Photo: Crunchy Pickle
Along with the immigration debate there is also a national discussion about speaking, learning and teaching “English only”. The Senate, last week, voted to endorse English as a “common and unifying language.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) endorsed the attempt to declare English the national language, a campaign he said began more than a century ago. He quoted President Theodore Roosevelt as having said that among other things, those living in the United States “must also learn one language and that language is English.”
But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said,
“I really believe this amendment is racist. I think it’s directed basically to people who speak Spanish.”
Proponents of mandatory English say it will lead to greater assimilation of recent immigrants. They also think it will help unify our nation by keeping us all under one mother tongue.
There is one interesting point that never seems to enter the English only debate: Most black Americans only speak English, and have done so for over 400 years since they arrived here in chains. They are monolingual for the most part, and read, write and converse in English.
How has their monolingualism helped them economically, socially or in the effort to reach the top? Poorly. In fact, the lack of an ability to speak in a few different tongues is evidence not of national unity, but of educational deficiency.
I have friends in Switzerland who speak English, Swiss-German, French and Mandarin. There are Japanese conversant in English and Brazilians who speak Spanish. Most nations around the world do not require the use of one language by law, but rather the citizens learn to speak in many languages to communicate with other human beings.
Sure it annoys me to not be able to converse in Spanish when I’m oftentimes surrounded by Spanish speakers. But why should I require them to unlearn another language in attempt to make them speak my tongue? They will learn the language(s) that they need in order to succeed. And if they only learn one language, chances are greater that they will remain unsuccessful.
That’s an educational choice for individuals, not politicians, to make.
Here in Van Nuys 
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Monolingualism also helps America regress further culturally economically and socially.
By “helps,” I mean facilitates. Such a law does not help America, “help” in the sense of aiding in the betterment of society.
I understand the motivations behind the people pushing an English-only law. They can’t see the forest for the trees and realize that using racism and white identity politics to postpone the November 2006 backlash against neocon politics is only going to lead to the decline, collapse and putrefaction of America.
In “Pools for Clowns,” I struck something of a nerve by comparing exorbitant pool-building to national collapse through the logic of chaos theory. This is another sign, abeit small, that America is an SUV about to head over a cliff while the driver has a Big Mac in one hand, his penis in the other and is talking to a collection agency representative on a Bluetooth headset.
Anglo-imperialism has already forced much of the world to speak English, as the wealthy nations of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand speak it, and it’s prudent to speak the language of your trading party. Also, the flow of popular culture (music, moviesm, literature, etc.) has been overwhelmingly one-sided, so much of the world that consumes English-language pop culture understands it better than Anglophones with other foreign languages. English also is the prevailing language of navigation and aviation. More importantly, English is also the language of the computer and the internet. The tool that has “flattened the world,” as Thomas Friedman likes to tout, has parties communicating to one another in English. Second, programming languages are written with English syntax. Regardless of where computer work is being outsourced, those programmers are going to learn English to write the code.
This is a double-edged sword. This has meant that poorer parts of the world have one advantage over Anglophones: the ability to speak more than one language. This is what enables outsourcing.
And what about the in-sourcing that America does? You know, the scourge of immigrant hordes? Well, the English-only law is not going to do what people aren’t doing right now anyway. Go to any ethnic neighborhood. In L.A., we have the luxury of having at least one for nearly every ethnicity in the world, so it’s not much of a reach. You’ll see offers for ESL education everywhere. High schools double as night schools. Community colleges offer them at every time of the day. Private tutors abound, and there are even ESL classes held in restaurants and private homes.
No immigrant needs to be threatened to learn English. They are already doing it out of necessity, or even they are enlightened enough to respect the culture of their adopted home and choose to learn it and even embrace it.
Conversely, do you see any reciprocal efforts by the archetypal white American? No, and the dance around the English maypole is right up their alley. In a vain attempt to try to decouple its inherent racism, English-only laws invoke “culture.” Culture? Only imbeciles and Americans buy that.
More often than not, immigrants understand American culture better than Americans. And, to add insult to injury, immigrants represent America the ideal, the PR slogan of the land of freedom and opportunity. If it weren’t for immigrants, America is the nation of people other countries had over as tourists.
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