Hilaria Baldwin’s Fake Spanish Accent Is Beyond Problematic

Many of us thought the controversy around Hilaria Baldwin's “Spanish” roots was over. But she returned to the spotlight this week when her reality show, “The Baldwins,” with husband Alec Baldwin, premiered on TLC. In it, Baldwin addresses criticisms of her Spanish accent — she says the controversy put her in “very dark” places.

However, there have been very few consequences for Baldwin, a white, American-raised woman who was known as “Hillary” until 2009, according to The New York Times. She, like my mother, was born in Boston, MA, a city known for its deep patriotism because of the part it played during the American Revolution. But Baldwin's phenotype has positioned her in a space entirely different from my mother, who was born much darker. While my Puerto Rican and Dominican mom learned to hide her culture (learning when and where to speak Spanish), Baldwin has capitalized on her proximity to Spanish culture.

Since the conversation resurfaced, I've been reflecting on how America seems comfortable with immigrants — just so long as they're wealthy and white. As Latines, our identities are often policed by people outside of our communities. Baldwin, meanwhile, is cosplaying the immigrant experience while many fight tooth and nail to defend their right to exist here during mass deportations. She pretends to forget how to say the word cucumber (feigning that her English isn't strong) to stand out among the crowd of whiteness. Even in 2025, we still find ourselves having to fight off extremely harmful stereotypes by people who have the privilege (and audacity) to move in and out of spaces freely and with impunity. Lest we forget, this woman claims to be whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She gets to be perceived as “unique” among other white people.

So many people today have strong opinions about immigrants' rights, and ironically, the loudest voices often come from Americans whose ancestry traces back to the original pilgrims. It's astonishing how easily Baldwin has been dismissed as someone “who didn't know better” or someone who just told a “white lie.” But as immigration policies take center stage in US politics, it's clear: America is only uncomfortable with immigration when it involves Black, Brown, impoverished, and truly vulnerable people.

In 2018, the Baldwins were on the cover of Hola! USA!, and her CAA speaker's biography still incorrectly stated that she was born in Mallorca, Spain. (She says that she was raised in both Boston and Spain.) Meanwhile, my mother has struggled to make those kinds of waves in her career as an entertainer precisely because she's a Latina in the comedy space — an industry, much like America, very much dominated by white men. For Baldwin to say that she didn't even read the articles that she was featured in is a slap in the face to those Black and Brown Latines who work tirelessly to be recognized by the press. This, to me, points to her level of privilege, which is only doubled by the fact that she pretends to be Spanish, which is not to be confused with Latine. Quick history lesson: The Spanish are Europeans, who wreaked havoc on the communities now known as being part of the Latine diaspora.

Baldwin's privilege doesn't stop there; she says she's teaching her kids Spanish at home. Meanwhile, for years, Spanish-speaking immigrants have feared teaching their kids their native tongue to avoid discrimination. When we show that we know more than one language, we are told to speak English or to go back to our country. I'm Puerto Rican, and while Baldwin feels emboldened to show pride in Spain, laws were passed banning us from having pride in the places we came from. Ultimately, Baldwin exemplifies something that has been happening my whole life — white people want to have proximity and ownership over the cultures that they claim to despise. They continuously fight to have the right to “culture” that isn't their own, whether that's Black culture, Latine culture, Asian culture, Indigenous culture, or any othered culture.

My relationship to Blackness and being more than Black is something else entirely — it's shrouded in shame and anti-Blackness. When white people say that they are more than just white, it has always come off to me that they are comfortable embracing aspects of our cultures — our food, our music, our style, our celebrities, and in some cases, even our beauty trends and features, because it does not carry the same consequences for them as it does for us.

Now, Baldwin was not claiming to be more than Spanish (even if she has taken that back), which, to reiterate, is European. But in today's political climate that has rolled back DEI programs (which have historically helped white women the most, by the way), as much as I would like to laugh off what she's doing, we all need to be looking at these issues more deeply. While US citizens in states like Texas have to carry around their birth certificates to prove their right to exist here and Trump says that he wants to make every one of us prove our citizenship to vote, Hilaria's weird impersonation of an immigrant matters. The president wants to remove birthright citizenship from those who are American-born. This is a dangerous time for Baldwin to be dancing around with a fake accent and a pretend lineage so that she can claim to be “multicultural.”

Let's call what's happening in the US what is: racial profiling. It makes me call upon a lyric in Disney's Pocahontas when she sings to John Smith, “You think the only people who are people are the people who think and look like you.” I don't think we can put aside the fact that her name is Hillary, and she has decided to go by Hilaria — evoking the English word hilarious. But this isn't a laughing matter. While Baldwin can sidestep the issue of immigration, so many Black and Brown people are facing the reality that a lot of white Americans want to see them deported.

Akaylah Ellison is a screenwriter whose storytelling blends the poetic and long-form narratives. Believing that empathy is a writer's greatest asset, Akaylah creates characters who voice fringe realities and encourage people from different walks of life to connect with them emotionally. Akaylah wants to create content that reflects her real world, which is a blend of people from all backgrounds who coexist without explaining who they are and who never apologize for it.