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THE ILLUSION OF THE DEFINITE & INVASIVE 'OTHER' SEVEN LIES THAT INFORM THE PUSH FOR AN ENGLISH-ONLY UNITED STATES 25 May 2006 The human space is fluid, adaptable, sensitive to evolving circumstance. This is why democracy is the only legitimate form of government. The identity of groups, or for that matter of individuals is not implacable, nor is it absolutely relative. It follows the vicissitudes of the human health and mind, and requires sincere dialogue with the other in order to reach its fullest potential. The push to establish a single national language can only be sustained on the basis of a number of false premises. We will explore seven such lies and misperceptions here, all of a particular sort, having to do with a way of rationalizing one's aversion to difference or to change. And, in each case, it is fairly easy to illustrate how the lie works against the interests of both a democratic society and American tradition itself.
This is not only patently untrue, as will be shown in the enumeration of the other misperceptions that provoke xenophobia, it requires that we reject both American history and the values of a democratic society. American society has never been uniform, has always had to find ways to bring harmony among disparate groups and from the Constitution forward has sought to defend the rights and the role of minorities in society. During the Second World War, the most decorated division was comprised largely of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Northwest and Native American tribes have lent soldiers, code-readers and specialists to all the wars since then. E pluribus unum, the national motto, meaning 'of the many: one', has long been interpreted not as a call to flatten and evacuate the richness of an immigrant and pioneer culture, but to harness it, to make a more vibrant and adaptable continent-wide market, rich in ideas, abilities, distinctive methods and innovations.
But more importantly, there are clear examples that show that imposed uniformity does not bring a healthy sense of national identity. France has a national one-culture policy that proclaims French the national language and requires that immigrants assimilate seamlessly into that one culture, leaving behind the trappings and traditions of their homelands. Children are forbidden from wearing culturally specific clothing in schools and the 31 other languages indigenous to France are simply ignored by the government as a matter of cultural policy. Foreign langauges spoken widely in people's homes, like Arabic, Berber, Lao and Vietnamese, are relegated to non-French status and communities that maintain close ties to their family culture often find themselves bunched into ethnic ghettoes. The result of this one-language policy has been constant and oppressive tension leading to the near total isolation of communities lacking the resources or the opportunity to integrate into the larger officially French culture, despite being French-born for one, two or three generations. The explosive tensions promoted by this policy, and reinforced by the tacit discrimination it appeared to permit, led eventually to last November's riots, which began in largely multigenerational immigrant ghettoes in the northern Paris suburbs and spread quickly to 20 such suburbs and eventually 70 cities across the country and into neighboring countries. The French interior minister further inflamed tensions by suggesting that the young men involved were by nature "scum" and that he would deport everyone who was accused of participation, ignoring the proportion of French citizens involved, his view obviously obscured by racial considerations. He further pledged a comprehensive purge of immigrants; the one-culture policy fueled this irrational xenophobia, directed at communities invited into French society during the post-WWII period of rebuilding. So, two evident problems with this lie of a sole unifying language: the declaration of a single culture does not erase cultural diversity —for this reason Europe pressured Turkey to eventually recognize its Kurdish minority, which it had officially labeled an historical fiction—, and in the case of Paris, most of the "immigrant" youths were French born. It is not the difference in culture that creates cross-cultural tension, but the refusal of the majority to accept that their nationality is not diminished or degraded by the presence of people who think and behave differently, but who also identify with that larger national identity.
