Hilaria Baldwin pretended to be Spanish wtf?!

[Ballstothis148]

This is the least important and most weird story of 2020.... this woman comes up on my Instagram a lot as a suggested page. Tbh I don’t find her interesting but know she’s Spanish and is into health, having babies with Alec Baldwin and that’s pretty much it. She speaks with a Spanish accent, on her IG page she calls her children “Baldwinitos” I do remember an article saying when she speaks Spanish to her kids people confuse her for a nanny so I thought an interesting take on a European mum in the States.

Except it’s all a lie. She’s not remotely Spanish. Her wealthy Boston parents (no Spanish ancestry) now have a holiday home there.

What is wrong with people?! I include me for being too interested :) why pretend to be Spanish? In one interview she even pretended she didn’t know the word for cucumber as her English isn’t that good

Oh and she’s not even called Hilaria, she’s called Hilary. This year I swear... what an odd story!! I did know a girl who went very French after a romance there one year... maybe it’s a thing!

I'm not sure why there's any debate. She has no Spanish ancestry and told blatant lies about being born in Spain and not moving to the US until she was 19. She's simply a liar who has been exposed. She hasn't murdered anyone though so people should just unfollow her and move on.

I have just watched an interesting video of some clips of her talking about herself, she says something along the lines of "I've always been a Zara fan, even before I was in this country (USA)"

don't really have an issue with people appropriating parts of their distant heritage or whatever really but am glad someone has called out Obama, not that I have any issue with him either but in the past there seems to have been a double standard with this appropriation thing, which is daft because it seems that all ethnic group do it

Wait - outed Obama?

Hmm, a Boston accent (Lloyd Grosmann?) can be an assault on the ears. Hilaria-us.

Wait. I'm old and finding modernity hard to grasp. It's bad, wrong, patronising , other bad things to culturally appropriate hair, clothes, recipes, assorted epithets and so on but, according to some on here, it's fine to hijack another nationality

Oh bugger. Half a post. Please ignore.

I wouldn’t call Lloyd Grossman’s accent Bostonian - just weird. JFK had a Bostonian accent, and Good Will Hunting had a fair few (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are from there).

Americans identifying with a distant ethnicity may be strange to those not from there, but people need to understand that the US is a county where nobody is truly native except the Native American. The history of the US is based on immigration and groups usually clumped together when they arrived and their American identity was linked with their countries of origin. Go to NYC and you will have a myriad of enclaves based on ethnicity. Even as these backgrounds got mixed and people moved away from the original enclaves, the countries of origin hold a nostalgia and a basis of identity for many even if it is just a talking point.

To pp saying about Americans thinking clan rivalry is still a thing etc. My ex (British Scottish, not American) used to carry on as though this was still a thing too. Some men (never known women go in for this behaviour as men do) do still act quite tribal about these things.

I'm really not getting the white girl thing. Even if Americans believe Sputh Americans are not white surely they know a Spanish person is a white European? Do they think Greeks and Italians are also not white? Totally confused

@gottakeeponmovin

I'm really not getting the white girl thing. Even if Americans believe Sputh Americans are not white surely they know a Spanish person is a white European? Do they think Greeks and Italians are also not white? Totally confused

Well they aren’t WASPs.

More than a few Americans don’t know that Spain is in Europe. They probably think it’s somewhere in Mexico.
On a different note, I doubt anyone her age brought up in Spain would use the name Hilaria by choice when in Spain...

Well it is not surprising that they dont see spain through a clear lens. It would be rare for them to have been to spain.

Spanish names sound like "staff" to them.
Made up awful names like Hoyt /mckenzie sound a bit upmarket to them, bit mayflower, bit protestant. Harper or Carter for a girl to my European ear sound dreadful but Americans find them WASPy and rich. Names like Julia or Lidia might sound like staff to Americans.
This is a generalisation of course.

This is just one example (naming) that shows how American view of Spain and European view of Spain differ.

Hilaria had a European view and idealisation of Spain!

Yep right down to the flamenco fans

I saw a 'kinnidee' earlier.

@NotPrude

To those who call it jealousy, grow up and stop being so silly. Just because your lives may be dull doesn’t meant everyone else’s is.

I’m very happy with my life and what I have. Neither DH and I are left wanting for anything because we’re both very very privileged in our lives, career and home. I also wouldn’t change a thing about how I look.

Yet I think what she has done is disgusting and shameful. Being an ethnic minority and having immigrant parents, it is absolutely immoral for her to capitalise on being Spanish in order to advance her career. We don’t get the option of picking to choose to be white one day or a minority another day. We are different as society regularly reminds us we’re different. We go through life being ostracised for looking different, speaking different, eating different foods, etc. What she has done is taken what she sees as the positive side of being an immigrant (the sexy Spanish lady) but not dealt with the prejudices that come with that. That is harmful and a slap in the face for real immigrants who face prejudices on a daily basis.

That point is lost on so many of you because you feel the need to push the narrative that she’s a victim of a witch hunt. She lied, she manipulated her fame, and now she’s been found out. She brought it on herself.

This

theundefeated.com/features/white-immigrants-werent-always-considered-white-and-acceptable/

No it has always been the case and still is that White in US means northern European, not Southern Europeans. Spanish people are considered to be non-white.

The only comparison we have in UK is to imagine that Hilaria had portrayed herself as mixed race. That's what it's like for people in US and why they are unhappy.

For us it is sheer bizarre madness, but for US it has much wider implications particularly if you're married to loud mouth Alec Baldwin who appears to have one eye on a politics career. We feel it must be embarrassing for them and it's rather funny - living like Manuel; however, in US it really is rather a shameful lie to have lived.

