A National Language Debate
As the nationalistic debate over language rages on, it really upsets me that the people forget which country they're living in. This nation was founded on the principals of immigration to strengthen national resolve. By mixing the diverse population of this world in one nation, only then can we become one people. But somewhere along the line the people lost sight of the goal and became more ethnocentric and nationalistic. A lot of the blame lies in our politicians, who do their best to perpetuate these harmful feelings about race, religion and national origin. I was watching Bill Maher last Friday and he had Pat Buchanan on the show talking about immigration. It's dangerous that I have so much hair right now (the fro is up to 4" above my skull when picked out) because I wanted to pull it all out. Thanks to Rick Santorum (Sanitarium), the people of Pennsylvania are now more focused on immigration and denying rights to homosexuals than they are to issues that really matter in Pennsylvania like eduation and health-care.
Hmm, Buchanan said that they should put a fence on the border (with Mexico, not Canada) because the people of Pennsylvania support it. Maybe it's just me, but Pennsylvania is pretty far from Mexico and wouldn't really be affected too much by a border fence. But the part that made me most upset was how he claimed that Mexicans have no interest in learning the language and should be barred from the country for that reason. So Buchanan may be from a family that has always spoken English, but most other people in this nation had ancestors who came to this country without knowing a word of English. I know that my family came to this country escaping religious persecution and found a nation that allowed them to carve out their niche in society. Look at the Forbes 400 and tell me how many of those people are from a family tree that speaks only English. So they may all speak English, but their grandparents or great-grandparents probably didn't.
The #1 problem with denying new immigrants is that we're denying ourselves the opportunity to further expand our vision of the world around us. Every immigrant brings valuable and unique experiences to us and help diversify our knowledge base. Just as a baseball succeeds by having a range of players (speedster, on base machine, power hitter, defensive captain, pitching ace, lefty reliever) on the roster, a nation succeeds by having a diverse group of people to extract labor from. If everyone in this country was really good at math but not at English, we'd be falling behind in media, entertainment and the knowledge economy. The only way to be successful as a nation is to diversify labor; having a math star, english star and two well rounded players is far better than 4 math stars as their skills become redundant at some point. Not only that, but there's only so much two people with identical intellectual profiles can learn from one another.
So how does this relate to our national language? Well, for anyone to succeed in business, they must know the language of business. As much as Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan care about the number of Spanish speakers around, the only way for those Mexicans that they hate so much to advance is to learn the language. Those who do not will be stuck in menial jobs where language skills are not needed. It's amazing to me how these racist/xenophobic people totally ignore the history of this nation. New York is a prime example of the true nature of immigration. There are different neighborhoods for the current immigrating ethnic groups: Hatian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. 100 years ago, those groups were basically divided in the same way, except the people were mostly of white skin. The Irish had their own neighborhoods and professions, as did Italian, French, German and Eastern European immigrants. Why else would there be a "Little Italy" in basically every American city if they didn't originally try to maintain their own traditions?
What it all boils down to is racism. Anyone who is against immigration and doesn't admit to being a racist is simply in the closet. They see Mexicans (the majority of these anti-immigrant hicks don't distinguish between different "types of Mexicans", grouping Guatemalans and Salvadorenos into the same group) in their country where there were few before and are threatened by the colorization of America. The world is not a majority white, so why would the "melting pot" end up white? When you mix brown, red, yellow, pink and black, you don't get white, you get brown. Language is tough to pick up when you're an uneducated immigrant who has been speaking the same broken Spanish for your 40 years on this planet, but their kids speak both English and Spanish. Maybe it's because these people just don't believe their children are smart enough to compete with bilingual children of immigrants and their admirable work ethic. Or maybe it's because this country has abandoned the fundamental principals on which we were founded. Regardless, the more we fight change, the more it will hurt us in the end. Instead of fighting the natural progression of this nation (and world) into a more diverse and multi-cultural society, we should embrace it. Instead of forcing people to abandon their roots and become "American" by speaking poor English, eating fast food and being lazy, we should encourage people to share their traditions. After all, if we had made all of the Asian immigrants abandon their traditions, we'd have no Thai, Chinese or Japanese restaurants. Maybe the 1950s in Middle America were great for some people, but I simply couldn't live in a world where everyone was the same and had the same beliefs. If you want to live in a world that limits free speech and immigration, move to North Korea.
