'Hilaria' Baldwin’s white privilege: The rest of us can't pick our accent or skin color.
Entitled is the right word for Boston native 'Hilaria' Baldwin, who deceptively pretends to be Spanish. She has choices. People of color like me do not.
When I was a kid, my peers would make fun of me for looking different from my parents (I’m adopted.) They would make fun of my “slanted eyes” (I’m South Korean).
To this day, the garbage dumpster that is MAGA Twitter will tell me to “go back to China” when they disagree with my political commentary.
Like any person of color, I didn’t get to choose the color of my skin or the shape of my eyes. I was born this way. Everyday we see people of color navigate the challenges of being a person of color in an increasingly fragmented country, where the echoes of white nationalism are broadcast constantly by the outgoing occupant of the Oval Office.
So when Boston native Hillary Baldwin masquerades as a native Spaniard called “Hilaria,” it is a disgusting combination of white privilege and cultural appropriation.
Baldwin's bald lies about her heritage
In a recent interview with The New York Times’ Katherine Rosman, Hillary would not concede that she has done anything wrong. Her husband blamed the entire controversy on society’s “ravenous appetite for scandal,” and she said she wasn’t hurting anyone with her deception. She remains without remorse, defiant, proclaiming, “I am entitled to my privacy.”
Entitled sure is the right word.
What’s so offensive about Hillary’s charade is her complete ignorance about what life is like for immigrants and people of color in this country. This might come as a shock to Mrs. Baldwin, but they are not afforded the luxury of choosing their heritage. It seems as if the reality of the world today has not penetrated Hillary’s bubble of privilege.
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According to a United Nations report, hate crimes against Asian Americans reached an “alarming level” across the United States in 2020. The FBI reported in November that hate crimes rose to their highest level in more than a decade. People of color are at a disproportionately higher risk of being harmed by law enforcement than the “Hillarys” of the world. And there was that time a bunch of white folks with tiki torches marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Baldwin's deception is tone deaf
Hillary claims that people are “confused” and are “misrepresenting” her. All due respect, we aren’t the ones pretending not to know the English word for “cucumber.” We aren’t the ones who decided to change our names to sound more ethnic, more than two decades into our lives. We aren’t the ones who change our accent every time we are on television.
There are plenty of people in this country who speak with accents, who were born somewhere else and came here for a better way of life. The melting pot that is the United States of America is at the heart of what makes our country truly great. Real immigrants are the backbone of our lives and the very foundation of our national identity. They are communities of grit, heart, passion and courage. They are proud of their heritage and home. They live lives of honesty and decency.
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Hillary suggests she isn’t hurting anybody with her deceptions. That might very well be true, but they are incredibly tone deaf and disrespectful when you consider the cultural context we find ourselves navigating in the here and now. She can romanticize what it means to be from a different culture. She can learn the language and give her children more ethnic-sounding names. But neither she nor her children will have to confront the other side of being nonwhite or nonnative in America. They will never be profiled or stereotyped because of their accents or physical attributes. They will not be taunted with racial tropes or have their potential handicapped by ignorance and intolerance.
Ultimately, how Hillary Baldwin handles this going forward is her choice, and that’s the point I’m trying to make. She has choices, the rest of us don’t.
Kurt Bardella, a member of Paste BN’s Board of Contributors and a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, was senior adviser for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans from 2009-13. Follow him on Twitter: @KurtBardella