Amidst of the current top story, other stories have flown under the radar. It seems that Englishnistas have done it again. In New Jersey, by a vote 4 to 2, Bogota’s city council has authorized, Steve Lonegan, Bogota’s conservative and outspoken Republican mayor, to write a letter urging McDonald’s to take down it’s billboard that advertises iced coffee in Spanish. He is also for his citizens to boycott McDonald’s if they refuse to take down it’s sign.
The mayor of a small Bergen County town is calling for a McDonald’s boycott if the fast-food chain does not take down a Spanish-language billboard advertising iced coffee.
His angst against the ad being done in Spanish is that McDonald’s is sending a message to Spanish-speaking immigrants that they don’t need to learn English. In fact, Lonegan, has characterized the billboard as a “racial profiling marketing campaign.”
For most Americans, racism is viewed only white supremacist organizations, KKK, and other similar organizations like them. What does race have to do with language, after all? Is it racist to suggest that immigrants need to learn English to prosper in this country? What’s wrong with encouraging them to enter the mainstream rather than remain apart?
Although, these are reasonable questions it diversts the the real issue, racism is a matter of group power; it is about a dominant racial group (whites) striving to maintain its systemic advantages and minorities fighting to subvert the racial status quo.
Whereas the principles liberalism and humanism were used to argue equality in the past, the Englishnistas are now using it as their the main rhetorical weapons to justify contemporary racial inequality. Many conservatives use these principles in an abstract way that allows them to support the racial status quo in an apparently “reasonable” fashion. After receiving criticism Mayor Lonegan explained his opposition to the to the McDonald’s ad in meritocratic fashion:
He said the borough welcomes Hispanics and is proud of its diversity. But he added that the English language is the common thread that ties residents together and that the Spanish-language billboard undermines that notion.
“For every one of those people there’s 10 people that are proud we’re standing up for this,” the mayor said.
In Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s “The Linguistics of Color Blind Racism: How to Talk Nasty about Blacks without Sounding ‘Racist'” [PDF], Bonilla-Silva argue that his color blind rhoteric has become the new contemporary racetalk.
Mayor Lonegan, is not the only one comtemplating this action. There’s a suprising unanimity among white folks across party lines when it comes to attacks on the use of race as a concept, that is coming from liberalism and from the left. One of the hallmarks the Democratic Leadership Council the effot to move the Democratic Party further to the right. In doing so, this attempt has consequences, it will marginalize the inequities of both minorities and the poor all in the name of appeals for “universal” programs. Meanwhile Immigration Reform and Bilingualism have become a bipartisan bloodsport.
Recently, the Congressional Education and Workforce Committee held one of their “field hearings” regarding immigration reform. The purpose of the was to investigate the role of English in the US.
What is the role of English in American education and society, and does the Reid-Kennedy bill undermine, rather than encourage, this role?
This is not the first time the Englishnistas had a crack at Congress.
History of the English Only Movement
Englishnista movement first bagan in 1981 when U.S. English spearheaded the constitutional English Language Amendment. If passed, the proposal would have banned virtually all uses of languages other than English by federal, state, and local governments. By 1988, all but two of the fifty states had at least considered legislation to declare English their official language – most of them in response to lobbying by U.S. English.
However, Englishnistas hit a brick wall when people found out the true motives behind their plan. In 1988, the Arizona Republic published excerpts of a confidential memo from the anti-immigration leader John Tanton. The memo was the seed that planted the idea of the Reconquista movement. The memo discussed the importance of defending “our common language” because of the “threat” of a Hispanic takeover. Unless something was done, it warned, the US would face a Hispanic takeover through immigration and high birthrates:
Gobernar es poblar translates “to govern is to populate.” In this society where the majority rules, does this hold? Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva [sic] if borders aren’t controlled? Or is advice to limit one’s family simply advice to move over and let someone else with greater reproductive powers occupy the space? … Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down! …
How will we make the transition from a dominant non-Hispanic society with a Spanish influence to a dominant Spanish society with a non-Hispanic influence? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? … We’re building in a deadly disunity. All great empires disintegrate, we want stability.
The memo was a frank revival of the theory of “race suicide.”
Make no mistake, US English may act as it’s only purpose is a language issue. US English is the sister organization to Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the organization that deals with the immigration issue. Tanton went off to start FAIR, determined, as he later recalled, to defy “the taboo that in 1979 proscribed discussion of the immigration issue.”
