A bigot by any other name...

“Racism” and “racist” are pretty big words, not words most of us use very comfortably. But they’ve been bandied about these pages a lot lately, in specific reference to the effort to initiate a ballot measure essentially banning bilingual education as we’ve known it.

Giving both sides the benefit of the doubt, I’ve always thought “racism” was a word that didn’t belong in this particular debate. That was before Californian Ron Unz, the moving force behind the so-called “English Immersion” plan, shot off his mouth – via his computer keyboard – this week. Now I’m not so sure.

The story started July 12, when the Post editorial board met with Rod Paige, President Bush’s secretary of education.

Paige is an impressive man, and the discussion was thoughtful, informal and wide-ranging. Toward the end of the hour, one of us asked his opinion of the English immersion campaign. He never said, “I oppose it.” The key, he said, is keeping our eye on the goal: bringing kids to English fluency as quickly as possible.

But he clearly thought it would be a mistake to limit the options available to kids. “Whether or not it is advisable to completely shut the door on native-language instruction,” he said, “is a decision that has to be made at the point of instruction.”

Unz’s initiative, of course, would slam that door pretty hard. It would require schools to put virtually all English learners in one-year crash courses. The bilingual approach, using kids’ native languages to keep them abreast of other subjects while gradually teaching them English, would be all but eliminated.

I’m no fan of traditional bilingual education. It had become almost a cottage industry, providing jobs for a whole new class of educationists while kids were held in the special classes for years. But here in Denver, at least, serious efforts have been made to interrupt that cycle, with a three-year goal set for moving kids on to mainstream classes. As Paige pointed out, that three-year horizon is also echoed in President Bush’s own “Leave No Child Behind” legislation.

Post Education Writer Eric Hubler’s straightforward story on Paige’s comments ran in last Sunday’s first edition and on Denver Post Online. And it sent Ron Unz into an e-mail frenzy.

The vehicle for his broadside was an irregularly published newsletter he sends to media types and immersion supporters around the country. “This last Friday, we received a cruel blow from a not-unexpected direction,” he wrote, saying Paige had “denounced our efforts.”

I should note that while Hubler’s story and the main headline (“Education chief: Keep bilingual option”) were dead-on accurate, a subhead had real problems. That subhead, “Paige decries statewide plan,” went far beyond what Paige had said and may well have helped propel Unz into his tantrum. The use of “decries,” I’m sure, contributed to Unz’s “denounced.”

Had Unz read the story itself with any care, however, he’d have known the secretary’s comments were quite moderate. But perhaps it was useful to overstate what Paige had said to set the stage for understating his credentials. What followed was grossly out of line.

“Paige, a black former football coach … is widely regarded as the dimmest member of the Bush Cabinet,” Unz wrote, adding that the secretary has an “apparent lack of ability to master or comprehend” his job.

What a transparent attempt to discredit a perceived opponent! Never mind that Paige, in addition to having coached, also earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University; served for 10 years as dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern University; and was the highly respected superintendent of schools in Houston from 1994 until he was tapped by Bush in 2000.

None of that counts. Maybe because, in Unz’s incredibly narrow world view, it’s because Paige is black.

When I talked to Unz Wednesday about the flap he’s stirred, he was still trying to defend the relevance of race to his tirade. American blacks know as little about the difficulties of acquiring English, he said, “as an eighth-generation descendent of the Mayflower.” In Unz’s world, Poles, Greeks, Jews and Italians can speak to the issue.

But a black man can’t? Even if he’s presided over one of the largest English-acquisition programs in the nation?

While admitting his remarks were “extremely insensitive,” Unz still offers no apology. His knowledge of Paige, he says, comes entirely from reading “the Eastern media.” Maybe they’re at fault. Only if his memory proves incorrect might Unz concede that an apology is owed.

OK. Maybe “racist” is still too big a word. It involves hate. Unz is really just “a person of strong conviction or prejudice, especially in matters of religion, race, or politics, who is intolerant of those who differ with him.”

According to my American Heritage, the right word for that is “bigot.”

Sue O’Brien ([email protected]) ) is editor of The Denver Post editorial pages.



Comments are closed.