RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Boxer’s crack about not speaking Spanish was a low blow

The upcoming mega-fight between Ryan Garcia and Gervonta Davis — two undefeated lightweight boxers and knockout artists — has gotten personal.

The opening bell for the Saturday match hasn’t even rung, and already Davis, who is African American, has hit Garcia, a Mexican American, with a cheap shot.

At a recent news conference, Davis declared, “I love my Mexican fans!” Then he engaged in a little cultural appropriation. “Tacos are definitely my favorite Mexican food,” he said.

No harm, no foul. Then came the offensive part.

By the way, Davis claimed, Garcia is “not Mexican, really” because he was born in Los Angeles. “How can (Ryan) consider himself Mexican if he doesn’t speak any Spanish?” Davis snarked.

Talk about a low blow. That jab will reverberate across the Southwest. That’s where you’ll find most of the 40 million Mexican Americans in the United States, inhabiting a region once owned by Mexico. For that tribe, my tribe, saying someone isn’t a real Mexican because he doesn’t speak Spanish amounts to fighting words.

For me, this exercise of assessing ethnic authenticity summons bad memories. As a Mexican American who attended a predominantly white university, I have long been plagued by cultural insecurities. It feels like I spent half my time in college accusing Mexican American classmates of not being “Mexican enough” and the other half being told the same thing by other Mexican American classmates. And when you’re on the attack, you look for soft spots where your opponent is vulnerable — like the fact that he has forsaken the language of his ancestors.

I’ve always wanted to speak better Spanish, my grandparents’ native language. My accent is fine, but I need a larger vocabulary. I think in English — and then translate whatever I’m thinking into Spanish.

A Cuban American friend told me recently that he does the same thing and that he gets stuck when he talks his way into what he called a “language cul-de-sac.”

Garcia may not speak Spanish, but he understands it. His parents were, like him, born in the United States. But his grandparents hail from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, according to the sports site Marca.com. Garcia’s father, Henry, is fluent in Spanish.

Davis’ crack about Ryan not speaking Spanish clearly bothered the patriarch.

“We are Mexican, my parents are from Nuevo Leon,” Henry emphatically told reporters. “In boxing, they know (Ryan) is Mexican. If he doesn’t speak (Spanish) well, OK, what can we do? But in boxing, there is no language. Just punching. That’s how you talk in the ring.”

If any of this sounds familiar, then you’re probably accustomed to closely following another blood sport: politics. As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Julián Castro, a former U.S. housing secretary, went through his own version of the Spanish inquisition. He was chided by white liberals in the media for not speaking well the language of his ancestors.

At the time, Castro pushed back. He told a writer for New York magazine that his critics didn’t “understand the reality of the Latino community in the United States” — a stew of English-dominant, Spanish-dominant and bilingual individuals. Also, Castro noted, “it’s the common experience of people … whether they came over from Germany a long time ago, or Italy … second-generation Americans who might not be quite as fluent … in the mother tongue, but of course are still proud of their background.”

Castro — a friend of mine for more than 20 years — was correct on all counts. Do we say that Italian Americans are less “Italian” if they don’t speak the language of the old country? Of course not.

The same goes for German Americans and Chinese Americans.

Only Mexican Americans, it seems, have to pass this ethnic purity test. That’s offensive and stereotypical. Some might even call it racist.

That’s an appropriate charge. It was racism that helped bring us to this point. Earlier generations of Mexican Americans were, in public schools, punished for speaking Spanish. And so they grew up to raise their children to speak only English. Our parents were told to master English, and now we’re criticized for not speaking Spanish.

It’s no wonder so many members of my tribe — Ryan Garcia and his family included — consider language to be such a touchy subject. It should be hands off.

Tread lightly. Or, like Gervonta Davis, you’ll be in for one helluva fight.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.