US English and FAIR are kept separate because it is a tactical matter. To charge linguistic minorities with refusing to assimilate and simultaneously to propose limiting their numbers smacked of ethnic intolerance, a return to the old nativism. It would reveal an impolitic analysis – shared by several (though not all) leaders of FAIR and U.S. English – that the problem was not merely the quantity of new immigrants, but the quality: too many Hispanics.
Tanton had written the paper for a private study group drawn principally from U.S. English, FAIR, and allied organizations. He dubbed it WITAN, after the Old English witenagemot, or council of wise men to advise the king.
Insecurity And Resentment
For groups like English Only, FAIR, Center for Equal Opportunity, Center for Immigration Studies, Council of Conservative Citizens, among other Immigration Reform and Language Restrictionism advocates they have one target in particular: that amalgam of imperial and indigenous traditions, incorporating Castilian, Galician, Moorish, Aztec, Mayan, Taino, and West African elements, known loosely as “Hispanic.” Not that nativists indulge in such fine distinctions. What concerns WITAN is a monolithic set of bad habits that it deems inimical to the American experiment: a “Latin” psychology that breeds underdevelopment, antisocial behavior, authoritarianism, educational failure, overpopulation, and of course, bilingualism. This is an updated version of the Black Legend. The villains are no longer ruthless conquistadores, but “ethnic bosses” who keep their people in bondage.
If the language was really the issue, they must look to their leader to blame to the decline of English. It was Dudya’s “No Child left Behind Act,” that ended Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act that encouraged “developing the English language skills” of children but also “to the extent possible, the native language skills.” The Act began in 1968 under Lyndon Johnson, and was renewed by all four Republicans, three Democrats before him. The new law disregards any instruction in any language other than English.
The Englishnista argument is only based on a Nationalist pride which is why they beat their chest proclaiming “This is America! That’s way.” Proclaiming English the national language will not unify this country, it will only divide it even further than it already is. The left was capable a decade ago of dissecting such a shell game, but now they are contributed to the fear of the brown menace – The Latino Boogieman.
Modern racial ideology does not thrive on the ugliness of the past, on the language and tropes typical of slavery and Jim Crow. Today, their language is a sanitized to justify keeping minorities out of the good things in life with the language of liberalism (“I am all for equal opportunity; that’s why I oppose affirmative action!”). Today’s Englishnistas do not feel guilty about a minorities’ plight because they simply believe if minorities are not succeeding it’s because they are not trying hard enough.
I know I will receive criticisms from conservative and liberal Englishnistas alike, which they will rebuke with statements such as “You are hypersensitive.” or “Just because I start disagreeing with you, you start calling out “racism!” Is post is meant to confront the color blind nonsense from within. The collective denial about the true nature of race relations may help them feel good, but it is also one of the greatest obstacles for them to do the right thing. My aim is to provoke, trigger Englishnistas and to expose themselves for who they truly are and counter their abstract liberal bullshit with concrete liberal positions based on a realistic understanding of racial matters and a concern with achieving racial equality.
It is time to demand equality NOW! We must say “NO” to poverty, to substandard schools and housing, to inferior wages and shit jobs, to old and new fashioned discrimination, to Driving While Black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican.
“HELL, NO” to second class citizenship in America. Only by demanding what seems impossible now, will we be able to make true equality possible in the near future.
Viva La Raza!
I hate the idea of being “color-blind”. We have a so-called “diversity” training in the field I work in where students are coerced encouraged into conforming to a “color-blind” use of language.
So, for example, one of my colleagues tells me that when he is out with one of his kids, and he sees a person who is not white (he lives in a lily white ‘burb), he does not know what to say to his kids. So, he has decided on this: He carefully calls attention positively to some aspect of that person other than their color. “See that woman over there. Isn’t her brightly colored dress very eye-catching?”
He seems clueless to understand how he is teaching his kids to notice virtually every non-“white” person who intrudes on their safe haven. And to use careful language and observations to call attention them quite clearly without overt, frank identification.
And so this person’s adult students, point out dress, speech, mannerisms, exclusively of minority persons they encounter, but never those of majority persons.
And its really remarkabe: only those characteristics that somehow reinforce common stereotypes, either by being strongly present or (What A Surprise!!!) absent, are noted for attention.
