official English legislation

[Grant Barrett]

On dimanche 3 juin 2001 15:31, Douglas Bigham <TlhovwI at AOL.COM> wrote:

>Also, is there precedent for such harsh claims against the
>bill?  Has this particular type of legislation been passed
>elsewhere in the world and shown to add to racist sentiment in
>that nation?  I'm not asking about cases where a language of
>some 10% or so is elevated to "officiality", or where a common
>"other" language is adopted for official purposes, but, cases
>where 70+% of the population has been speaking a language for
>nearly 200 years, that language is declared as "official", and
>the subsequent effects add to the impoverishment of the
>"non-native/non-fluent/non-proficient" speakers?

Those are rather narrow standards by which to find examples of language bias taking
place; they don't even correctly describe the situation in the United States.

I think a good example (if not a perfect one) of the kind of trouble that can take
place is in Indonesia, where ethnic Chinese are said to own 10 percent of the wealth.
Among other pro-bias, anti-Chinese laws, one was passed against the usage of Chinese
characters on signage. During the riots last year, ethnic Chinese were singled out as
targets of violence: rape, murder, shop-burning.

What I believe happened is that official laws against ethnic Chinese, and their
language, helped legitimize the Chinese as targets, accentuating pre-existing biases and
hatred. Given the passage of an official language law, I fore-see this happening in
the US, although on a non-violent level. We already have outrageous examples of
language bias and prejudice even without any kind of government legitimization.

I see no advantages to passing such a law and several against it. What I see is a
supposedly innocuous English-as-official law being the stepping stone to future
English-to-the-exclusion-of-other-languages law. Slippery slope logic that may be, but I
believe it. And that would be wrong.

--
Grant Barrett
New York loves you back.
http://www.worldnewyork.org/