Why an Official Language Matters

Around 15 years ago, during the recession, I finally landed a job running the photo studio for a large national company that sells office supplies. This after being out of work for about a year. I was ecstatic and could not wait to start the new job. When I showed up for my first day, the guy I was replacing told me not to unpack my bags because within several months, they were moving Photo to the middle of Iowa in a village with a huge warehouse, a stoplight, and not much else. Human Resources had neglected to mention this during the onboarding process, so eight months later, when the happy times ended, I got an offer to relocate. I declined because at the time I was a single dad with two small daughters here in St. Louis, so I talked myself into one of their customer service jobs to hold on to the health care benefits and the 30 percent pay cut that came along with them.

This customer service job was one of the lousiest positions out there, in my opinion, because you had to know stuff about a million different products, use a computer program that was still DOS-based (2010), and you had to deal with the public. None of these was worth what they paid you. Now, this particular division of the company made its money through a rewards program it offered to the employees of client corporations. The longer you worked at one of these companies, the more points you got. The more points you got, the more stuff you could buy as you redeemed them for all sorts of products. We took these calls all day long, and quite frequently, I got ones like this:

"Mi papi does not speak English. I am his son/daughter/grandchild. I will speak for him."

We were supposed to deal only with the employee, but due to the high number of calls we got like that, management overlooked the policy. As long as somebody on the other end of the line had the correct employee ID number, we'd do business. So the guy gives you his father/uncle/grandfather's ID, and you could look him up and see how long he'd been working there. I remember being more than a little surprised when I found out that Papi had been living in the US for 10, 15, or 20 years on average and obviously had not bothered to learn the language. Many were truck drivers, and while you don't need to know English to understand what a stop sign is telling you, it did make you wonder what aspects of the rules and regulations of the road they didn't fully comprehend because they couldn't speak the language. And if they couldn't speak the language, it made you wonder about assimilation and how much they knew about the place they were living in.

Thomas Jefferson? Que? Pearl Harbor? Que? The Bill of Rights? Que paso, hombre. Solo envíame mi televisor de pantalla grande. (What's the deal, man. Just send me my big screen TV.) Now I didn't actually ask anything like that, but I'm trying to make a point. If you can't be bothered to learn your host country's language, then there are probably a lot of other aspects of the culture that you're ignorant of as well. Like politics or current events, the former of which is downstream from the latter. And if you're unaware of such things, then either you're getting your information from family members (which will have a certain viewpoint) or Telemundo, which has its own slant. Neither of these is a great way to invest in your adopted homeland because you should be educating yourself, separating the wheat from the chaff, and arriving at your own conclusions. That contributes to a more informed and independent society rather than one that just accepts what it is told to accept.

Having a common language is like glue that binds a society. It holds it together and makes it strong, and it's one of the most durable adhesives in a culture. When you don't have a common language, you get tribalism. You get division. You get Balkanization. None of these bode well for what is supposed to have been a melting pot where all of the ingredients meld together and assimilate to become one people. Today, thanks to mass uncontrolled illegal immigration, we may never become what we once were. And what we once were was pretty good compared to where we are today. President Trump issued an executive order Saturday designating English as the official language of the United States. You should take the time to read the whole thing. It's pretty good and makes perfect sense.

Section 1. Purpose and Policy. From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language. Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English. It is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official language of the United States. A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.

English Is Spoken Here: We Finally Have a National Language Thanks to Trump Executive Order

Naturally, there are already critics, and of course, NPR is one of them. Roman Palomares, head of the League of United Latin American Citizens, had this to say in one of their reports:

"Our Founding Fathers enshrined freedom of speech in the First Amendment without limiting it to one language. They envisioned a nation where diversity of thought, culture, and expression would be its greatest strength...Declaring English as the only official language directly contradicts that vision, America thrives when we embrace inclusivity, not when we silence the voices of millions who contribute to its success."

Well, first of all, I hope that someone informs Roman that the Founders never thought diversity would be America's greatest strength. They believed that freedom would be America's greatest strength. This is implied in the title Declaration of Independence, and underscored in its second paragraph, where Liberty is called out as an inalienable right. I didn't see the word diversity anywhere in there. Second, nobody is silencing the voices of millions; somebody is merely expecting those millions to bother themselves with learning the native language as well, so we can all communicate with each other.

I would also make the point that if diversity is so good, and a common official language is so bad, why does the international air travel industry demand and rely on one linguistic mainstay (English) for all communication between controllers and pilots? Could it be that one language makes the whole thing work so that flying is safe? *sigh* Would that some thoughtful reporter might ask that of people like Roman and his fellow travellers. Diversity is great, but only if it adds to the culture instead of splitting it up.

Anyway, the diversity trope is getting so tiresome because if it doesn't put unity of purpose in line ahead of it, then we're going to diversify ourselves right out of a country. As for NPR, I wonder how they would feel if federal subsidies were paid out in pesos. Would it still think diversity was so good?