In a move to increase repression of all national minorities in the
United States, the U.S. House of Representatives last Thursday
began the process to make English the official language of the U.S.
government, and scrap long-standing requirements for bilingual
voting ballots. The new act is called the "Language of Government
Act" and would legally require the federal U.S. government to
conduct most official business in English. The bill also eliminates
requirements from the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ballots in some
areas with high concentrations of immigrants be printed in
languages other than English.
This move against national minorities is part of the campaign
to wipe out any vestige of human rights within the United States,
subjecting everyone to the dictate of those who are most powerful.
This will surely deal a blow at all those who are trying to retain
their languages and cultures in the face of the increasingly
hostile and violent attacks of the reactionary forces.
Many official critics called the proposal divisive and
mean-spirited. "English-only is the Jim Crow of the 1990s," said
Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.
"If this bill passes I would be unable to effectively
communicate with 60 percent of my constituents," said Rep. Bill
Richardson from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Sponsors of the bill have tried to hide their hatred of the
national minorities with talk of saving money and calls for
"national unity and the need to build one great nation." Rep. Bob
Livingston, from Louisiana said, "We are an English-speaking
nation." He falsified the situation in Canada, suggesting that the
movement of the Quebec people to exercise their sovereignty is a
result of Canada having two official languages.
The U.S. war of independence from Britain and its civil war
replaced one form of oppression and slavery for another. Even
bourgeois civil rights were not extended to Americans of African
descent. Throughout the twentieth century they have been forced to
fight racism and humiliation as a people.
The United States is stuck in 19th century considerations. The
ruling class still considers the U.S. as a melting pot where all
cultures and languages are eliminated to suit the monopoly
capitalists. However, the people have awakened to the modern
necessity to protect their languages and cultures. The people are
becoming conscious of the democratic right for all languages and
cultures to flourish in an atmosphere free from language chauvinism
and other forms of ethnocentrism. Like all countries in the world,
the U.S. requires renovations. Its English-only bill is another
attempt to block all renovation and deny the people their rights.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
