How many of you feel inhibited in using a language other than English when you are out in public? I know that I think twice about speaking in Punjabi on my cell when there are others around. Here are two examples of recent language xenophobia incidents. The first involves Zach Rubio, a 16 year old student in Kansas City who was suspended for speaking Spanish in the halls:
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Zach Rubio’s high school had no such signs |
“It was, like, totally not in the classroom,” the high school junior said, recalling the infraction. “We were in the, like, hall or whatever, on restroom break. This kid I know, he’s like, ‘Me prestas un dolar?’ [‘Will you lend me a dollar?’] Well, he asked in Spanish; it just seemed natural to answer that way. So I’m like, ‘No problema.’ “A teacher who overheard the two boys sent Zach to the office, where Principal Jennifer Watts ordered him to call his father and leave the school… in a written “discipline referral” explaining her decision to suspend Zach for 1 1/2 days, she noted: “This is not the first time we have [asked] Zach and others to not speak Spanish at school.” [Link]
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p>Note that this high school has no policy against speaking Spanish outside of class, and even if it did, it would be difficult to understand how such a policy could be legal.
The second incident involves an editorial assistant at the Chicago Tribune named (verdad) Ahmad. A. Ahmad:
The Amtrak train was four hours outside New York City when we heard the conductor’s voice on the loudspeaker…We were all stuck, somewhere in the middle of New York state, and we would have to wait for a bus to take us to the nearest big city… I decided to call my mother in Chicago to tell her what happened. We spoke in our native tongue, Arabic.… I heard sirens approaching, and the bus suddenly came to a stop on the side of the highway. Police cars came–so many I couldn’t even begin to count them… The man told police he understood Arabic and had overheard my conversation. He thought I was talking to some terrorist cell when I was chatting with my mother… The authorities questioned me for nearly three hours at an Albany police station. They asked me where I was from, whether I was a United States citizen, who I knew in New York City, who I worked for, and why I was traveling alone. [Link]
In this latter case, tripple A has nothing but praise for the authorities:
The officers were, for the most part, courteous and understanding of my situation.
One officer, Investigator James L. Rogers of the New York State Police, would later call me twice to make sure I made it to New York City with no hassles. Once the police realized the man couldn’t actually speak Arabic, they knew the allegations were baseless, and that he was a wacko, hell-bent on deporting every Muslim back to the Middle East. [Link]
But the ease with which he was stopped and detained without having done anything makes me … uneasy. Just imagine being detained and questioned for hours just because somebody overheard you reciting the latest bollywood song lyrics into your phone and you’ll see what I mean.
UPDATE:
A semi-related but very funny story:
In Dallas, on the weekend, I talked to a woman who spoke good but accented English. She told me that spoke an aboriginal language most of her childhood. She didn’t learn English till she was about 10 years old. She learned it from the women who came to live with the family and the 13 kids after her mother fell sick.
She didn’t have a chance to use her English outside the community until some years later. She and her brother went in to Tucson to buy the hose and the bucket they needed to build an outdoor shower.
She went to the hardware store and placed her order. The person behind the counter looked at her and raised his hands in the air, the sign of incomprehension. So she tried again: “can you sell me a bucket and a hose?” She got the same reaction.
Now she said, “What is the matter with this guy? Doesn’t he speak English?”
The man beside her looked at her with surprise and said, “Lady, you’re speaking Spanish.” [Link]
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A lot of us software engineers that came over recently have the same problem at the workplace/public spaces @ work.OSHA and other guv agencies say that one can speak in any language @ the workplace if the conversation is not work related and the participants can understand. The average WASP @ work is not aware of the law and gives us grief about this all the time.This “Jesus hates you pagans” guy I knew always insinuated that we were talking bad about him when in reality we wudn’t give a flyin’ f**k about him or his pagan hating church and wud be talking about stuff relevant to us alone.
For some reason I always avoid speaking in Punjabi in public .. or if I do, I’ll clearly repeat what I said in English. I guess all this suspicion is part of the reason why. How am I supposed to make fun of other people now?
I think it really stems from insecurity. if the students were speaking Spanish in the classroom, distracting other students or from the lesson, it would be one thing. But to simply have a conversation in the hallway or the bathroom, between friends… it just seems insecure to me.
