Pinche Gabachos, they can be Americans the minute they get here from across the ocean. Still, people like me can never be an American, because the Gabachos say we ain’t white enough to be American.
I can prove that great-grandparents were in the census in 1860, that they were born in what is now Texas before it became Texas, and yet I have always been a Mexican-American, or a Hispanic, or Latino. I have to choose my ethnicity, but those pinche Gabachos decide that people like me can never be as American as they are.
In my almost eighty years of existence, I have never seen a census that asked the Gabachos if they were Norwegian, British, German, etc. Americans. The Gabachos do that so that they can make sure that people know that we are different than them, not as good, not as clean, not as smart, etc.
Yet we have a Gabacho attacking an American woman because he claims that she does not love America first. He makes that claim due to his ignorance, having not bothered to learn the facts first.
But the outrage stems from an apparent mistranslation by right-wing news site The Blaze, which reported that Ramirez said: “I’m a proud Guatemalan, before I’m an American.”
A video of the event shows Ramirez, who began her speech in English, saying she wanted to conclude her remarks with a few words in Spanish (“...quiero terminar diciendo unas palabras en español…”), because she is “very proudly Guatemalan” (“...porque yo soy guatemalteca con mucho orgullo…”). But, she continues, “Primero que soy americana”—which translates roughly to “First, I am American.”
Like most Americans, my ancestors immigrated to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their future families. Six out of eight of my great-grandparents came from Norway. I grew up very aware of that heritage, with some Norwegian traditions passed down through the generations.
Yet, neither my parents – nor my grandparents, who were first-generation Americans – have ever referred to themselves as Norwegian Americans. They are Americans. And they’re proud of it.
