NB: Based on the responses (and a couple of personal e-mail messages), perhaps less cleverness and more directness was warranted in my previous post. Please allow me to elaborate.
I think making English the "national language" is ridiculous, serving no purpose other than to disenfranchise people who do not speak it. Imagine if you could not legally get a driver's license without speaking English, because federal law prohibits the publication of documents in anything other than the "national language." In Miami-Dade County official signage and publications — such as ballots — must be provided in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. Federal-level legislation would override state- and county-level statutes, potentially prohibiting the Department of Elections from encouraging voting by our significant non-English-speaking population. This certainly sounds to me like a good way to ensure the primacy of white, Anglo votes, but perhaps that's only a coincidence. I mean, literacy tests were just to encourage black education, right?
But let's be clear: America is now, and will remain for the foreseeable future, an English-speaking nation. It simply makes sense for people who venture outside of their ethnic enclaves to learn the basics of the lingua franca of the neighborhood, even if the neighborhood extends from one ocean to another. This means that sensible people who venture from Weston to Hialeah on a regular basis should learn a little Spanish, and the reverse, obviously, is also true.
An old friend of mine is a first-generation Cuban-American. He spoke English fluently, but when he spoke Spanish like an American, and his Cuban friends (and family) made fun of him for it. His father was an international courier, so he spoke English passably well, but his mother never bothered to learn a word of it. When I asked him why, he told me she didn't need to, because she never left Cuban neighborhoods. She was willing to limit her own experience to avoid having to learn anything new.
Another friend of mine is from Peru. Her mother is from Hong Kong, though, and in spite of spending most of her life in South America, she has only learned a very small handful of Spanish words, preferring to speak only Cantonese. This became a problem when she moved in with my friend and her husband, since her husband doesn't speak any Cantonese. When Edgar is home alone with his mother-in-law, the communicate via a dozen Spanish words and hand gestures; she never leaves the house. When she became ill, it took them forever to find a local doctor who spoke Cantonese. Her quality of life would be improved if she would learn some English, but she doesn't feel like she should.
I think that at the core of the debate is a fear among certain members of the Anglo community that places like Miami aren't really part of the US any more, and that their inability to speak the common language of certain neighborhoods takes them down a peg, renders unstable their perch at the top of the socio-economic heap. I mean, who knows what kind of disrespectful things those people might be saying in that gobbledygook language of theirs? Well, guess what, Mr. Tenth-Generation White American Senator? The way you act, pulling this kind of "national language" crap, you are probably right. And you deserve it. Pendejo.