My mom always hated when my dad and his friends or family would all speak in Hindi, because she didn’t understand it and assumed that it was because they were saying things they didn’t want her to know. Thus, we didn’t learn Hindi at home probably in part because of my mom’s paranoia that everyone would be talking about her… silly thing, insecurity…
i think there are shades to this. making this is legal issue is obviously sketchy, but, in terms of courtesy i think there are real concerns. speaking in another language by its nature erects a barrier and distance. i happen to know someone who was at a trade show in texas, and because she ‘looked anglo’ spanish speaking customers would always critique and talk shit about her products because they assumed she didn’t know spanish. as it is, she had fluent italian and could understand spanish perfectly, so this was a fallacious assumption and eventually if the customers wouldn’t stop talking shit about the products (mind you, they might be 3-4 feet in front of her space) she would tell them in spanish that ‘no, that is isn’t made out of cheap metal’ (etc. etc.). i suspect that the problem of perceived lack of courtesy is less in the case of situations where an individual clearly has a difficult time communicating in english. i.e., if you have a situation where an old chinese or spanish woman who barely knows english asks a younger person questions in another language in front of those who don’t know that language, i think people can connect the dots and assume that there is not intent toward exclusion or secrecy, it is at least expediency and most likely necessacity. on the other hand, the tendency for genuinely bilingual people to switch back and forth probably is more likely to set off alarms and anger, and this might be more likely to happen in the case of americans for whom spanish, english and spanglish are all first languages, and who feel comfortable and are habituated to switching between them at will and convenience.
a cross-cultural question, how does multi-lingualism work in india?
Thus, we didn’t learn Hindi at home probably in part because of my mom’s paranoia that everyone would be talking about her… silly thing, insecurity…
well, if you don’t know hindi, how do you know she wasn’t right? 🙂
also, might i add that here in oregon i have noticed that a lot of things in public places (i.e., library self-check out terminals, etc.) are going toward bilingual options. some of the hostility is probably derived from the reality of the fact that spanish is starting to become a necessacity for many jobs and public agencies are mildly accommidating spanish monolingualism (especially in blue-collar industries and social services).
razib, sparing you my life story and some armchair psychology 😉 I was told as much by family, and I know my mom’s personality. Incidentally, I’ve been learning Hindi as an adult, and that’s no easy feat.
wrt Razib’s #6 comment, it was the same way in Florida and parts of Texas. While some citizens (the ones who have bumper stickers which say “these colors don’t run” or “Toby Keith Rocks” or the Calvin-pissing-on-something decal) have issue with those who don’t “speak American”, most people seemed to just shrug and go “So? It’s helpful, big deal…”
do you shake your head in that weird-ass way that i see in bollywood movies sometimes? what i’m asking is, is that a structural byproduct of the language, or a tendency picked up through cultural osmosis?
I shake all kinds of things in weird-ass ways 😉
I dunno about you guys, but biliguality is fabulous. As a 2nd gen, I love the fact that i can talk shit about other people with my desi friends when we’re out. Thats why i learned hindi…well that and to speak with my relatives when in India.
Honestly we live in a capitalistic society, if your dumbass doesn’t understand, go to a fucking library, but don’t tell me not to use knowledge i have which you don’t. Sorry white boy, you’ve got enough fucking priviledges from being white, now you wanna stick me cause you dont understand the words comin out of my MOUTH? FUCK YOU
also Razib,
HAHAHA, yes
It’s helpful, big deal…
not to hijack thread (never happens), but i think there is a distinction though between bilingual signs on a library self-check out screen…and the reality that bilinguals are getting preference in many jobs. the fact of the matter is that there are certain jobs where you are going to run into A LOT of spanish speakers. thatz the factz. but as you said, learning a language is tough, and some people are too old to do it well, and some people are just bad at it after puberty (i am one of those, throw a diff eq or square matrix my way, but not shit with ‘cases,’ whatever that means).
This sounds a lot like Arizona’s failed “English as the official language” program/law. Maybe I’m hypersensitive, but it sounds like national origin discrimination to bar individuals from speaking ANY of their native language. Plus, what does the school care, particularly if it’s a social exchange? I used to think it was rude [to speak in other languages] in mixed company where not everyone could participate, but I just got over it. While I think everyone should reach fluency in English in their education, I also think Americans should have to learn foreign languages and achieve intermediate fluency. If you happen to speak another language at home, it’s that much more awesome for you. This obsession with English just seems like proxy for other issues of inclusion and xenophobia.
