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John Kass
English is language of success in U.S.
Published May 21, 2006
There was man who plowed his fields in the old country with a mule since the family was too poor to own a tractor.
So on spring mornings, he'd take that mule out to the fields beyond his small village and break the rocky ground, planting crops to help feed his father and mother and sisters and brother.
He was about 30, plowing those fields, and while plowing, he'd think about America. Like so many of the world's poor, he was desperate to come here. And finally, this immigrant landed in Chicago, a legal immigrant with papers who had something in common with so many other immigrants, legal and illegal:
He couldn't speak a word of English.
Later, he got married and had three sons. Though he always spoke with a heavy accent, he learned English and became a citizen of the United States. And he stressed English at home. English, English, English, he'd say.
One of his sons went into business. Another became a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. And the other is writing the newspaper column you're reading right now.
And I have no doubt that my life would not have turned out this way--the son of a man who worked with a mule on scrabbly fields writing a newspaper column for a big-city American paper--if my late father hadn't stressed English at home.
He wanted us to be proud of our heritage. But he wanted us to learn English, to speak it at home, to help us become Americans.
So it amuses me to hear the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, play the race card in reacting to the proposal in the Senate to make English the national, common and unifying language of the United States.
Reid said the proposal was "racist."
"This amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish," he said the other day in an immigration debate.
That quote made the newspapers, but comments made by Reid a few years ago were largely ignored, except by The Washington Times.
Because in 1993, Reid was busy playing a race card with a different face.
"Our federal wallet is stretched to the limit by illegal aliens getting welfare, food stamps, medical care and other benefits without paying taxes," Reid was quoted as saying then. "These programs were not meant to entice freeloaders and scam artists from around the world."
Again, I may have missed Reid's ugly old quotes in the rest of the news coverage. Perhaps network TV highlighted those old Reid quotes when I wasn't watching, so if I missed it, I apologize. But I've got the feeling that Reid's 1993 vitriol was ignored.
Ignored so as not to confuse the urgent new message, which is that even a symbolic move to make English our common language is somehow threatening.
That's the sense I get from much of the coverage, that the English proposal is, if not outright racist, then somewhat mean-spirited and xenophobic, evidence of intolerance and fear.
"This is something that is more significant probably to the American people than it is inside this chamber," Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who offered the bill, was quoted as saying.
"So I believe this is something very significant we'll be doing today that people have talked about now for four decades that I know of, and I believe it should be popular," Inhofe said Thursday.
Inhofe and the Republicans were joined by 11 Democrats in approving the measure, which is largely symbolic. But symbolism is important too. It demonstrates intent about the direction of the culture, and there's nothing wrong with the people of this country, through their elected representatives, intending that English be the language of the United States.
The fact that we're now reduced to defending the concept of a common language should tell you more about how skewed the debate has become than anything else.
Those immigrants who learn English and assimilate are the ones who prosper. They don't remain dependent on political bosses and big city political organizations, which is perhaps why Reid and others don't like it.
But whether English is official or not, all of us who are the first generation born in this country have much the same experience.
Whether our parents stress English at home or not, we end up with English anyway, even when speaking in the language of the old country, mixing bits of the new language in with the old.
If our parents speak Spanish, many of us end up speaking Spanglish; if they speak Greek, we speak Greeklish; and Polishish, or Frenchlish, Cantoneseish, Urduish, Farsish and so on.
Someday, no matter how intense we are on the immigration debate, no matter what position we've taken, whether we cleave to old country ways or not, we may go back to the old country for a visit. We go to the little towns our parents came from, to walk our grandfathers' fields, and into the village square to meet relatives and family friends.
And there, we're introduced, as the Americans.
