Is Teaching English-Only Classes Racist?

Reed Hastings may lose his seat on the California state Board of Education for supporting English-only classooms for immigrant students in some California schools. Even Susan Estrich is defending him.

Here's my favorite picture of Susan Estrich:



It all bounces around like BB's on a stainless-steel counter, but it all comes together so be patient.

• In the Middle Ages, Benefit of Clergy allowed that any layman who could demonstrate literacy could gain a reprieve as long as the crime was only a lesser felony or first conviction. Ben Jonson, the playwright, pled benefit of clergy when he was arraigned for killing a fellow actor. In other words, the ability to read and write English (or Latin) was so valued it could be used as protection against criminal punishment.

• Historically, people have looked down on others who do not speak their language. Lack of a common language fundamental interferes with cultures engaging peacefully with each other. A difference in language could be enough of a reason to start a war.

• The priestcraft has long known the power of language, and how to elevate one's own group by creating a specialized language that excludes the laity. In early days, the faithful were awed by those who could read and write and make sense out of squiggles on papyrus. Imagine what it would be like if you were illiterate to see people who could convey meaning to each other without speaking. Why do the priestcraft reserve a special language to themselves? So that others need them. They become the middlemen, the go-betweens, who must be consulted to access the Holy Spirit and the hidden secrets of the Divine.

• Lawyers, like the priestcraft, have successfully excluded a majority of citizens by creating a technical terminology that requires us to need them. We always ask why they can't talk our language. Well, if you could understand their language, if you could easily understand a contract, would you need to hire a lawyer?

• (Update: A friend who happens to be a lawyer takes exception to my simplification. Indeed, lawyers and priests and doctors--You have a non-specific urethritis, Mr. Alexander--and other professionals necessarily develop a technical vocabulary to properly practice their professions. And laypersons cannot be expected to master that vocabulary. My point is simple. We live in an age where technical use of a language is being used to exclude and manipulate others, my simplification notwithstanding. We can all think of examples of such abuse. Acknowledging the necessity for and benefits of a technical vocabulary does not mitigate the real existence of manipulative use of that technical vocabulary. Besides, I like law. I even wrote an article on Shakespeare's Knowledge of Law.)

• Imagine living and working in France for a year and studying the language and culture diligently. Then imagine taking a month off to travel around France, talking with French people in Paris and Provence and Grenoble. Lovely, isn't it?

• Now imagine living and working in France for a year and not studying the language and culture diligently. Imagine traveling around France struggling to make yourself understood. How capable do you feel?

Okay. Here's the bottom line. I think that one of the most manipulative, controlling, disempowering, and indeed racist things you can do to immigrants to the United States is to put into place measures that keep them from learning English. Why on earth would anyone support an education for immigrants in this country without doing everything possible to help them learn English? Why do lawyers and priests and politicians create a special language?

In a word, dependency.

It's that simple. If I am an Hispanic leader who needs a following, and if I want to make sure that my people have to work through me to get information and help, I will not be all that excited about empowering them to get that information and help directly.

If they want to know whom to vote for, what the political issues are, what the president is saying (or what I want them to believe the president is saying), I will make sure that in the interests of "multicultural" education, they stay with their own language. That they do not assimilate into the American culture by learning English.

That they are dependent on me.

• A person who knows English does not need an interpretor.
• A person knows English does not need my help in understanding what politicians are saying.
• A person that knows English can get by in America without my help.

Most importantly, a person who speaks English might discover that what I am saying to my people may not quite match what that person may now discover independently.

Everyone who argues that English-only is racist has it backwards. English-only is empowering, inclusive, community building, connecting, supportive, and pluralistic. It opens doors. It gives individuals power to be free, to access information directly, to make up their own minds.

And that's what the whole thing is about, isn't it? Who controls their minds? Do we help them learn English, so that they can control their own minds? Or do we deny English to them so that we can control their minds?

*** Clear language engenders clear thought, and clear thought is the most important benefit of education. The Graves of Academe