My favorite non-English experience is when my mom switches to Punjabi to gossip/criticize in front of non-Punjabis. Except that she got so used to doing this she used to do it in the gurdwara, b/c of course NO ONE speaks Punjabi there. 🙂
well, i work in germany and its commonplace to hear a dozen languages everyday around you..there’s a lot of turkish, arabic, etc goin around..initially it was alarming to be in such a stew but then i guess i got used to it..even my workplace is multilingual (german/french/italian/english/..)..though i definitely do feel strange when people in a conversational circle switch languages for no reason..i always thought it mannerless to use a foreign language in a gathering unless others understood it but people here seem to think otherwise!! i’d never imagine it would escalate to an issue of this magnitude..i mean there’s a limit for being paranoid..
as far as india is concerned, there’s always the common denominator:hindi to use when nothin else works..
This sounds exactly like what happened to me when I was in school – a couple of friends and I were fined for not speaking in English during our lunch break.
PS: I went to an “English Medium” school in India, and I know for a fact that ours was not the only one to impose only-English-within-these-walls rules.
This obsession with English just seems like proxy for other issues of inclusion and xenophobia.
yes, it is. but only to some extent. the cases that ennis points to above are outliers. intregrate over the full distribution of language speech and i think we could agree that spanish speakers don’t live in fear of public opprobrium and rebuke. this is notable because it is somewhat exceptional in its insensitivity.
but I just got over it
well, no offense, but your personal preferences are not the standard by which public mores are determined. if you get enough people to agree with you, than they are. if not, well, they aren’t.
hindi to use when nothin else works
i don’t know if read this here, or heard it on the BBC or something, but i recall something about some north indian guy complaining that most people in tamil nadu didn’t speak hindi (the gall!).
btw, let me offer that evolutionary anthropologists posit that language emerged as a facility of humans so that we could communicate transparently and efficiently in our groups. the tower of babel mythology does reflect the reality that linguistic variation tends to bespeak distinctions. this is not just ethnic, in many parts of the world the elites and lower classes might as well be speaking different languages. notwithstanding the overreaches noted above, i am certainly willing to declare that i dissent from the sanguinity of some toward toleration of dialectical opacity in public as a norm. to some extent, my rationale is the same as that for opposing black-moving-objects in burqas becoming acceptable in custom as well as law, what putative individual benefits are accrued are obtained at the cost to social exchange and interaction.
I’m not arguing that my personal preferences are the way the world should function or they way American society forms its standards of appropriate conduct, I was just commenting from my perspective. I may be simplistic, but I’m not stupid, thanks.
I can’t agree with you, and maybe it’s b/c I live in California, where people are beaten and ridiculed on a regular basis for speaking Spanish, or as the gringos like to call it down here, they “speak Mexican.” I don’t think this case is exceptional aside from the length of the suspension. As for the second case, I think the only thing unusual was that the police let Ax3 go after figuring out that the man who called in was nuts. And generally, I don’t think it’s useful for desis/Arabs (or any p.o.c., actually) to play oppression Olympics over who’s going to get screwed most in America.
Razib – language definitely has social space, and even status, associations. I wonder how much of that is at play here. i.e. keep Spanish out of schools and on the streets and in the homes.
Another thing to consider – what exactly constitutes “English” in the above example. If some kids were to speak pidgin/ebonics would that not be acceptable?
I can’t agree with you, and maybe it’s b/c I live in California, where people are beaten and ridiculed on a regular basis for speaking Spanish, or as the gringos like to call it down here, they “speak Mexican.”
i think this depends on the part of california. i’ve heard many more stories about what you are talking about from people who have lived around say, fresno, than san luis obispo. and FYI, my understanding is that mexican spanish is very different dialect from castilian standard. a friend of mine stupidly took spanish classes from a local woman who was from guadalajara before her year abroad in seville. once she got to spain, people looked like she was on crack when she opened her mouth, mostly because she spoke somewhat like the illegal peddlars and workers that are starting to appear there to fill manual occupational positions (from latin america).
