Learn English or get out — or at least don’t run for office.
Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a county judge’s ruling to remove Alejandrina Cabrera, who would have been running for city council, from the March ballot in San Luis. Although more than 90 percent of San Luis’s residents are Hispanic and “Spanish is heard at least as much as English,” as Adam Cohen wrote in this week’s issue of Time magazine, residents will not have the option of voting for her in March because, as Cohen points out, her English-speaking skills just weren’t good enough.
Cabrera’s case touches on a delicate national issue: How do we relate to those who speak only basic English and what should we do when immigrants are slow to assimilate into American culture?
Consider not the possible violations to the democratic process in the Cabrera controversy. Or even the perceived crafty racism of English-speaking purists. For the everyday experiences, consider instead having more compassion for the man struggling to find words to communicate. Give just a little more patience to the woman who speaks differently than you.
Children of immigrant parents know. It’s the call from some official when mom says, “Here – you talk,” or the knowing glance that defers speaking duties to you in front of the quick-lipped suit at the door. The glance that says, “You answer – my accent will frustrate him.”
Unless you’ve lived in a country where English isn’t a primary language, the anxiety of language acquisition doesn’t mean much to you. But imagine living in India or Finland, when every thought uttered is blocked by “Again?” or “Huh? I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Immigrants undergo a poignant identity crisis that is difficult for many Americans to understand. Assimilating into a foreign culture takes great courage that is not considered by the American who applies the bumper sticker of Uncle Sam wanting immigrants to “Speak English or get out!” on his or her Chevy.
The English-learning speaker also has the double-consciousness that W.E.B. Dubois spoke of: the “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
It’s like going to a dinner party where the eating utensils are unfamiliar to you and feeling self-conscious, even fearful of the eyes watching you eat. You don’t want to offend your host, but you’re just learning how to eat. Apply this analogy to language acquisition and consider the constant, unfairly critical ears listening to you speak and the eyes watching you live when you are still working out how to fit in.
When the newspapers and street signs are written in a language foreign to you, the desire to acclimate — to understand and communicate — is palpable. Learning a new language is complicated, but even that can be overcome. What’s harder is how the immigrant will abandon his or her old home for a new home and how they will shed part of their former identity to accommodate the assimilation of a new one. What they lose, in the process, is language — the songs of their country and the past of their family.
Gov. Jan Brewer, who denounced “open border” policies because they are “threatening” to “our personal liberties” in her 2012 State of the State address, is close-minded. Anti-immigrant proponents who feel they need to “take America back” from immigrants are wrong. Immigrant parents like mine, naturalized citizens and fine English speakers, are still figuring out how they fit into the American narrative. Unlike Brewer, they’ve yet to feel authorized to threaten the liberties of others.
Reach the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu
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