Superficially, voters in Dade County, Florida, seem to have struck a blow against a misguided policy of bilingualism. They have approved, by a 3-to-2 margin, an ordinance that prohibits the expenditure of county funds for the use of any language other than English or for the promotion of ”any culture other than that of the United States.” In fact, the county is being just as misguided in one direction as it was in the other when, in 1973, it formally declared itself to be a ”bilingual county.”

The 1973 resolution expressed the best of intentions toward the Miami area’s large Spanish-speaking population. But it ignored a central fact of the immigrant experience in America. The nation has admitted and absorbed millions of foreign-language speakers without abandoning the socially and economically unifying force of English.

But it is neither unity nor a national language that the Dade County voters have now endorsed. Upset by the new wave of Cuban refugees, they have attached a stigma to any language other than English. They have hoisted the ”culture of the United States” – whatever that means in a pluralistic nation – on a jingoistic pedestal, above supposedly inferior cultures.

The new ordinance is, among other things, an administrative nightmare. Will it outlaw the foreign language signs that are indispensable in an area so dependent on tourism? Will police dispatchers or other emergency services ignore non-English appeals for help? It would be a blessing if the ordinance were ruled unconstitutional.

The pity of the whole spiteful episode is that it obscures the fundamental issue: the need for sound educational strategies to teach English to all children and, where possible, to adults as well so that all may share in the opportunities of a society joined by the cement of a common language. Dade County goes wrong when it tries to achieve by coercion what ought to be offered as a promise – the benefits that flow from having a common tongue.



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