Another thing to consider – what exactly constitutes “English” in the above example. If some kids were to speak pidgin/ebonics would that not be acceptable?
it hasn’t in the past from what i know. this is just the recapitulation of an old argument. the irish american roman catholic hierarchy of this country spent decades wearing the german catholics down on the issues relating to their ‘native’ language schools in places like st. louis. world war I ended that.
on the issues relating to language, a friend of mine from athens, GA, told me that after high school a lot of his friends who stayed in the south picked up a southern accent. you see, athens is a college town, with many resettled northern families, so southern accents were not normative in his high school. but once they got out into the wider work world, it was necessary for them to fit in as ‘folks.’
keep Spanish out of schools and on the streets and in the homes.
well, i won’t defend the conduct above, but, i have very young siblings. when my sister was in 1st grade she was placed in an ‘immigrant’ class (without my parents’ knowledge). this class consisted of about 15 children from spanish speaking backgrounds and 15 children from russian speaking backgrounds, and 2-3 others, which included my sister. one problem was that the pace of this class was at retarded level (this is how my parents found out that she’d been placed in a class for kids who were expected to have low english fluency). but another problem was that non-english speech was widely tolerated in this school, and my sister and her english speaking friends (1 chinese american girl, 2 native whites) had to make friends with kids from other classes because the russian and spanish speaking clique simply behaved as if they didn’t exist during recess.
Mexican Spanish is a different dialect than Castilian, but it is no more appropriate to call it “Mexican” than it is to call American English “American.”
And people aren’t just beaten up or harassed in Fresno (although this is a more comforting thought since the Central Valley is depicted as backwater, agrarian and hick) – you see this problem throughout California, particularly in areas with large Latin@ populations (LA, San Diego, South/East Bay Area). There’s also evidence of this in Arizona and other border states.
Badmash, you know the answer to this 🙂 No one is talking about allowing Ebonics in the classroom when they’re talking about English-only debates — just look at the fiasco in Oakland. I think the most difficult part of this argument for outsiders was understanding the logic behind Ebonics being classified as an entirely different dialect/linguistic strain of English, which would lend itself to the same kinds of “English as a second language” or “bilingual ed” neeeds as non-(standard) English speakers. The question of whether it was appropriate to speak in the classroom was not even on the table.
As someone who was also put in a non-native speakers class for 2 days in first grade, I feel like this problem is more endemic to how bilingual education classes are framed and approached nationwide instead of a problem with students and their fluency in a non-English language. Even today you see a disproportionate number of ESL students placed in special ed instead of seeing coursework and programs tailored to rapid advancement and education in English. This also used to help schools in some states buy time since traditionally special ed programs aren’t held to standardized testing performance (thus you can inflate your scores by taking out ESL students, who generally score lower in the vocab/reading sections of these tests).
I speak hindi, gujarati and punjabi in public all the time (on the phone). Have never gotten grief for it and have never thought twice about it. Except once. This redneck asshle started mumbling under his breath and making these weird noises (literally – “puk, puk, puk”) every time I passed him (I was in a store) and I thought I heard the word “foreigner”. My mind didn’t register what was going on for a minute. When it did, I literally froze in my tracks. Went back to the guy and confronted him. Asked him if he was talking to me. Expected him to kind of back off and deny the whole thing. No way! The moron tells me “you people” can’t talk in public like that! I can’t describe in words the sheer and utter *rage that filled every part of my being. I literally started trembling. And of course I didn’t let him get away with it. Cussed him out, called him a f*cking racist and stood a foot away from him, stared him in the eyes and continued talking in Gujarati. Not a very mature way of handling it? Maybe. I’m just glad I could resist the temptation to physically hit him.
Because there are no cliques in high school, and everybody communicates in a public and transparent fashion, with no codes or exclusion. Right?
If this was really a primary concern for educators, they would do more to integrate their student bodies. Instead they do the opposite, but then complain when racial and linguistic subgroups imitate the dominant pattern.
