Stick with me folks, this is eventually going to come down to language.
So yesterday, here in Chicago, we had our municipal election. Had to elect a new Mare (that’s how mayor is pronounced in Chicago), every alderman and a couple other city posts, among them, City Clerk.
The scramble to the ballot started close on the heels of da Mare, Richard M. Daley (the younger)’s announcement that he would not seek a record 7th term as Mare of this great city of Chicago
By now, probably everybody knows da next Mare is Rahm Emanuel. Out of a field of approximately 1gzillion candidates, in the end, the few (turnout, about 40%) the proud (just about every Chicagoan) and the brave (just try and make it through a February like we’ve had this year) had five candidates from whom to choose.
It was an interesting group of folks running for the job. Two African American women, the first, former US Senator from Illinois Carol Moseley Braun; a nice kinda nondescript Anglo Saxon sounding name. There was a second African American woman, Patricia van Pelt-Watkins. Without seeing a picture of her, that name would never make you guess a African American woman was carrying it around. Criminy. Tall, white as the background of this diary, Dutch me could have had the first of her two last names. Again, pretty Anglo Saxonish sounding. Then there was Rahm Emanuel. If his reputation had not preceded him, that name would probably leave a lot of people scratching their heads. Everybody pronounced that one right, oh he of white skin. There was Mr. William Walls, with yet another Anglo sounding name. Gery Chico comes next, and his surname pretty much pegs him as Latino (although his mom was/is of Greek descent). But, Chico only has 5 letters, so, it was pretty easy to get the pronunciation of that correct: ChEEko (not Chico, rhymes with sicko).
Pulling up the rear in this litany of Chicago’s mayoral candidates, is soon-to-be former City Clerk Miguel del Valle. There’s pretty much no mistaking that Mr. del Valle’s roots are from some Spanish speaking location or another.
Here in Chicago, we’ve had Miguel del Valle to ‘kick around’ for a really long time. He’s a perennial name in Chicago and Illinois politics. He was a state senator from 1987–2006, and has been City Clerk since 2006; his term expiring in May when the newly elected Clerk will replace him. That’s 24 years in the eye of Chicago politics.
I don’t watch TV much, but last night, as I engaged in my obsessive habit of election results watching, I streamed some local news stations’ live coverage of the election.
Over the course of the evening, between local TV and Chicago public radio, I spose I listened to or watched 3-4 local stations.
Not a single reporter, or anchor, managed to pronounce Mr. del Valle’s very Hispanic sounding name correctly.
Here, let me help those who wouldn’t know either: MeeGEL dehl VAHye. Pretty much everyone in a city with a moderate to large Latino population knows that double ll sounds (more or less) like y, right? Everybody knows they’re tortEEyas, not tortilas. It’s only five syllables that comprise the name of this well-known Illinois politician. MeeGEL dehl VAHye. Really, not all that hard.
No news person got it right. Not one. The consensus mispronunciation was “MeeGEL de Vallyea”.
Seriously? We can pronounce Muammar Gaddafi; we can spit out Hosni Mubarak with nary a slip of the tongue, but we cannot pronounce Miguel del Valle in a way that translates to just a tad; just a teeny tiny modicum of respect for a candidate who has been in the news for 5 straight months as he ran for Mare of the country’s 3rd largest city? We can find the energy to learn how to pronounce the names of murderous despots, but not a respected local politician? Really?
What does that do but put into unmistakable sound bites, the reality that people who are ostensibly trusted to provide news coverage, have so little respect for a person who has dedicated his entire adult life to serving the people of this city and state that they cannot even be arsed to get his easy-to-pronounce Hispanic name fucking right.
MeeGel dehl VAHye was not my candidate. But my blood pressure was spiking up and down last night at this demonstration of such rank disrespect for a brown skinned, honorable public servant who just happens to have his roots in Puerto Rico. And there, in a little politico-linguistic nutshell, is what is wrong with the ‘majority’s’ relationship with people of brown skin and Latino name in this country.
Shame.