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As a social media application feature, a hashtag (#) functions as an index that catalogs and retrieves content that has been tagged with a particular word or sequence of text. Over the last couple years, the use of #NoSaboKid has proliferated across social media platforms in the United States. In its dominant use, the term expressly names a figure of U.S Latinx youth who—having been born and/or raised in the Anglophone context of the U.S.—lack linguistic competency in Spanish and are thus perceived as less authentically Latinx. Looking at the hashtag text itself, #NoSaboKid is composed of two parts. The first is the incorrect conjugation of ‘no sabo’ which emerges from the overregularization of the irregular Spanish verb saber (to know), a process that most often occurs as people learn a language. The second part of ‘Kid’ situates how perceived linguistic competency is often acquired during youth and implies that the person was born and/or raised in an Anglophone context. While overregulation occurs across linguistic contexts, the specificity of the #NoSaboKid is co-constitutive with histories of immigration from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to Anglophone countries like the United States. In the following, I offer two compelling moments from my dissertation and consider how two research participants define and experience being a #NoSaboKid.
Standing with one hand tucked into a front pants pocket and her other hand holding an iPhone, Salva poses and smiles in front of a bathroom mirror in a selfie she posted to her Instagram story during July 2023. Contrasted against the white shower curtain reflected in the mirror, her cream-colored shirt from the online shop Hija De Tu Madre spells out “NO SABO” with each letter of text varying in color and positioned above a sad face emoticon. Using the text sticker feature of Instagram stories, Salva has added the text “No Sabo Kid” and layered a short clip of audio from the 2018 song “I don’t even speak Spanish lol” by XXXTENTACION featuring Rio Santana and Judah.
In an interview with Salva, I bring up the ‘NO SABO :(’shirt and ask how she would define a #NoSaboKid. While Salva acknowledges the negative affect that popularly accompanies the #NoSaboKid designation, she instead displays enthusiasm about the designation by claiming the identity in our interview and through her stylistic choice of t-shirt. Excitedly, Salva tells me about when she got the shirt and walks over to a nearby dresser where she pulls the shirt from a drawer before giving her definition: “How I describe myself as a no sabo kid is that, I really don’t know as much, but I’m trying, like I’m really trying.”
In expanding into her own language abilities in Spanish, Salva details how her parents did not speak Spanish and so had not taught her or her sister. Yet, her desire to actively learn and improve her Spanish stemmed from wanting to be able to communicate and know her grandparents. In taking her language acquisition seriously, Salva explains how she and her sister began practicing their Spanish with one another, coworkers, grandparents, and by enrolling in Spanish classes throughout high school. As she cites examples of her improvement in speaking Spanish, she excitedly tells me about how she recently wrote a letter in Spanish to her grandfather for his birthday that caused him to become emotional and almost cry. Currently, Salva takes Spanish courses at her university, engages media in Spanish daily, and practices often with friends. These examples are underscored by my observations of her Instagram account where I often see her share graphics, memes, and songs in Spanish. Additionally, throughout our interview Salva’s linguistic practices demonstrate her capacities to understand and speak in English and Spanish. Yet, as she stated initially in her definition, Salva concludes this part of our interview with the reiterated statement that she doesn’t know that much in Spanish. I understand Salva as positioning herself as being unable to produce legitimate Spanish even as she demonstrates otherwise. This moment becomes an example of languagelessness—a theorized phenomenon by Jonathon Rosa in which Latinxs are perceived as incapable of legitimately producing English and Spanish.
In an interview with a different participant named L.A., I ask her about being a No Sabo Kid and she responds by citing a tweet she replied to from a mutual follower on Twitter/X. For the anonymity of the research participant, I will be paraphrasing the following Twitter exchange. In the initial tweet the original poster tweeted that it would be “crazy” for Hispanics that do not speak Spanish to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. L.A. responds by questioning why people shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate their heritage regardless of their language abilities and adds that Spanish is a colonial language anyways. In positioning Spanish as a tool of colonial imposition she explains in our interview that shaming someone about the way that they speak, their knowledge of a language, or lack thereof, functions only to make people feel bad about themselves and delegitimize their belonging to the Latinx community. As we continue our conversation, it also becomes clear that the logics that locate perceived subjectivity also link to the innate value afforded to subject positions as L.A. states that she has tried to avoid the designation of the #NoSaboKid by actively learning and practicing her Spanish. In reflecting on this, L.A. states:
“You kind of have to be perfect in English and Spanish, you have to be perfect at both of your cultures, and you can’t be, like, you can’t, you can’t make mistakes because that is going to be used against you, and I don’t think that’s fair.”
I ask her if it’s possible to be perfect in English and Spanish and she explains how she sees her girlfriend as speaking perfect Spanish and being “super Mexican,” articulating how language maps onto racialized categories of being. As she goes on, though, she notes that even her girlfriends’ family chastises her for saying things incorrectly in Spanish and “not being Mexican enough.” Interestingly, L.A. then expands into how being not enough is not just about speaking Spanish for her but also draws from how her family perceives her embodied stylistics and their normative gendered expectations that extend to her sexuality:
“My family like, you know, basically being like, you’re not enough, you’re not good enough, you don’t speak well enough, you don’t dress well enough, you don’t act well enough, you know, like you’re not here enough.”
As L.A. continues speaking she positions herself in opposition to these statements by stating they come from people who are hating on her. In connecting this to the #NoSaboKid, L.A. tells me that she doesn’t claim the #NoSaboKid designation because she also doesn’t want to frame herself from a place of lack. In part, I think this refusal of the designation is intertwined with her demonstrated refusal of the deficit stances her family takes on her failing to embody a proper gendered subjecthood inclusive of her sexuality. Even if L.A. was perceived bilingual in Spanish and English, our conversation illuminates that she still would not be considered authentically Mexican because of how her person, and sexuality in particular, are positioned as incompatible with Mexicanness.
Across research participants in my dissertation, there is an awareness of the #NoSaboKid—the figure emerges in shared memes, TikTok’s and Instagram reels, and metalinguistic commentary by participants. In these instances, the negative connotation of the #NoSaboKid is personally contextualized in familial histories of immigration, assimilation, and overlapping colonial contexts. I chose to write about Salva because for her the designation of the #NoSaboKid is not about lack but seeking connection: it names her experience of being born and raised in a linguistic context that impeded her ability to learn the primary language of her grandparents and thus communicate intergenerationally. In this, I am guided to approach discussions of language and diaspora as people seeking to connect across colonial fissures. With L.A., I am guided to question how legitimate language use and Latinidad are constructed in the first place and for whom authenticity always already excludes in its racializing assemblage. While the reception of the #NoSaboKid is broad, I am interested most in how the varied reception identifies, complicates, and sometimes disrupts hegemonic frameworks of belonging. As I hold these two interviews in conjunction, I see the #NoSaboKid as naming an imagined and yet real contemporary diasporic Latinx subjectivity that emerges in the consequences of overlapping colonialities. In taking a lead from Salva and L.A., I think we have to ask what becomes relationally possible in how we belong to ourselves and each other if we decenter the exclusionary framing of authenticity and instead seek to know one another in our shared and divergent histories.
Sergio Lemus and Dozandri Mendoza are section contributing editors for the Association of Latina/o & Latinx Anthropologists.