Razib,
if you can’t understand “No problema” then you’ve got other problems 😉
(the ones who have bumper stickers which say “these colors don’t run” or “Toby Keith Rocks” or the Calvin-pissing-on-something decal)
i shudder…they actually have ‘toby kieth rocks’ decals? OMMGG…..keep my mother away from that stuff.
personally, for me, i feel as long as all languages are promoted equally in america, it’s all good. i just have a fit when certain langues are stressed, and others are ignored. i’m begging my fmaily and friends to teach me hindi and punjabi, and i love it when they do speak it, even though most of the time i have no idea what they’re saying. now, there are some places, where i can see the language barrier. when i was younger, my mother was talking to a woman whpo was part latino of some sort, and she didn’t know a word of spanish. she was around others who told her ‘speak spanish, we can’t understand you.’ she was also told by another woman that they were talking behind her back, and calling her various eufanisms (sp), and since she couldnt understand it, they got away with it. i’d taken to learn a small bit of spanish, because i’ve had to spend far too many trips at the welfare office in my youth, and others i know, as well as myself, have seen similar situations. so, it should be added that i don’t care what language is spoken, as long as you’re not using to purposely make soemone feel uncomfortable, whatever. i go to my local store and say how are you in polish to the one employee, and all my sikh friends greet me with sat sri akal.
Because there are no cliques in high school, and everybody communicates in a public and transparent fashion, with no codes or exclusion. Right?
ah yes, no, there are no cliques, i’ve never seen any! you got me!
just because there are preexistent fissures based on class, race and popularity does not mean that we should sit still and allow the formation of another axis of differentiation. for example, in the case above with my sister, the principle shouldn’t have clustered all the putative children of immigrants in one class (this was an SES issue too, many of the russian kids parents were on welfare and the latinos were from working class backgrounds while most everyone else was suburban), he should have distributed them amongst the various 1st grade teachers (the 2 anglo girls were apparently there because of the arithmetic, there weren’t seats anywhere else, so they got stuck with the immigrant 1st grade).
I feel like this problem is more endemic to how bilingual education classes are framed and approached nationwide instead of a problem with students and their fluency in a non-English language.
well, this wasn’t standard bilingual education class. it was supposed to follow the curriculum just like all the other classes, but from what i gathered from afar (what my parents told me) is that there was a tacit policy of just stuffing immigrant kids together in one class and not putting much effort in keeping them up to speed, because if you split them up that spread the ‘problem’ (i.e., teachers having to take time out to help).
The thought of a school doing that is horrible, and it sad how many of our educators are getting dumber and dumber.
But I think that sometimes it is inappropriate to speak in a non-English language and sometimes I even find it annoying, especially when the person speaks loudly.
As far as the Arab speaker on the train, well I can’t blame the cops for taking the matter seriously, but to prevent such incidents the liar who claimed he could speak Arabic and caused the whole mess should face some sort of charges – lying to the Police and causing public hysteria are crimes of some sort aren’t they? At least haul his ass down to the precinct, cause him the same hastle and humiliation and then slap a tidy little fine on him. He’ll think twice next time.
i feel as long as all languages are promoted equally in america
they won’t be. there will be some languages that are privileged along with english. instead of a monopoly, you’ll hae an oligopoly, and people will try to get into the game, like with the ebonics fiasco. back in 2001 the UC system was considering replacing the sat with the sat ii subject tests (i don’t know if they did it), and black leaders cried foul because they asserted it gave latinos and asians (chinese) and an automatic advantage because they could use that as one of their 3 subject tests.
they won’t be. there will be some languages that are privileged along with english. instead of a monopoly, you’ll hae an oligopoly, and people will try to get into the game, like with the ebonics fiasco. back in 2001 the UC system was considering replacing the sat with the sat ii subject tests (i don’t know if they did it), and black leaders cried foul because they asserted it gave latinos and asians (chinese) and an automatic advantage because they could use that as one of their 3 subject tests.
mm…that’s sad. hmm……well, i still won’t give up hope. i can’t predict the future, so i still have think there could be a chance to it. maybe an unrealistic and improbable chance at this point, but anything’s possible if we work on it.
Again, there’s a double standard here, because some fissures are tolerated as “natural” (wealth etc) while one’s native language isn’t. I see your point about the potential of encouraging these divisions further Razib, but I think the choice made to tolerate divisions arising out of economic disparities and not cultural disparities is based on a capricious disregard for culture (aka prejudice?)
The point is that they only get upset about one cleavage while ignoring the others, or endorsing them as being essential to high school. Why impose a unilingual policy in the name of transparency and unity when these are two values that high schools care little about? Because now it’s the dominant group that feels excluded for once, and that’s threatening. What they want is one way transparency only.