Of the more than 300 languages currently spoken in the United States, at least 154 are indigenous languages, which predate the arrival of European colonists five centuries ago. Of those native languages still spoken inside the territory of the United States, about half are endangered, 7 have only 1 fluent speaker, and 42 have 10 or fewer speakers. It is not the multiplication of languages that is the problem, but the disappearance of vast amounts of linguistic culture and knowledge from American society. Immigrant languages have also played a role in making American society what it is. After decades of being treated as an unwanted ethnicity, Italian Americans, most often poor immigrants from southern Italy, or their descendents, in New York and other cities, speaking their own language, some even to this day, after several generations, introduced a new culinary culture into American society. At the death of the New York restauranteur Delmonico in 1881, the exiled Cuban poet José Martí, writing in Spanish, noted the outpouring of popular affection for the man and his life's work, specifically noting the gratitude expressed by many for his having introduced sauces, garnishes and ingredients that all agree enriched American culture and society. At the founding of the republic, English was deliberately chosen as the language of standard use in law and government, not as a means of establishing a national vernacular, but simply to provide continuity in law, as the entire legal tradition of the British colonies in North America had been drafted in English. There were even competing camps arguing that German or French should be used, to accentuate the break from England and because there were a large number of colonists who spoke those languages as their mother tongue. In fact, according to the 2000 US census, there are presently in the United States only 24,515,138 citizens of English ancestry (single or multiple ancestry included), while there are 42,885,162 citizens of German ancestry. English-language culture has been a leading feature of American society, throughout its history, and has been most prevalent in publishing (books, magazines, newspapers and government documents), but it has never had an exclusive dominion over the American mind, and it does not represent any primary ethnic origin for the non-indigenous United States, as a republic.
There are an estimated 450 to 500 million Spanish speakers across the globe, 40 million of whom live in Spain and 40 million more of whom already reside in the US itself, most of them speaking English as well. Spanish is also spoken by millions of people in Europe, south Asia and Africa. The population of the US in 2000 was 281,421,906, according to the US census. The Census Bureau now estimates that figure is 298,820,183. The total number of people the US Census Bureau reports live in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries (including Mexico and Puerto Rico) in 2006 is 309,631,738. So, unless every country in Latin America were emptied, there is no risk of a de facto overtaking of the English language in the US; nevermind the fact that there is no evidence of any hemispheric conspiracy to make the US a Spanish-speaking country. Ultimately, it is the failure of imagination in the way individuals form their own sense of identity that generates the fear, not so much of foreigners or of another language, but of having to compete with fellow citizens who know more than one language. The English-only movement is pushing very deliberately to limit the richness, vitality and adaptability of American culture, as well as its ability to learn of and respond to international crises or national security issues. It is in this that the nation itself faces the most serious threat to the potency and resilience of its linguistic and democratic culture.
What's more, immigrants who have faced political hardship, economic depression, harsh journeys on foot or cramped in tiny enclosed spaces, violent smugglers and real mortal peril, all in hopes of reaching the promise of American society, tend to prize more passionately and more personally the freedoms and the rights afforded by American law than American-born citizens can normally imagine. Throughout American history, from the Revolution, through the Civil War, into the World Wars and including the 2003 Iraq invasion, foreign-born US citizens and non-citizens have fought on behalf of the United States, risking their lives for a country whose ideals they believe in and to which they hope to one day belong.
This assumes many things: one, that democracy must be a closed system (the USSR, North Korea and Cuba have very effectively demonstrated the flaws of hermetically sealed societies)... two, that it is the sole privilege of an essentially distinct human population (who decides which people are essentially and naturally entitled to participate? how does one get around such stratification being antithetical to the US Constitutional system?)... three, that democracy means uniformity (we have covered this above). Each of these rhetorical bases is contrary to the meaning, the direction and the lessons of American history. And each ignores the phrasing of the nation's founding documents. In his famous "I have a dream" speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said the "promissory note" represented by the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been "returned, marked insufficient funds". He meant that the nation had to recognize that its core aspirations had not been achieved, precisely because a group identified by outward differences was still excluded from true equality before the law.
