If one speaks English and White House content is provided in English, what does one lose from the the same content being presented in another language?
It's hypocritical for the nation that prides itself on freedom of expression and inclusiveness to refuse to provide it's Executive Branch's official statements in only one language.
Even China provides its government's official statements multiple languages, one being English, which isn't even among
the languages primarily spoken in China.
The matter of multilingual presentation of official U.S. communications today is nearly no different than it was in the 1800s. Then it was German; today it's Spanish. Opponents of moves to make English the official language of the United States frequently suspect that English-only advocates are motivated by more than political idealism. This suspicion is certainly justified by the historical record. For the past two centuries, proponents of official-English have sounded a multiplicity of themes, some rational and patriotic, others emotional and racist.
The Enlightenment belief that language and nation are inextricably intertwined, coupled with the chauvinist notion that English is a language particularly suited to democratically constituted societies, are convincing to many Americans who find discrimination on non-linguistic grounds thoroughly reprehensible. More prominent throughout American history, however, have been the nativist attacks on minority languages and their speakers: Native Americans, Asians, the French, Germans, Jews and Hispanics, to name only the most frequently targeted groups.
The English-only nativists who attacked the Germans used arguments similar to those heard nowadays against newer immigrants. Benjamin Franklin considered the Pennsylvania Germans to be a “swarthy” racial group distinct from the English majority in the colony. In 1751 he complained, “
Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”
The Germans were accused by other eighteenth-century Anglos of laziness, illiteracy, clannishness, a reluctance to assimilate, excessive fertility, and Catholicism. [1] They were even blamed for the severe Pennsylvania winters. Most irritating to Pennsylvania's English-firsters in the latter 1700s was German language loyalty, although it was clear that, despite community efforts to preserve their language, Germans were adopting English and abandoning German at a rate that should have impressed the rest of the English-speaking population.
Anti-German sentiment spread along with German immigration, and the nation as a whole resisted both the German bilingual schools that were established in parts of the Midwest in the 19th century and the common practice of publishing legal notices in German-American newspapers. Variously, the U.S. Congress again rejected motions to print laws or other documents in German as well as English. The motions were often treated jocularly and were shouted down amidst racist cries of, “
What! In the Cherokee? [and in] the Old Congo language!” (see also:
3 defending the native tongue - Welcome to English Pages 1 - 19 - Text Version | FlipHTML5)
Antagonism toward Germans and their language resurfaced in the Midwest in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and again across the country during and after WWI. Between 1917 and 1922, most of the states dropped German from their school curricula. Nebraska's open meeting law of 1919 forbade the use of foreign languages in public, and
in 1918 Governor Harding of Iowa proclaimed that English should and must be the only medium of instruction in public, private, denominational and other similar schools. Conversation in public places, on trains, and over the telephone should be in the English language. Let those who cannot speak or understand the English language conduct their religious worship in their home. Such attitudes had a chilling effect on language use for some 18K people were charged in the Midwest during and immediately following World War I with violating the English-only statutes
The anti-German school laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923. In
Meyer v. Nebraska, the court ruled that “the protection of the Constitution extends to all,—to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue.” The court in
Farrington v. Tokushige in 1927 invalidated similar laws. And the SCOTIS reaffirmed the states' responsibility to educate non-English speakers effectively in
Lau v. Nichols, though the court did not specify how this was to be accomplished.
Nonetheless, Americans remain troubled even today by foreign languages and their speakers. And for what? To what end? To gain what? What share of our population doesn't speak English? Official-English is an emotional issue, one involving questions of patriotism as well as racism, language loyalty as well as assimilation. It is borne not of reason but of unreason. As Americans we are not made better by speaking English, but we stray farther from our core welcoming principles by forcing English's use. We are after all a nation formed of and for immigrants.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
― Emma Lazarus
Notes:
- How does one in the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s deign to link Germans and Catholicism? The Reformation, the failed Counter-Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia, the Thirty Years War, the decline of the French Monarchy after Louis XVI, the German secularization movement...none of those things suggested there was a rational basis for out of hand linking Germans with Catholicism. Then as now, people were keen to jump upon whatever bandwagon of straws they could find to make their case for perpetuating divisiveness.
