Monday, January 19, 2009

I Speak American

I drove quite a bit this weekend, listening to my radio when it chose to work as I traveled between my boyfriend's house and my apartment. During several instances on his part of the state, I heard talk of a vote coming up on January 22nd to make English as the main language in Nashville, TN. The commercial in support of this act was given by a man of Latin descent.

The commercial that called for people to vote 'no' for English as the official language was given by an obviously white liberal woman. Hearing her talk and her reasoning behind having a hodge podge of dialects made me so angry I had to turn the station. Unfortunately, my radio had frozen again, so I had to pull over and unplug the stupid hunk of metal to basically reboot it.

I just don't understand. It's not a problem for the Chinese to have Chinese as their official language. Spanish in Mexico. French in France. Etc, etc, etc. And yet, having English as our official language, the language that the majority of our people in this nation speak, is considered intolerant. At least that was what this certain woman was peddling.

There is a difference between being intolerant and keeping our cultures alive. I am all in favor of immigrants coming to live here. With one stipulation - that they come here legally, pay taxes, and eventually acquire a working knowledge of English. If I moved to Russia, I would be expected to do the same. If I moved to almost any other country, in fact.

We are the only nation who is so damn afraid of offending a minority (that is quickly becoming a majority) that we cannot make a stand on what will benefit the good of the country. I believe America has made many amends for the Spanish community, and I do not believe these allowances were for tolerance. I believe they were to increase the movement of these people to our country because they will work for almost nothing. Everything this country does is money oriented.

Money makes the world go round. Maybe I'll understand that better when I get some.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As an Anglo American, I visited Mexico last year for a short time. I did not see any allowances made for lack of knowledge of the Spanish language. If i were to move there and want to work, would I be coddled and catered to help me assimilate into the culture. No. My knowledge of Spanish is enough to curse and survive in a restaurant. On the upside, I did see several drugstores where you could most Rx drugs for 1/10th the price of what they are here in the states... I'm sure it was all legit.

Lenina Crowne said...

Of course it was! Did those pills actually work, by the way. You know the ones...

And basically, I can count in Spanish. I wonder how many times I would have to do that to piss them the fuck off?

The Demon said...

Does no one but me remember the Mexican-American War? You know, the battle of Chapultepec and every other engagement where we ruined the mexican's shit.

Lenina Crowne said...

Yes. But that was the past. This country has become way to concerned with PC in the last few decades in my opinion. I'm in favor of building up the borders myself.