Last week, District 2 City Councilman Jack Perry ran his mouth quite a bit. He talked about speakers of the “Hispanic language” and other “minority factions” forcing the city to “bend over backwards” to provide document translations, and he talked about a situation in which the city will soon find itself translating documents into “Tagalog, whatever the hell that is.” Perry suggested the city investigate the advantages and disadvantages of making English the official language of College Park, and he made no question of which side of the fence he lies on.
I’ve been around College Park a few years now, so the tone of these comments didn’t really surprise me – Perry isn’t exactly known for his political correctness. But I did get quite a surprise from the incident, in a completely different way.
It all started when I visited The Diamondback Online to read comments about the article. Of the 19 comments – quite a few, by summer Diamondback standards – those that disagreed with Perry only went so far as to condemn his rough presentation of the matter or generally disagree with the idea of making English the official city language. Though Perry was called a racist, elitist and “toolbag,” nobody bothered to poke holes in the logic he laid forth for making English the official language of College Park.
Laying out a slippery slope argument, Perry asserts by adding Spanish translations of documents, the city opens itself to needing to support a slew of other languages, resulting in an expensive overall translation process. However, most languages are not as widely spoken in College Park as Spanish is, and given the amount of fuss Perry has raised concerning Spanish translations, translations to Tagalog – or, for that matter, pretty much any other language – just don’t seem too likely, leaving the councilman’s argument moot (Sorry, College Park Filipinos).
However, the flaws in reasoning found in the comments of Perry’s online supporters were even more alarming. One supporter asserted there are communities of Latinos cropping up across America with no desire to assimilate, necessitating English as the sole official language to force these groups to learn. Unfortunately, I’ve heard the same or similar arguments used a number of times, and these arguments strike me as being exceptionally weak.
One of the main reasons many Latinos immigrate to America is in search of economic well-being that’s much more difficult to attain in their native lands. As English is the language of business in America, it makes sense many of these immigrants would value education in English, if not for themselves then certainly for their children. This postulate is supported by statistics, as well – according to a recent survey, over 90 percent of Hispanics believe it is “very important” to teach English to the children of immigrant families. This doesn’t sound like the stance of a people isolating themselves into communities that won’t assimilate.
Another faulty argument on the discussion board I’ve seen a number of times to support legislating English as an official language is the ethos appeal that English is “the glue that has kept the U.S. together” historically, and making it official would lead to catastrophe (in this case, the commenter provided “civil war” as the likely side effect). Of course, this is a blind emotional appeal with no substance. Historically, the United States has seen a number of immigration surges, and none have topped the surge around 1910 in magnitude or effect. Yet I didn’t hear about any American civil wars in the early part of the 20th century, and I have to believe today’s smaller immigration surge will similarly lack major upheaval.
However, it’s equally bogus to hold up English as some sort of magical glue that keeps the country together – the consistent presence of immigrants throughout U.S. history doesn’t seem to support that point at all. Indeed, one historical constant seems to be the U.S. has always had a large number of foreign language speakers, so if anything, working to limit the number of non-English speakers in America would be un-American.
The American official language debate is a very interesting one that raises a number of questions reaching all the way to the very meaning of what it is to be an American. By cluttering the debate with logical fallacies and blatant misstatements, Perry and the like obscure the true debate, making a touchy and charged national issue even more touchy and charged.
When approaching the national language issue, I suggest we all step back and look critically at the arguments being presented; there are a lot of Jack Perrys out there with an argument that falls down under the least bit of scrutiny.
John Silberholz is a computer science and mathematics major and The Diamondback’s deputy managing editor during the school year. He can be reached at silberholzdbk@gmail.com.
