Last year, The Economist reported that a bilingual Arizona reporter faced a backlash, with viewers complaining that her pronunciation of Spanish names was “overly Spanish.”

The pressure to suppress fluency in a second language has been great in the modern United States, particularly among conservatives in the political sphere. John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor, has pointed out that in early U.S. history, presidents were expected to have mastered French, but more recently bilingualism has been seen as a liability in U.S. politics. McWhorter says the reasons for this disdain have varied depending on which language is in question.