
NPR. (2023, July 27). What it means to be ‘No Sabo’. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190427959/what-it-means-to-be-no-sabo
Flores, E., & Brown, M. (2023, September 16). The ‘no sabo kids’ are pushing back on Spanish-language shaming. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-no-sabo-kids-push-back-spanish-language-shaming-rcna105170
Garza, J. (2024, September 18). ‘No sabo kid’ | The history behind the term and how the new generation of Hispanics are redefining it. https://www.khou.com/article/life/people/our-story-our-history/no-sabo-kid-meaning-spanish-history-hispanics/285-43959aa3-7867-4fe5-8f0b-b532c6df6dfd