Living in Toronto, Canada, most of these US incidents seem almost hard to believe to me (which is not to say I don’t believe them, BTW). Sometimes I feel like no one in this city has English as a mother tongue; speaking a language other than English in public here is the norm, although the diversity of minority populations here is such that there isn’t one particular dominant non-English language in most situations. Even many of our public information materials (emergency info, waste-pickup schedules, etc.) is printed in almost a dozen different languages. On the other hand, when I was a child (7-8 yrs old) I lived in the US (Minnesota) for a couple of years. Although I was pretty bright as a kid, I was put into the lowest-level reading group, only, as far as I can see, because I was from Canada (English-speaking Canada). Go figure.
Again, there’s a double standard here, because some fissures are tolerated as “natural” (wealth etc) while one’s native language isn’t.
name a society without class divisions.
now name a society without language divisions (you can).
class is the basis of communist solidarity, but in practice, nations like russia had to turn to nationalism (democratic-centralism, blah, blah). nationalism which was rooted in language.
language divisions are tractable. germans were swallowed into the america body politic. latinos will be swallowed, it is matter of when, not if. class fissures, or fissures between butt ugly and attractive, or athletic and non-athletic, well, in the last two cases, go to god, and the first, go to greed.
The point is that they only get upset about one cleavage while ignoring the others, or endorsing them as being essential to high school.
how are schools going to erase class divisions? they can where they can (i.e., banning calculators on tests when they were expensive, providing vouchers for students who can’t afford football fees, etc.). how schools going to erase divisions between jocks and pussies? i think there is apples and oranges going on here, some divisions are fundamental emergent properties from the natural variation within a population (even assuming that class has no correlation with any heritable traits, random fluctuations will lead to accumulation, or communist party membership, or ‘good proletariat class background’). language divisions are not fundamental. they’ve always been eliminated over time.
Linguistic resistance is futile, eh? 😉
I wasn’t actually appealing to the communist ideal. However, there are strategies that have been employed to downplay the role of economic background in schools e.g. uniforms/dress codes enforced to minimize the display/awareness of socio-economic background, which don’t seem to have much importance in most schools in N America. Speaking of “God-given” attributes, I really think culture and language are as much a part of these as physical attributes.
Living in Toronto, Canada, most of these US incidents seem almost hard to believe to me (which is not to say I don’t believe them, BTW). Sometimes I feel like no one in this city has English as a mother tongue; speaking a language other than English in public here is the norm, although the diversity of minority populations here is such that there isn’t one particular dominant non-English language in most situations.
Toronto is the most diverse city in North America, maybe the world, and a very hospitable place. I’ve always felt more comfortable there than in New England or New Jersey. I happened upon a Liberal Party meeting in downtown Toronto and was surprised to see the numbers of Sikhs and Hindus participating. But from what I gather (anecdotally), ethnicities are melting quickly there (in Ontario). I think Canadian South Asians marry out at a much higher rate than Indian- Americans, the majority of whom marry other Indians (though usually without caste/regional considerations), and Pakistani-Americans, many of whom still marry their cousins.
And this is in a society (Canada) where the political regime openly celebrates multiculturalism and very nearly implemented Sharia law for Muslims. 🙂
However, there are strategies that have been employed to downplay the role of economic background in schools e.g. uniforms/dress codes enforced to minimize the display/awareness of socio-economic background, which don’t seem to have much importance in most schools in N America
they used to. in part the culture changed toward individual expression, and in part i believe there were civil liberties challenges (not on the constitutional level, but in concert with the zeitgeist the regs were dropped).
1) yes, SES variance can be ameliorated 2) but never eliminated 3) linguistic substructure can be ameliorated 4) and definitely eliminated
I really think culture and language are as much a part of these as physical attributes.
well, i disagree. so perhaps it is about norms & values. no shame as long as we know we wear different uniforms.
I think Canadian South Asians marry out at a much higher rate than Indian- Americans, the majority of whom marry other Indians (though usually without caste/regional considerations), and Pakistani-Americans, many of whom still marry their cousins.
i’ve cited statistics that shown 1.5-american born browns marry at rates of between 25-40% (i.e., 1.5 marry in more, american born out more) before. i’ve got to run, so google it if you are curious.
adios!
