My wife is half mexican and her mother was fully hispanic from immigrant mexican parents. Nearly all my wife's cousins, aunts and uncles in Colorado are bi-lingual. But when my wife's mother came to Muskegon Michian (looking very mexican but having married my wife's very white dad) she didn't want her kids to be ostracized and thus didn't speak spanish to them. So my wife, though half mexican heritage, grew up learning no spanish at home.

I grew up in the same city and saw first hand the prejudice against hispanics in junior high and high school.