Politics Legislating Language
Headline: Senate supports English as U.S. national language. (Cantwell and Murray voted no, but Dems from Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Delaware voted for it. No Republicans voted against it, making headlines like Immigration tears Republicans in two a little harder to get excited about.)
Under the Republican proposal, the federal government is directed to “preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America.” It does not go as far as proposals to designate English the country’s official language, which would require all government publications and business to be in English.
Instead, it says government services and publications now offered in other languages would be unaffected. But the proposal declares that no one has “a right, entitlement, or claim to have the government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services or provide materials in any language other than English.”
Of course, the jingoist insist, anointing a “national language” is just a symbolic gesture—and that’s the fucking problem. It’s an cultural strike against pluralism that stokes the cultural fire against immigrants (a racist movement, even if the legislation supporting it technically isn’t; see this guy), it acclimates voters to more xenophobic and statist legislation in the future, and it’s a fucking stupid waste of time and energy. A state cannot legislate language. (See Ireland, Spain, the former Soviet Union, and the dozens of other countries where the fortunes of minority languages rise and fall independently of legislative attempts to either preserve or destroy them.) It can, however, burn economic and political capital trying to.
Let’s hope the Republicans are shooting themselves in the collective hoof. And that the speculation about conservative Latino voters abandoning the Republicans isn’t just a pleasant liberal fantasy.
This is nothing more than racism. First, lets review our history. Parts of the United States actually were Mexico. People spoke Spanish there before it even became the United States. Has everyone forgotten that France, Spain, and Great Britain all owned large swaths of territory in his country? Of course, for many years, the United States had no official language. The idea that we have no official language was meant to reflect the multilingualism and the diversity of heritages in this country. Can someone from Canada please explain the idea of bilingualism?
This is nothing less than racism. And this is why: because you are targeting a specific ethnic/cultural group. Because over and over again, the rhetoric is aimed at people from Mexico and Central America. Thirty people from China were found in a cargo container last month after arriving the Port of Seattle. But I didnt hear anyone complain. But one Mexican person crosses the border and everyone gets their panties in a wad.
Look. Im not denying there is a serious immigration problem in this country. Im for neither blanket amnesty nor shipping everyone off. But we are a country of immigrants, we always have been. But the truth is, we have always hated immigrants in this country. The Japanese Internment anyone? Remember "Irish need not apply"? Yes, people should be encouraged to speak English, its the language the vast majority of people speak in this country and its the language that all communications are conducted in. But a bill like this is nothing more than racism, it denies the multicultural history of his country, not only the people who built this country from the politician to the anonymous laborers, but the history that created the geographic boundaries of this country.