Thread: Ruben Navarrette: The right to speak Spanish

The IA hugging nimrod pontificates:

Ruben Navarrette: The right to speak Spanish
By Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Tribune
Article Launched: 12/04/2007 07:37:54 PM PST

There was one priceless scene in an episode of the PBS television show "American Family" where the patriarch - played by Edward James Olmos - argues that there shouldn't be things like bilingual education and that here in the United States, everyone should speak English. His friend wholeheartedly agrees. What makes the scene funny is the irony: Both men are making their arguments in Spanish (with English subtitles).

The scene is a neat metaphor for the complicated views that many Hispanics have on the subject of language - views that often confuse non-Hispanics and create tension between the groups.

For instance, there are plenty of Hispanics who oppose bilingual education because they think it hurts kids by making it more difficult to learn English. Yet at home, many Hispanics tend to switch effortlessly between Spanish and English and make an effort to ensure that their children maintain their command of Spanish.

Not that they always succeed. The Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research institution, recently reported that while half of the adult children of Hispanic immigrants speak some Spanish at home, the percentage falls to a quarter or less for their children and grandchildren.

And despite the fact that many Hispanics are committed to learning English, many of them also flatly resent English-only laws or workplace rules prohibiting languages other than English.

That makes sense to me. Just because you think people should learn English doesn't necessarily mean that you think a government or private employer should coerce them into doing so through pressure, threats or intimidation. And for what purpose? Just because you think it is in a person's own self-interest to learn English doesn't mean that you need laws and regulations that seem intended to accommodate English speakers by forcing others to conform to the ways of the mainstream.
So don't be surprised if many Hispanics applaud the decision by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to sue the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required employees to speak only English on the job.

The requirement was posted and yet at least two Hispanic employees defiantly continued to speak Spanish while at work. The EEOC claimed that their firings violated the law. English-only proponents said that the EEOC's position violated common sense.

The critics are wrong. It's not that a business doesn't have the right to expect its employees to speak English. It does. It just doesn't have the right to prevent workers from speaking languages other than English. That's what this case is about, after all - not a requirement that employees be able to speak English, but a rule that banned the speaking of other languages.

Of course, a business has the right to consider one's ability to speak English as a prerequisite for employment. But - once the person is hired - the employer shouldn't discriminate against some employees just to put other employees at ease.

For one thing, there's the First Amendment. Courts have ruled that people have the right to converse with one another in whatever language they please as long as it doesn't interfere with how they do their job.

Besides, the proponents of English-only laws sometimes claim that allowing employees to communicate in a language that others may not understand fosters division in the workplace. But what is really divisive are rules that pit one group against another and make language the dividing line.

And we don't need any more of that. The immigration debate is already splitting the country. Now language has become a proxy for the foreigners that frighten us.

Library books frighten some folks in Lewisburg, Tenn. - library books in Spanish, to be precise. A while back, at the Marshall County Memorial Library, an employee named Nellie Rivera proposed a bilingual story time where children could have books read to them in Spanish. Some townspeople raised a fuss and demanded that all books in the library - whether bought with public funds or donated by private individuals - be in English.

The silver lining is that there are good folks in Lewisburg, and around the country, who scoff at such cultural censorship. As word of this bilingual backlash got around, outraged patrons began sending checks to the library that were specifically earmarked for buying Spanish-language books. Perhaps to tweak the opposition, some of the donations were in Rivera's name.

That's what I love about story time - in whatever language. There's usually a happy ending.

Ruben Navarrette is a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist (e-mail: ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com).
http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_7634101

The EEOC is going to loose this one

It was a requirement of being hired that you learned English....they failed to live up to the hiring stipulation....

Ok, I will go into a spanish restaurant tomorrow with my friend, order in English, sit down and we will proceed to converse in Italian.

I'll let everyone know what the reaction is.

That makes sense to me. Just because you think people should learn English doesn't necessarily mean that you think a government or private employer should coerce them into doing so through pressure, threats or intimidation. And for what purpose?

How about employment in the United States of America to serve citizens!!!

This is yet another article tonight that has irritated me!

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds"- Samuel Adams

The amusing part of this is that it is only Navarrette, the EEOC, and other libidiots who believe this suit is about the "right" to speak Spanish in the workplace.

The two women who are the plaintiffs could not care less about anyone's rights.....their own included. It's all about the $$$$$ and anyone who believes otherwise is seriously fooling themselves.

If I want to speak Spanish, I have the right to do so. Same if I wanted to speak Japanese or any other language. I have a right to converse with others in any language. But when it comes down to doing business in this country, English is the "official" language.

Look, any drive to purge public libraries of foreign-language books-if Navarette is even characterizing what happened accurately, which I'm not certain he is-is stupidity. However, that's very different from holding story hours IN SPANISH when these children aren't conversant in the language as it is. These are students who NEED to learn English, which is the language of prosperity and the dominant language of this country.

ESL and bilingual education are frauds perpetrated upon the American public by ethnic lobbyists who need to be put in their place.

Yes, everyone has a right to speak whatever language they want to each other, HOWEVER; in public, it is extremely Rude to speak it in front of people who do not understand the language you speak.

I speak Spanish and Italian and can understand Portugese and you would be surprised at some of the things I hear when people do not realize that I may understand their conversation. Puts me in a bad spot.

I have been subject to overhearing private conversations held in "my space" in either of these languages and let me tell you, I DO make it a point to speak to the manager of an establishment when I hear insulting, racist or derogatory comments. I do so publicly, not quietly.

I am so sick of this traitorous idiot. Talking about how Hispanic children and granchildren are mostly speaking English after a few generations. Hell, my mother came here from Japan knowing hardly a word of English when I was a baby, and she learned English and had me not only speaking English, but reading and writing it as well before I entered kindergarten. And she never attended a single class, she did it all on her own as my father was shipped out over-seas in the navy for many months at a time. She never expected that I be taught bilingually in school, or demanded there be Japanese books in the library, or demanded I be taught Japanese culture, heritage or language. In fact, she would have argued against it if they ever tried. She told me stories about her original home and growing up there, but raised me to speak English and insisted that I live and learn American history and culture. And why was this? Because we chose to live in America.

She knew that this country was our home and that English was the language of this country and she made damn sure that I spoke it. In fact, other than a few words and phrases, I know no real Japanese, yet I don't feel culturally deprived or original heritage deprived at all. I am a proud American, not an Asian-American, not a Japanese-American, not a hyphenated anything. I was born in Japan and have a Japanese mother and of these facts I am proud, but as a citizen of this country I am an American, PERIOD.

Make no mistake, this clown Navarette has an agenda, the growing of a seperate Mexican, NOT Hispanic, NOT Latino, but a MEXICAN nation within our nation. And the way he attempts to achieve it is by creating and maintaining a seperate class of loyal Mexicans here in America, loyal to their language, their culture, their history, their everything and America has just got to accept it and adjust to their demands or we are to him the same as genocidal, ethnic cleansing, murdererous, Nazi-like racists.

Unless we stop this clown and all he stands for we will have a nation within a nation, a third world dump just like Mexico, with rich, arrogant bastards like him weilding power over the low-class peasants, just like it is in Mexico. The only difference is that he still wants us to stick around, after all who's going to pay for all these moochers? Certainly not him.