Anna Paulina Luna: Spanish Speakers Think Hispanics are "Too Stupid" to "Know" English
During a 2019 episode of The Yard Sign podcast, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said those who speak Spanish to Hispanic Americans think they are “too stupid” to learn English. Luna also compared doing so to speaking “Kenyan” to Black people.
Anna Paulina Luna:
“We speak English first of all. I was trying to explain this to someone. I was like for outreach why would you, like you don’t go up to someone who is Black and start speaking Kenyan to them. You know what I’m saying? So why would you automatically go up to someone who is born in the United States and start speaking Spanish as if they’re too stupid to know their own language that we assimilated into? It’s our country too.”
Perhaps Anna Paulina Luna was giving us a preview of the new Florida curriculum. Let’s correct it. Kenyan isn’t a language. The official languages of Kenya are Swahili and English. The institution of slavery in the United States obliterated the language and culture of enslaved peoples from Africa. Kenya is not one of the African countries enslaved people were taken from.
Despite what Anna Paulina Luna seems to believe, the United States doesn’t have an official language. Even so, Spanish has been spoken on the continent longer than English has and indigenous languages much longer. Despite what Luna implied, those who are “born in the United States” but don’t speak English aren’t “too stupid” to learn anything they choose to.
In 2020, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna was interviewed by Jorge Ramos in English for Univision Noticias, a Spanish language news show. The interview was overdubbed in Spanish for broadcast. Prior to being elected to Congress, Luna was the Hispanic Outreach Director for Turning Point USA
