Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa District 5, who is best known for his anti-immigrant statements, recently reintroduced legislation to declare English the official language of the United States. He has proposed this English Language Unity Act seven times without success, but this latest attempt resonates with President Trump’s fixation on monolingualism.
The U.S. has a troubling history with English-only policies and ideologies. The current administration only adds to the U.S’s bad track record with language policies, and it reinforces the nation’s failure to recognize linguistic diversity as a relevant form of diversity.
Trump’s English-only rhetoric is, above all, anti-Spanish. Not only was his campaign the first in several election cycles not to use ads in Spanish, but he overtly disparaged the Spanish language with mocking catchphrases. “Bad hombres” is the example par excellence.
King’s proposed bill defines the English language as the “common thread binding individuals of differing backgrounds” in the U.S., but leaves no place for linguistic diversity within its definition of what constitutes a “diverse” nation.
Government business is already carried out primarily in English, but the enactment of an English-only policy runs counter to the increasingly pluralistic approach to language taken on the other side of the border.
Mexico recognizes 69 official languages. Its policy gives legal standing to 68 indigenous languages in order to facilitate government communication with indigenous communities. These legal obligations are not always carried out in practice, but speakers of languages other than Spanish are nonetheless legally entitled to documents translated into their local language.
Enumerating languages under the law may not be a pragmatic solution, but leaving the official language unspecified allows government actions to be carried out in whichever language a situation warrants. Official documents can be translated to other languages when most expedient, and interpretation can be carried out without legal impediment.
In the 2011 hearings for an earlier version of the English Language Unity Act, Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan District 14, delivered his testimony in broken Spanish to make a simple point. His Spanish-language statement would be prohibited under this law, since Congressional testimony is an official government transaction.
As Conyers points out, the law would not merely prohibit use of non-English languages in formal Congressional settings. It could also impede everyday business, like obtaining a driver’s license or registering children for school, which qualify as official government transactions.
U.S. businesses have ditched most English-only workplace policies following years of litigious battles over the interpretation of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission policies. Implementing the English Language Unity Act would only reimplant these discriminatory ideologies in U.S. society.
Linguistic minorities have no guaranteed protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the EEOC protects from discrimination based on national origin, which can encompass differences in linguistic background.
Bilingualism suggests a coexistence of two languages, not the imposition of one over the other. Instead of unifying the nation under a common language, the English Language Unity Act makes the English language antagonistic to linguistic diversity in the U.S.
kmilvert@umail.iu.edu
