“Te miraban como si tenías una enfermedad”

The present investigation examines Spanish-speaking Latinos’ experiences speaking Spanish in public spaces in the Upstate of South Carolina through a racio­linguistic perspective. Forty-one Spanish-speaking Latinos participated in semi-structured, quasi-sociolinguistic interviews, responding to questions about the nature of their encounters when speaking Spanish in public and, if roles were reversed, how they would react if non-native speakers (NNSs) engaged in Spanish with them. Multi-grounded theory methodology was applied to the analysis of the qualitative data. While participants recounted a range of experiences, they mostly cited negative reactions toward their use of Spanish. Participants were subjected to discriminatory remarks, received “weird looks” — or the literal white gaze, — and commonly used race-related terms when sharing their stories of speaking Spanish in public, corroborating the co-naturalization of race and language. Nevertheless, participants expressed overall positive reactions if NNSs were to speak the language with them, but only if NNSs’ intentions were sincere.