In fact, there is no way around the basic truth that the declaration of a national language has only one purpose: to institutionalize discrimination in a way it has never been done before in the United States. During the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, from 1939 to 1975, his government declared Castilian (the language we know as 'Spanish') the national language of Spain. People who spoke one of the other languages widely spoken in Spain (Catalán, Basque or Gallego), were pushed out of positions of importance, robbed of their property and systematically persecuted for not speaking the proper "Christian" tongue, as Franco's regime would have it. Eventually, people were detained, forced to do hard labor, enslaved by the state to build a tomb for the dictator, tortured and killed, because their use of a distinct language was perceived as a grave threat to national unity, despite those languages having been part of Spanish society for a thousand years or more. Since the transition to democracy, beginning in 1975, the present day constitutional republic has four co-official languages, persecution on the basis of language usage is forbidden, no matter the language, and the society is more politically and culturally vibrant, more economically prosperous, in closer contact with its neighbors, more sustainable as a political system, observing and protecting the principles of democracy, an example to other nations. The First Amendment to the US Constitution promised that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... [or] to petition the government for a redress of grievances". So, the Inhofe amendment to S.2611, which aims to strip all Americans of the right to interact with their government in any language other than English, directly assaults a basic constitutional liberty. It deliberately makes communication between the government and the people less effective and undermines the right of individuals to solicit the correction of an injustice. That means less accountability in government when facing certain segments of the population, which is a stratification of legal protections and an abstract but very real form of segregation, enacted by law. [s]
BACKGROUND/DE TRASFONDO: Anoche, George W. Bush presentó desde su despacho en la Casa Blanca, un plan de cinco puntos claves para una "reforma comprensiva" de la política migratoria de Estados Unidos. El plan incluye despachar 6 mil soldados de la Guardia Nacional a la frontera con México y un carnet biométrico para los inmigrantes, pero también moderó su retórica, recordando que "todo ser humano tiene valor y dignidad, a pesar del estatus de sus papeles de ciudadanía." [Texto completo] NEW ROUND OF MASSIVE PRO-IMMIGRANT DEMONSTRATIONS Peaceful rallies in more than 60 US cities took place yesterday, to protest against House Republicans' plans to classify all undocumented immigrants as felons, to build fortified wall between US, Mexico. Tens of thousands gathered in major cities, carrying banners reading "We are America" and waving American flags and flags of their countries of origin. [Full Story] IMMIGRATION REFORM COULD EASE HARDSHIP FOR MILLIONS In recent weeks, the United States has seen the streets of major cities flooded with protesters, demanding more humane immigration reform than that offered by the House of Representatives. The bill currently before the Senate could offer such a solution, and would provide an opportunity for millions more people to become US citizens. [Full Story] |
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The first key false premise is that there is an irrevocable danger to one's identity, one's security, one's community and the integrity of one's culture, if confronted with difference, if —to use the logic of the open market— one is forced to compete in the realm of ideas.
The second basic untruth to examine is that government sanction of a national language leads to greater unity and a stronger uniform sense of national identity. First, it's worth referencing the brief glimpse of American history above and the words of great leaders who defended the idea of a potent national character, stemming from the global origins of the US population, to see that this is not even the goal of American society.
A third major false premise of the English-only movement is the belief in some sort of past golden age in which English was the sole unifying language, spoken by all and to the exclusion of all others. This is not only untrue —the gold rush of 1849 brought not only easterners to northern California, but also communities of adventurous emigrants from China and east Asia—, it is utterly ridiculous in its denial of historial reality. 
A particularly insidious lie at the root of the English-only movement is the fear of an "invasion" of Spanish speakers. It is simply untrue that the Spanish-speaking population of the Americas could eclipse the English-speaking population of the United States and displace English as the unofficial lingua franca of the republic.
There is also the pernicious suggestion that people speaking other languages are not loyal Americans. This is directly tied to the false projection of "American" as connoting "English-speaking" and "white".
That suspicion of something one does not understand, or which is outwardly different, is somehow a useful tool in the furtherance of democracy, helping to seal the system against unwanted intruders. 
There is, lastly, the fundamental lie that says that official classification of all other languages as secondary, by establishment of an official state language, does not mean one discriminates or that the system of open democracy becomes less open.
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