So called “color-blind” = color-stereotyped.
i like bilingual signs because I get to test out the five years of Spanish I took in school. Ever try to do an ATM transaction in a foreign language? It’s fun.
I remember the first time I encountered the foreign language option at an ATM. I was annoyed to have to press an extra button but I got over it. I don’t understand the rage such small considerations cause in some English speakers.
Smaller issues such as voter pamphlets have insignificant cost. English Only is a wolf of racist strategy in sheep’s clothing of societal unity — a strategy pressed by a relatively small group fooling uninformed and/or outright prejudiced voters.
In joining opposition to Arizona’s English Only initiative the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation and others told of the racist underpinnings of English Only in multiracial, multilingual Hawaii, which nearly destroyed the Hawaiian culture. Banning all languages but English served to negate nonwhite racial and cultural groups and did nothing to assimilate Hawaiians.
The Linguistic Society of America added that the initiative would reduce citizen participation in government. Besides,
(As the case was ultimately dismissed on procedural grounds, the U.S. Supreme Court dodged ruling on the constitutional issues.)
In Alaska, where the English Only initiative was found to be in violation of the Alaska constitution, twenty different languages are spoken.
There is no call for English Only. The movement is a cover for unwelcome and undemocratic white-is-superior attitudes.
Save the leis. Aloha.
I took German in high school rather than Spanish and know only a very few words of Spanish (about enough to say, “Sí, es muy caliente” at our favorite Mexican restaurant during last week’s heat wave). But I enjoy reading the signs on the bus that have both English and Spanish versions.
I used to take a newsletter published by the Esperanto League of North America. Most of the stories in it were about problems crossing the language barrier — for instance, a woman who got dismal results testing out the 911 system in her hometown by calling them and speaking Spanish, or the Czech man arrested in the US who insisted on a judge, jury and prosecutors who spoke Czech for his trial.
Of course their solution was to promote the use of a neutral second language (i.e. Esperanto), a solution that has little chance of success, I’m afraid. Still, someday we’re going to have to come to grips that we are a multicultural country, and are going to have to find some solutions to the language divide, and that telling everyone “English or nothing” is not going to solve any problems.
HOw funny!! Now the city of Los Angeles will be renamed The Angels. The state of Colorado will be named the state of Red. San Fransico city will re called Saint Francis. the Camino Real street will be from now on be called the Royal Way street. Not to mention the River Big for the soon to be the former Rio Grande. Any idea waht the state of New Mwxico should be renamed after? And then there are the native american language spread throughout this country.
Yep, we should retake our culture and our language back. And when the idiot we have as preident wants to use it , we should yell at him to use English only! He can shove it in su culo!!!
Not to forget the Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo.
Don’t know the translation of Alameda, but the rest is “of the fleas in Saint Mathews.”
What about the Alamo? Would they change an historical site like that?
World War I on the Home Front
Once the United States entered the war, a search for spies and saboteurs escalated into efforts to suppress German culture. Many German-language newspapers were closed down. Public schools stopped teaching German. Lutheran churches dropped German-language services.
Germans were called “Huns.” In the name of patriotism, musicians no longer played Bach and Beethoven, and schools stopped teaching the German language.
Americans renamed:
sauerkraut -> “liberty cabbage”;
dachshunds -> “liberty hounds”;
and German measles -> “liberty measles.”
Cincinnati, with its large German-American population, even removed pretzels from the free lunch counters in saloons.
A St. Louis newspaper campaigned to “wipe out everything German in this city,” even though St. Louis had a large German-American population.
Name changes:
Luxembourg, Mo. -> Lemay;
Berlin Avenue -> Pershing;
Bismark Street -> Fourth Street;
Kaiser Street -> Gresham.
Thanks for providing this perspective from WWI. It shows that “freedom fries” was new! Language is so powerful in shaping the course of any conflict and the history you presented reveals it was not something that was just devised after 9/11. Thanks!
You learn something new every day! Thanks XP!!
I don’t think they’ve gone far enough. Why should New Yorkers, all immigrants you know, rest with degenerating back to english? I would ammend the law to make Iroqian the language of what’s now called New York. If that’s too big a step all at once why don’t do an interim renaming New York New Amsterdam and make the people there brush up on Dutch?
That’s “Nieuw Amsterdam” to you, buddy. </snark>