http://qz.com/470888/declaring-an-official-language-in-the-united-states-is-unnecessary-and-un-american/

PATRIOTIC PRATTLE

Declaring an official language in the United States is unnecessary—and un-American
Jake Flanagin August 04, 2015

The American way of life is alive and well. (Reuters/Stringer)
On July 31, Carlos Steven Baez was enjoying a meal with his mother at a Southern California IHOP when an older white woman dining nearby overheard them conversing in Spanish.
“We speak English here,” she scolded as a stunned Baez filmed. “Go back to Spain.”
“You can’t be doing that,” Baez replied. “That’s racist.”
The woman then launched into a nonsensical yet seemingly well-rehearsed denunciation of bilingualism—linking it to Nazism and Stalinism while name-dropping every autocrat from Hitler to Castro. “We want English in the United States,” she said. “We have freedom of speech … we want that freedom.”
Though clearly not representative of most Americans, this woman is hardly the first to conflate American patriotic identity (as symbolized by a superficial understanding of “freedom” and “liberty”) with policies mandating English-only communication. Geopolitical history demonstrates the authoritarian bent of one-language policies, as well as their inability to produce greater nationalistic cohesion, as is so often their stated purpose.
Though the United States has no official language at the federal level, bills are continually introduced in both houses of Congress calling for the establishment of English as the nation’s sole official language. (One such bill, proposed this March by Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, is predictably titled the “English Language Unity Act of 2015.”) Advocacy groups like ProEnglish—an influential Virginia-based nonprofit—are a major force behind this kind of legislation.
The Southern Poverty Law Center classified ProEnglish—founded by notorious xenophobe John Tanton—an active anti-immigrant hate group in 2009. In 2013, ProEnglish provided legal support to an Arizona community-college student suspended for a number of reasons including complaining about students “speaking Spanish in and out of class,” according to the Tucson Sentinel.
The student in question, Terri Bennett, became something of a folk hero in the conservative press that year—a courageous figure standing resolute against the tides of forced multiculturalism, reverse racism, and a deterioration of American culture and values.
But what proponents of the English-only movement probably don’t realize is that their closest ideological comrades are also some of their most despised: zealots of the Chinese communist party. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is home to nearly 300 individual living languages. And it is also home to one of the strictest monolingual language policies in the world.
“From its inception, the central tenet of PRC language planning was to promulgate Mandarin Chinese, no matter the ethnicity of the speaker,” writes Arienne M. Dwyer, a Chinese and Altaic linguistic anthropologist at the University of Kansas, in a May 2014 article for World Politics Review. Though the PRC “emphasizes that fluency and literacy in Mandarin are key for individual economic advancement,” as English is in the United States, Dwyer believes these individual-empowerment arguments are “intentionally simplistic.”
In Chinese schools, Mandarin is “a primary means of socialization of minority and non-Mandarin Han students,” Dwyer claims. “So, in the mid-1980s, Beijing began transferring minority pupils to schools in Han-dominated China under the neidi ban, or inland class policy.” Eventually a full third of secondary-school graduates from Tibet were transferred, and by 2011, more than 23,000 of Tibetan primary-school graduates had been forced to change schools as well. In Xinjiang, home to the Uighurs, China’s largest Muslim minority, the ministry of education announced in 2014 that “qualified high-school graduates” were to be sent to inland China for four years to participate in “Xinjiang classes.” These special courses were engineered to teach Uighur youth to “love the socialist motherland [and] safeguard national unity.”
These policies bear troubling similarities to those used by US and Canadian residential boarding schools in the the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Designed to forcibly assimilate Native American/First Nations youth, the institutions did little to ameliorate the overall conditions of indigenous communities in either country. “Little wonder that Tibetans and Uighurs consider these policies to be at best linguicide,” Dwyer adds.
The 1976 Soweto Uprising—a bloody protest led by black South African high-school students against the white-supremacist government—is another example of the problems endemic to one-langauge policies. Students from area schools flooded the streets of Soweto Township to protest the imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools, only to be brutally dispersed by police. The uprising is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa, although the policy wouldn’t be fully demolished until 1994. But it also stands as substantial proof of the divisiveness and ineffectiveness of forced monolingualism policies. Clearly, already disadvantaged groups aren’t likely to develop any further affinity for a state that dictates how they communicate.
From a communication perspective, these types of one-language policies aren’t even necessary in the United States. Immigrant groups tend to linguistically assimilate within a single generation, as was the case with Germans, Italians, Poles, and Greeks in the early 20th century. The same can be said for Hispanic Americans: a 2007 Pew study found that English fluency jumps 65% between first and second generations.
Which brings us back to the unfortunate incident at IHOP. While the woman in question is an extreme example, the kernel of her anti-immigrant sentiment is nevertheless identifiable in conservative elements across the US political landscape. As recent comments by GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump indicate, good, old-fashioned, anti-immigrant nativism is alive and well—the same kind of rhetoric used by turn-of-the-century xenophobes to discriminate against immigrants from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe.
The American “way of life” isn’t under attack, because the American way of life cannot be distilled to a single cultural condition or experience. As it always has, the story of America is a story that is ever-expanding, growing richer and more textured—which is kind of the point of this country to begin with, isn’t it?
In its organizational mission, ProEnglish claims “in a pluralistic nation such as ours, the function of government should be to foster and support the similarities that unite us, rather than institutionalize the differences that divide us.” Which is to say that the function of government should be to foster monism—a theory that denies the existence of distinctions or multiplicity in society. Federally enforced linguistic (and by extension cultural) homogeneity? That’s about as un-American as one can get.
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
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Nearly Half The Elementary Students In Some School Districts, Don't Speak English.

