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 akland,
which made headlines in 1996 when its Board of Education decided
to teach Ebonics,
is once again poised
to become a
trendsetter in political correctness. Oakland's City
Council is expected to grant final approval to an ordinance imposing
language quotas for city-government jobs on May
8th.
The Oakland
ordinance
would require "future city employees who deal frequently with
the public to speak either Spanish or some dialect of Chinese —
preferably Cantonese — in addition to English."
Oakland City
Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, who drafted the ordinance,
claimed "it's our responsibility to provide access to our services,"
and described it as "an extension of affirmative action."
Another supporter
of the ordinance, Councilman Danny Wan, argued that "[Oakland]
has an obligation to make sure all our services are accessible to
all of the taxpayers in the city."
Government
officials used to use words like "responsibility" and
"obligation" when they discussed the need for immigrants
to learn our national tongue. Too many government officials are
now saying, "don't bother to learn English."
Tragically,
some immigrants are listening. On March 2, 2001, ABC's Nightline
news program was devoted to the topic, "English:
Who Needs It?". Viewers watched as an immigrant from El
Salvador, Blanca Alfero, demonstrated how she got by in Washington
D.C. without speaking English. Yet Alfero felt entitled to lecture
a bank teller who could not understand Spanish:
Voice Over:
"In fact she [Alfero] is so used to being able to speak Spanish
whenever she wants, that she is taken aback when her bank has
no Spanish-speaking teller on duty one day. . . . She even urges
the teller to learn Spanish."
Alfero: (Through
translator) "When one does not speak English, they need to
be able to speak Spanish. . . . [S]ometimes I go and they say
nobody speak Spanish. So I go."
Thankfully,
some immigrants remain determined to make a place for themselves
and their children in America. They are demanding English classes,
instead of the linguistic welfare they are being offered these days.
Mexican immigrant
Rosalie Salazar recently complained to the New York Post's
Andrea Peyser that her eight-year-old girl, who was born in America,
had "been in this school three years" but has learned
"almost nothing" about reading, writing, or speaking the
English language.
Mrs. Salazar
knew that English was the language of opportunity. I suspect Blanca
Alfera knows this too.
Oakland might
provide English classes to its own Salazars and Alferas. Instead,
in addition to the proposed language quotas for government jobs,
the city plans to create a "translation center" with initial
operating costs of $200,000 - $300,000.
In addition,
Oakland City Council Legislative Analyst Lupe
Valdez determined it would cost the city "at least $228,000
if all 38 city departments translated just five brochures into two
languages, and $361,000 if a third language was added."
(These cost
estimates may still be far too low, given that translators are in
short supply. The New York Times reported on April 16th that
the FBI cannot recruit enough qualified people to translate wiretaps
of suspected terrorists.)
Public outcry
eventually forced Oakland to retreat from its endorsement of Ebonics.
Perhaps public revulsion to Oakland's proposed language quotas will
spark a similar retreat.
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