Julián Castro is a bit sensitive about the fact that he did not grow up speaking any Spanish, and only took it up recently to advance his political career.
The former secretary of Housing and Urban Development managed to squeeze out a sentence in Spanish during the first Democratic primary debate last week. Castro said his name, which was then followed up by him telling Spanish-speaking viewers that he is running for president.
That was it.
This stood in contrast to some of the other 2020 Democratic primary candidates, including Beto O’Rourke, who spoke fluent Spanish during the same debate. The contrast stood out a bit, given that Castro was the only Hispanic candidate on stage that night.
But you see, it is America’s fault that Castro is not fluent, he claims. His parents were oppressed by American culture, which pressured them into making sure he focused on learning English as a child.
“People, I think, internalized this oppression about it, and basically wanted their kids to first be able to speak English,” Castro said this weekend in an interview on MSNBC. “And I think that in my family, like a lot of other families, that the residue of that, the impact of that is that there are many folks whose Spanish is not that great.”
Castro continued, claiming has learned from experience and is making sure now that his own children learn both Spanish and English.
“But today my daughter Carina goes to a bilingual program, and she goes there with people of different backgrounds,” he said. “In other words, speaking a second language, whether it’s Spanish or another language, is celebrated today as something that we should admire and something that will help you maybe get — get paid more at your job and you know, is useful.”
Castro added, “That also is a sign of progress. I’m proud to live in a country where we’ve made that kind of progress in just a generation or two.”
But the whitest Democrat of them all was on that debate stage last Wednesday night, and he spoke fluent Spanish. If O’Rourke can do it, why can’t Castro? No amount of amateur culture analysis can erase the fact Castro is a grown man who can learn a language he didn’t grow up with as well as his Democratic counterparts.
The guy is 44 years old and hardly in a position to blame his parents — or America, for that matter.
