Senator Obama and the Flap about Speaking Other Languages

    Drive into Abilene, Kansas in 1917 and you saw this sign:

SPEAK THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

If you don’t know it – learn it

  If you don’t like it – move out.

           The sign appeared at the height of “The Americanization Movement”, a crusade (begun in roughly 1900) to transform the immigrants who threatened America’s Anglo Protestant core. Among others, Italians, Polish, Portuguese, and Greek immigrants promised to rot that core for at least two reasons: They came from inferior cultures; and they refused to relinquish their original beliefs, values and practices.

        Like Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter, the newcomer’s accents and behaviors said that they were “hyphenated” Americans (e.g., Italian-Americans); Uncle Sam only wanted 100% Americans so the hyphens needed to immediately lose any attachment to their country of origin. As Theodore Roosevelt literally shouted it out, “This country is a crucible, a melting-pot in which many different race strains are being fused into one. If some of the material remains as an unfused lump, it is worthless in itself, and it is also a detriment to the rest of the mixture.”

     It was this mixture of self-satisfaction, ethnocentrism, and zeal that led, in 1924, to a gigantic contradiction. As the Americanizers enthusiastically celebrated the melting pot metaphor, Congress passed, in 1924, immigrant legislation that slammed the door in the face of virtually everyone on earth. So called Asians took the biggest hit; they got zero slots. But the core was protected and revitalized to such an extent that, from 1924 to 1965, England, Germany and Ireland received almost two-thirds of America’s legal immigration slots.

   America never opened its doors to the world. It opened its doors to people from certain parts of Europe and, when Senator Obama recently asked us to learn more than the English language he touched a cultural hot button that stretches from Senator McCain right back to his hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Our Anglo Protestant core may be pure European but one strong strain of our culture doesn’t like foreigners in general and immigrants in particular. We are better than they are. And even when they do exactly what we ask them to do, we still give them a very hard time.

   Consider these stories from two of my students. One is second generation Italian, the other is second generation Spanish. After arriving in the United States, each of their fathers learned to speak English and they speak it with authority and fluency. However, both men still have heavy accents. Let the family go to a restaurant and the students said their dads are often ridiculed – with ‘can you believe this’ stares or requests to repeat and repeat- when they order the meal. In Connecticut, the allegedly liberal Constitution State, the servers treat the fathers like hyphenated Americans even though the men speak two or more languages and the wait staff speaks one.

        Americans are superior; even when we are making fools of ourselves.

    We could argue that accents are all-American; that anyone who takes the time to learn the language deserves applause rather than humiliation. Instead, many of us criticize the immigrants for their halting efforts; or argue that they do not want to learn English oblivious to what is happening, for example, on Spanish TV. Here in Connecticut the daily ads feature an English language tape set that sells for $400; buy the tapes hawked by opera singer Placido Domingo and the price can double. So, is the logic is that “these people” do not want to learn English but they are willing to pay big bucks for language programs whose salespeople stress the tight linkage between success and speaking the English language.

    If we really want newcomers to learn English why not follow the example of Israel? Faced with new immigrants speaking many languages, they instituted, in 1948, ulpans, schools where the newcomers learned –for free- the Hebrew language. The ulpans are still in place as I write and they offer one means to assist newcomers to learn a basic skill – the dominant language of their new country of origin.

   Senator Obama never disagreed with learning English; on the contrary, he said that “the immigrants, absolutely, need to learn English.” What pushed the 100% American cultural button was his sense of envy for Europeans who spoke two or more languages. Critics of Obama argue that it’s a necessity in Europe; to interact across the continents many countries people must speak more than one language. In America we can speak English from Augusta to Eureka. So, we don’t need to learn another language. Only the immigrants have that obligation.

    This is self defeating nonsense. In Iraq we have almost no one who speaks Arabic. How do you gain good intelligence if you cannot speak the language? Equally important, a friend –he is a born abroad bottle engineer- tells me that in meetings in Europe, the conversations seamlessly move from one language to another. Will Americans sit there like ignoramuses? And, as China gains more and more economic power, will we tell them to speak in English or we will do business elsewhere?

   In a global economy, remaining monolingual helps guarantee economic suicide. But, another, arguably more important reason to learn a second language is to open ourselves to other people’s cultures. Words are like trunks; they contain layers and layers of stored beliefs and values. Efforts to learn another language helps us poke through the trunk and, as we see how other people think, we have the opportunity to examine our own way of thinking.

  So far as I can see one essential component of creativity is the willingness to continually expose ourselves to different beliefs, values and opinions. So, in assessing Senator Obama’s suggestion do we want to imitate the bunker mentality of Theodore Roosevelt?

   Or, do we want to see how other people think and grow as human beings because we are as open to other languages and cultures as we are to the “ethnic” food those “worthless” immigrants create in some of the nation’s best and most expensive restaurants.