The article above shows it from a black person's point of view - the non-white (not northern European) appropriated whiteness via being racist against black people and doesn't really touch on that these "non-white" Europeans are still NOT considered white. That's why Hilaria's defence is saying "there are a lot of white people in Europe". Sounds mad to us, but that's her defence for lying.....

I no longer know what a minority group is. Are we talking globally or nationally? I would never have called a European Spanish individual a minority group. Surely they are just Spanish. Equally are Italians also a minority group? So who is a majority group? White people. But who is classed as white now? Does it come down to tone of skin only or do we need to look at heritage also?

This is the problem - people hearing news from another country, but only applying their own experience - (why we kept hearing about "jealousy" from dimwits too).

If we want to understand why this is a problem in the US, you need to understand US politics and culture to at least a small degree.

No-one is saying Spanish people are this or that. What we are saying is that in the US these is a history of prejudices which are not anything we will understand unless willing to look a bit deeper.

Historically, European Spanish people are non-white in US - it's not that difficult to understand.

People saying they've never heard of only northern Europeans historically classed as White in US - have you heard of the Indian caste system ? Have a look at the way Brazil categorizes whiteness is a whole mad world to delve into.

Hilaria is American - born and bred - and for her she would understand 100% the connotations of saying you're Spanish. Lots of people in UK clearly don't seem to understand how offensive that would be to Hispanic people in US - however, it is and Hilaria knew this.

Have a look at the way Brazil categorizes whiteness is a whole mad world to delve into

How does Brazil categorize whiteness?

If we want to understand why this is a problem in the US, you need to understand US politics and culture to at least a small degree.

No-one is saying Spanish people are this or that. What we are saying is that in the US these is a history of prejudices which are not anything we will understand unless willing to look a bit deeper.

Historically, European Spanish people are non-white in US - it's not that difficult to understand.

Actually that is hugely difficult to understand. Why on earth would Spanish/or any Europeans be classed as non-white. It doesn't make any sense

People saying they've never heard of only northern Europeans historically classed as White in US - have you heard of the Indian caste system ? Have a look at the way Brazil categorizes whiteness is a whole mad world to delve into.

No not heard of it, yes it does sound mad, and all tied up in US identity politcs, but what's it got to do with Hilaria and Spain anyway? She and Spain aren't Indian or Brazilian. She was pretending to be Spanish

Hilaria is American - born and bred - and for her she would understand 100% the connotations of saying you're Spanish.
Lots of people in UK clearly don't seem to understand how offensive that would be to Hispanic people in US - however, it is and Hilaria knew this

Why would sayng you're Spanish be offensive to Hispanic people? I'm honestly baffled by all this American categorising and labelling that seems to cause so much offence. I get that some Spanish might be offended, although I doubt it, they're probably just amused by it all and would laugh it off, but why would "Hispanic" people be offended?

Historically, European Spanish people are non-white in US - it's not that difficult to understand.

Actually that is hugely difficult to understand. Why on earth would Spanish/or any Europeans be classed as non-white. It doesn't make any sense

Of course it does. If power resides with Protestant Americans from Northern European roots (which it did - think of the roots of the founding fathers, the DAR etc) then any people not from that ancestry are immediately lesser. As in the UK Catholics were discriminated against - it was a huge deal when Kennedy won.

Why would sayng you're Spanish be offensive to Hispanic people? I'm honestly baffled by all this American categorising and labelling that seems to cause so much offence. I get that some Spanish might be offended, although I doubt it, they're probably just amused by it all and would laugh it off, but why would "Hispanic" people be offended?

Because by pretending to be Spanish she implied she was Hispanic. The white privately educated girl has appropriated their culture.

Actually that is hugely difficult to understand. Why on earth would Spanish/or any Europeans be classed as non-white. It doesn't make any sense.

The issue of how whiteness is socially and legally constructed and maintained is incredibly complex and fascinating (at least I find it fascinating) but probably beyond the limits of this thread, as meandering as it's already been.

The most basic explanation is that the US has a huge number of Spanish-speaking/Hispanic immigrants (from either Mexico, or countries in central or South America) who historically and currently suffer a great deal of oppression and racial discrimination. "Whiteness" is strictly controlled in the US, both legally and culturally (why they have things like the One Drop law, how Irish people weren't considered white, and why the US Supreme Court has heard cases to decide whether a person - and many of these cases have been Hispanic people - is legally white or not.) There are relatively few people immigrating from Spain to the US, so in America the assumption is that anyone who speaks Spanish as their first language is Hispanic and from a country in the Americas. The average American is not going to see a dark-haired person speaking Spanish and assume she might be white European from Spain because that's just a level of subtlety and nuance that most people don't go into.

Of course it does. If power resides with Protestant Americans from Northern European roots (which it did - think of the roots of the founding fathers, the DAR etc) then any people not from that ancestry are immediately lesser. As in the UK Catholics were discriminated against - it was a huge deal when Kennedy won.

The founding fathers was almost 300 years ago. I don't understand what relevance it had now or even what their religion was. When America was founded, people were given the freedom to practice whatever religion they wanted. Why would someone be considered "lesser"? Aren't most Black people in the USA of a Protestant, though Nonconformist, religious background anyway?

English Catholics were denied certain rights, not many that would have mattered much to your everyday English labourer anyway, but that was centuries ago too.

Because by pretending to be Spanish she implied she was Hispanic. The white privately educated girl has appropriated their culture

Don't people in America know the difference between "Hispanic", I'm not sure, what that means tbh, and someone from Spain? In Hilaria's head, for whatever reason, she is Spanish not Hispanic and she made that clear. Or am I missing something