To expose racist attitudes, no other subject compares to language.

Columns about limiting bilingual education, the official English movement, or other efforts to impose linguistic sanctions to violate the civil rights of Latinos bring out the worst attitudes from some of my readers.

“This country has been speaking English for 200 years and now, because all the Spanish countries are dumping their butts on American soil, we should change our native tongue to Spanish just because the Spanish are either too dumb or too lazy to learn English,”wrote a Hawthorne resident responding to last week’s column on a pilot program to teach Spanish to children in one elementary school in Clifton.

“If they spent as much time learning to speak English as they do making ghettos and committing all kinds of crimes, they might accomplish something,”he wrote. Yet, this man doesn’t consider himself a bigot.

“You have a lot of nerve calling Clifton people bigots, because I live in Hawthorne and I feel the same way,”he added.

For the record, I believe the overwhelming majority of Clifton residents are not bigots, but people, like most Americans, who appreciate the value of education and diversity. Last week’s column was about a small minority of people who are threatened by the Spanish language. This one is about those threatened by Latinos.

Last week, the column noted that this is only a one-hour per week pilot program at Clifton’s School 13, that other languages are likely to be offered when the program is expanded throughout the state, and that starting with Spanish is a logical choice because Clifton has a growing Hispanic population and is sandwiched between the predominantly Latino cities of Paterson and Passaic. But the responses speak for themselves.

“Last I heard these cities were still… in the United States of America!”another reader wrote.”I ask you, why aren’t the Latinos learning English?” The answer is: They are.

Until I’m blue in the face, I can explain how Latinos recognize English as this country’s primary language, how they see the need to learn it, how most adult English courses are booked with waiting lists, how no one is trying to impose Spanish over English. But some people base their beliefs on their unfounded fear of a Latino takeover.

“There are Spanish speaking TV and radio programs, Spanish billboards… the list is endless,”noted another reader.”I feel this is the cause of the problem.”Ironically, this reader recognized that he is not against learning a second language,”being nearly fluent in German myself.”

Other readers noted that no second language should be taught.”Our children do not need to know “Como esta usted”before they learn more useful things, like math, computers, and yes, history, current events, geography, etc.,”wrote a reader who described the Spanish classes as “useless.”

Some readers distort my writings. For example, one said we should not give our youth another language to curse in, because too many are already doing it in English. One claimed that I ridiculed a mother who would prefer that her children learn Latin and that I presume to know what’s best for the woman and her child. I’m still wondering which column this person read. Mine made no mention of such a woman or child.

Some complain that by writing about racism, I’m fanning its flames.

But I believe that only by exposing it, we can put out the fire.

Thankfully, there are always many others who help me keep the number of these bigots in proper perspective. Like the 75-year-old retired schoolteacher from Washington Township who said she regrets not being able to attend a free Spanish language course offered to senior citizens at a local college. Yet, she bought a book and a tape and she’s learning Spanish on her own. “It’s a shame that bigotry can get in the way of education,”she wrote.

An English as a Second Language teacher noted that Spanish courses at the elementary school level are long overdue in Bergen County. But as the mother of a high school freshman who is taking her fourth year of Spanish, she said the standards for teaching Spanish need to be raised.

“If my daughter had started instruction in elementary school, she could actually be communicating in Spanish by this time in her life,” noted the Ridgewood resident.

“It’s accepted knowledge that the sooner children are exposed to another language, the easier they learn it,”she wrote.”By learning another language, the child is exposed to another culture, and in this world, we all need to understand the world around us. What a better, enjoyable way to start this process than the relatively painless language-learning that a child experiences? I really don’t understand the close-mindedness of people who want to keep their children isolated linguistically. What are they scared of?” Some of my readers objected to Spanish being the only required language to start the program.”While it is great to learn a second language, the students should be given a choice,”wrote another reader.

I would agree, but not for the same reasons.

“I think some of the parents fear what just might happen to their neighborhood,”the reader added.”I lived in Washington Heights in the late Sixties and early Seventies when it was beautiful. Look at it now.

Need I say more? I hope you can see it from the perspective of the concerned parents. This may open the floodgates of Spanish people into Clifton. Tell all the concerned Cliftonians to start speaking up or pack up, because it will only get worse.”

Need I say more?



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