Learn English or Lose Your Child
What happens when English is enforced as a primary language?
Many believe English should be the primary language in the United States, and that polices should be imposed restricting foreign languages. The arguments made for this line of reasoning are many, each laced with lazy rhetoric and bigotry. I, for one, am saddened to behold a nation of people who have lost their way.
Lady Liberty speaks through poet Emma Lazarus with the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” What a beautiful image Lazarus’s poem creates. Come and live here all you discriminated against and made to suffer; come here to America and be free. Sadly, she fails to mention the caveat, as long as you’re white and speak English; otherwise, get the hell out.
Whether our country is a melting-pot or a salad bowl, what matters is our acceptance of one another. We are supposed to be a country willing to embrace strangers with open arms, and they can be brown or yellow, and they can speak Mandarin or Spanish, it doesn’t matter because here we are free. The instant we dictate what language a person can speak we have abandoned our freedom.
Imagine a world where a judge can punish a citizen for not speaking English. According to author Ellen Barry in her article, “Tennessee Judge Tells Immigrant Mothers: Learn English or Else,” these scenarios have already begun. Barry recounts one court case involving a mother in Wilson County who had failed to immunize her child. Judge Barry Tatum put the mother’s custody of the child in question and instructed her to, “learn English and to use birth control.” The implied threat here seems to be, learn English or lose your child.
Judge Tatum made a similar order to another Mexican woman cited for neglect of her eleven-year-old child; in this instance, he gave the woman six months to learn English at a fourth-grade level. Once again the threat of losing her child is implied.
I’m sure the task of learning Spanish in six months would be nearly impossible for me. If English were enforced as our primary language, this sort of discriminatory behavior would become common place.
To implement English as the primary language is paramount to writing a law that states discrimination is acceptable.
Some doors cannot be easily shut. How many people would lose children, jobs, money, and hope with these dehumanizing rules? Are the citizens of this country so lazy they are willing to give up freedom rather than work on understanding? If so, what a sad commentary on the American people this is.
Those arguing for the enforcement of English are afraid of a world that doesn’t speak their language, a world where they are not in control. Here’s a wake-up call, the world is a big scary beautiful place filled with contrasting cultures, colors, and languages, and it’s time we all accept that fact.