When Anna and I want to speak to each other without being understood, we use double “cryptography”: she speaks to me in Malayalam, and I respond in French. Works like a champ 🙂
The funniest: we were at a coffee shop and I asked her a question, she responded in French. A guy asked us if were speaking ….Gujurati.
this fear of an alien tongue is somehow unexplainable..maybe shrinks out there know better..its everywhere – right from the tamils who agitated against hindi (btw its quite an interesting aside that south indians pick up hindi easily if they go up north while most north indians hardly try!) to the obnoxious french who answer in their language even if they knew english..
i’ve cited statistics that shown 1.5-american born browns marry at rates of between 25-40%
Wow! Thats higher than I whould have thought based on my experience with weddings. I must be living in a fucking ghetto 🙂
say wha’???
speak english! 🙂
this fear of an alien tongue is somehow unexplainable..maybe shrinks out there know better..its everywhere – right from the tamils who agitated against hindi (btw its quite an interesting aside that south indians pick up hindi easily if they go up north while most north indians hardly try!
Well…the Sindhis settled in Chennai who have substantial economic interests in the state (and are the only non-Tamils who can get into the prestigious Madras Club) speak it mighty well.
Tamil linguistic chauvinism is really a sort of ethno-nationalism. Dravidianism (which is still the ideology of the major political parties in the state) viewed the Brahmans as invading, Sanskrit-speaking aliens. Hindi was the Sanskrit stand-in, and the vehicle of Aryan hegemony over the South.
i read the washington post article in its entirety… and the thing that i’m most proud of is this kid’s dad:
before i launch into my comment–i will say that i was a teacher for 2 years in Detroit, and that there are educators who just don’t get ‘it.’ but there are also many that do and are trying to implement change in public and private schools.
Anyways,
I’m excited about this father’s go-get’m attitude towards the school’s stupid policy. I always felt that schools have always tried to capitalize on the passivity of immigrant parents.
I am absolutely positive that had a similar incident happened to me or my brother when we were in school, my parents would have automatically aussumed that the school was right and defered to their decision.
actually….wait let me think…oh yeah…that happened [not with my speaking hindi at school, but something else–where a bunch of students got in trouble and if you’re parents came in and made a ruckus about the punishment–it was rescinded but if your parents didn’t then you got a detention/suspension].
i guess my thought is that i feel that South Asian culture holds educators with a view that they can NEVER be wrong–even when they are.
So props to you, Mr. Rubio!
Ennis and badmash, I think you two are my new favorites 🙂
Speaking to socioeconomics, this argument completely relies on a conception of market capitalism in which inequality/inequity are inherent to the system. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I think some radical policies and wealth distribution could do some good in this category, and I don’t think wealth inequality is a “natural” phenomenon simply b/c it’s prevalent in most societies.
As far as linguistic difference being erasable, I think this is true and also deplorable. I mean, we could all mimic the Japanese in Korea, but I think most people who identify with classical liberal norms/morality would see this as disgusting today. I can’t see why cultural hegemony or culture-cide in the form of language is ok or even a desirable end. It’s like the freaking Borg, minus the part about learning everything about another civilization’s society/culture.
Regarding Latin@ integration, this argument presumes some kind of Latin@ homogeneity and also ignores the impact of race on integration. Latin@s are one of the most racially diverse groups in the US, and understandably folks who look more “Anglo” and come from historically rich families have had an easier time absorbing into white privilege than Afro-Latin@s who may have histories of poverty and slavery instead.
And, to answer your question, UC still uses the SAT I test – it was just heavily restructured and is deemphasized slightly in admissions in favor of the SAT IIs 🙂
In terms of Tamil frustration with Hindi, I actually think it’s kind of well-founded. Don’t more individuals speak English in the subcontinent than Hindi? Given Hindi’s role in constructing the national ideal that India used in independence, I can see why folks would have the same frustrations with Hindi (as representative of this kind of national image) that they have with the contemporary image of an Indian put forward by the more Hindu nationalist types. And please don’t construe that to mean that I think Hindi-speakers are nationalists! I just think it’s important to reflect on the use of language in national projects.
You must not have any lazy friends 😉