Really, there is too much crap going on all over the place, but today I'm going to rant about this.Listen, if you move to France, you'd better know that they will expect you to speak French there. In fact, they are bizarrely particular about that. If you move to the United States and expect to continue to live here, I see no reason why you should not be expected to speak English out in public. Don't want to learn English? Also no problem. You can speak whatever language you want to at home, and if you live in a community that is predominantly inhabited by others who speak your language, you're good. Yesterday I drove through Chinatown, and plenty of the stores had Chinese signs and, no doubt, offered Chinese language services to their customers. I would bet that these store-owners can also manage English, if they want a more diverse clientele.
My grandparents were immigrants who did not speak English when they arrived here. They learned it because that was the choice they were offered. Learn English, no column B. You can be sure that when my grandfather applied for citizenship and took his test, he was not offered the chance to take it in Yiddish. But they spoke that language to each other and taught it to their children and read the Forvarts in Yiddish instead of The New York Times in English. My husband's great-grandparents took the opportunity to shop in the Italian grocery stores in their neighborhoods, and went to Italian restaurants where they all spoke in Italian. Damn, I just wrote yesterday about my neat experience Friday night at a Polish family dinner.
But all these people have learned English, as much as they need to, to function in this country. When they make a telephone call to a government agency, they are not offered the chance to hear the voice-prompts in Polish, even though that's their native tongue. Why should we offer them in Spanish?
Personally, I think the guy who wrote this article is full of shit. It's not racist to demand that Spanish speakers use English in public. I think it's racist to treat them as if, as a group, they are not smart enough to learn English, the way every other immigrant group who ever came here did.