Hmm, Buchanan said that they should put a fence on the border (with Mexico, not Canada) because the people of Pennsylvania support it. Maybe it's just me, but Pennsylvania is pretty far from Mexico and wouldn't really be affected too much by a border fence. But the part that made me most upset was how he claimed that Mexicans have no interest in learning the language and should be barred from the country for that reason. So Buchanan may be from a family that has always spoken English, but most other people in this nation had ancestors who came to this country without knowing a word of English. I know that my family came to this country escaping religious persecution and found a nation that allowed them to carve out their niche in society. Look at the Forbes 400 and tell me how many of those people are from a family tree that speaks only English. So they may all speak English, but their grandparents or great-grandparents probably didn't.
The #1 problem with denying new immigrants is that we're denying ourselves the opportunity to further expand our vision of the world around us. Every immigrant brings valuable and unique experiences to us and help diversify our knowledge base. Just as a baseball succeeds by having a range of players (speedster, on base machine, power hitter, defensive captain, pitching ace, lefty reliever) on the roster, a nation succeeds by having a diverse group of people to extract labor from. If everyone in this country was really good at math but not at English, we'd be falling behind in media, entertainment and the knowledge economy. The only way to be successful as a nation is to diversify labor; having a math star, english star and two well rounded players is far better than 4 math stars as their skills become redundant at some point. Not only that, but there's only so much two people with identical intellectual profiles can learn from one another.
So how does this relate to our national language? Well, for anyone to succeed in business, they must know the language of business. As much as Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan care about the number of Spanish speakers around, the only way for those Mexicans that they hate so much to advance is to learn the language. Those who do not will be stuck in menial jobs where language skills are not needed. It's amazing to me how these racist/xenophobic people totally ignore the history of this nation. New York is a prime example of the true nature of immigration. There are different neighborhoods for the current immigrating ethnic groups: Hatian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. 100 years ago, those groups were basically divided in the same way, except the people were mostly of white skin. The Irish had their own neighborhoods and professions, as did Italian, French, German and Eastern European immigrants. Why else would there be a "Little Italy" in basically every American city if they didn't originally try to maintain their own traditions?
What it all boils down to is racism. Anyone who is against immigration and doesn't admit to being a racist is simply in the closet. They see Mexicans (the majority of these anti-immigrant hicks don't distinguish between different "types of Mexicans", grouping Guatemalans and Salvadorenos into the same group) in their country where there were few before and are threatened by the colorization of America. The world is not a majority white, so why would the "melting pot" end up white? When you mix brown, red, yellow, pink and black, you don't get white, you get brown. Language is tough to pick up when you're an uneducated immigrant who has been speaking the same broken Spanish for your 40 years on this planet, but their kids speak both English and Spanish. Maybe it's because these people just don't believe their children are smart enough to compete with bilingual children of immigrants and their admirable work ethic. Or maybe it's because this country has abandoned the fundamental principals on which we were founded. Regardless, the more we fight change, the more it will hurt us in the end. Instead of fighting the natural progression of this nation (and world) into a more diverse and multi-cultural society, we should embrace it. Instead of forcing people to abandon their roots and become "American" by speaking poor English, eating fast food and being lazy, we should encourage people to share their traditions. After all, if we had made all of the Asian immigrants abandon their traditions, we'd have no Thai, Chinese or Japanese restaurants. Maybe the 1950s in Middle America were great for some people, but I simply couldn't live in a world where everyone was the same and had the same beliefs. If you want to live in a world that limits free speech and immigration, move to North Korea.
posted by Dan Pasternack at 4:15 PM
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