Schools In Georgia, Kentucky... how many others ?

Making " Programs " for other students to teach them.

Teachers are saying it takes 5-7 years to learn.

How much is this costing tax payers ?

Slowing American children down?

http://m.eagnews.org/?url=http%3A%2F%2Feagnews.org%2Folder-students-used-as-translators-for-younger-classmates-at-ga-elementary-school%2F&dm_redirected=true#2582/

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a2ZbNcai0EM#/

Half Of Kentucky's Kindergarten Doesn't Speak English. Six Languages


http://www.wdrb.com/story/27904782/half-of-kentuckys-incoming-kindergartners-were-not-ready-to-learn-in-2014/

10 Reasons To Make English Our Official Language

http://proenglish.org/data/backgrounders.html?id=167:ten-reasons-to-make-english-the-official-language-of-the-united-states&catid=48/

Jag tror att svenska ska vara det officiella spr�ket. Det �r inte s� sv�rt att l�ra sig och mycket vacker p� tilltal. Dessutom, n�r du �r i Storbritannien eller Frankrike, kommer ingen vet vad du s�ger, och det �r alltid roligt

google it

Ongoing failure to edit such cut and paste stuff, and remove the debris of incompatible formatting, makes it a painful mess to try to read.

However, it is a very bad article, with defective reasoning aplenty.

Establishing a single language for a politically unified populace, is necessary for developing efficient internal commerce, and thus building a healthy and efficient economy. That is why China and MANY OTHER COUNTRIES have established formally, a single national language.

It's why even the United States still requires some functional understanding of English, as a part of gaining citizenship here.

There are two kinds of people who oppose establishing a national language: there are the people who don't understand the real reasons for having a single language (as stated above), and who resist all attempts by the powerful to control individuals (this allegiance to freedom, self-determination and liberty is what they confuse with American Ideals and patriotism);

and then there are the people who actively want to use language variations to personally profit from the situation.

There is nothing remotely Patriotic or logical involved with opposing having a single language for all financial transactions.

However, there is also no excuse whatsoever for that woman to have so rudely demanded that she be able to overhear other peoples' private conversations in her language. She's a jerk, but the need for a single national language is important.

No Thanks,
And you have reinforced, the majority. of Americans, who want to make it official.

Ah, come on. How do you know until you've tried it?

Ongoing failure to edit such cut and paste stuff, and remove the debris of incompatible formatting, makes it a painful mess to try to read.

You were previously given a technological explanation, on another thread as to why it cant be helped. Yet you post on 50% of my threads

However, it is a very bad article, with defective reasoning aplenty.

I agree on both counts. But trying to find two opposing points of view, wasn't easy. Taboo PC subject for most. But of course... not for me.

The rest... is just your opinion, which is exactly what I want... American opinions.

This is NOT about NOT speaking other languages, or willing to do so, or intolerance. (My grandfather spoke 4 before his LEGAL arrival).
This is a serious & controversial issue that must be addressed.
It is about what AMERICANS want as a whole & what is best for the country.... now & the future.

False. On a previous thread, I was told why it was happening, which I already knew, more or less. The fact that people continue to post such garbage strewn and confused messes, is a result of their overt CHOICE to post garbage. In this case, you were perfectly capable of editing the cut and paste to make it readable, and you chose not to. That's on you, not on the technology.

As for your pretense that my responding to your threads reflects well on you in any way, or excuses you from being lazy in your posts, I am flattered, but your logic in saying so is utter nonsense.

Your claim that you couldn't find something to cut and paste that shows rationality and intelligence, also doesn't excuse you from responsibility for posting it. Pretending you are brave enough to bring up "taboo" subjects is made a lie, by the fact that you DON'T post your own words, only clumsily repasted garbage from other people.

Want to discuss something and have the discussion be worthwhile? Post something legible, which you actually support or oppose directly. Playing coy games, and then insulting or attacking the people who don't care for coy games, isn't an honorable pass time.

When I arrived at Mingle2, there were NO women posting in 'political'. Your first post to me & those insults & the names you called me.... made me what I am today. Move over, cranky old white man, & thank you Igor. On second thought.. I have what I need & there are other more active political/ current event sites, you can keep your corner.

well my goodness me boys and girls
ya'll need to play nice

America official or unofficial language is english
we know this to be true
based on the language of the majority

was this woman in the restaurant being an ethnocentric bigot? probably


we are also the melting pot which means people from many different cultures and races reside here

he treats everyone that doesn't agree with his standard of thinking the same... someone who's as smart as he thinks he is should know better...

thats why it should be ONE language...

speaking more than one language in the home is not new
we are a country of immigrants
children used to be to speak Russian, German, Swedish
and often times mamma and daddy and grandparents who were first generation
could only speak their native language yes?
but their children learned english..when they attended school




this new way of thinking, this new acceptance runs into difficulties when the public schools must now employ teachers who are bilingual

though I understand that we are a global society and that we must be able to communicate with other countries

mmmmm... but we still offer foreign language in schools and in many high schools two years of it are required..

I come from a family of educators
when does this accommodating begin and end? we have to order textbooks and workbooks and how many languages must they be available in?

i think it's a bigger problem when i can't get the job i want because i only speak English...

the western side of Michigan has an area where many migrant families live and work. I applied for a job oh ten years or so ago working in a Head Start preschool. This is a federally funded program by the way, and I was turned down for it not from lack of experience but because I was not bilingual.

thats kind of understandable, they need someone who speaks whatever language they speak to teach them English... but to not get a job in a retail setting because some people want to live here and not learn English is not understandable to me...

hahaha ya in that situation I understood...can't really teach them if they do not what you are saying

you on west coast or Texas?

Houston, the big city in Tejas...