All eyes are on Arizona. The recently passed immigration law, which forces police to demand the citizenship papers of anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” of being an illegal immigrant, has brought the state under fire. But Arizona isn’t just promoting racial profiling; it’s promoting other forms of discrimination as well. Another bill that just passed in the State’s legislature bans ethnic studies programs that “promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” and recently the Arizona Department of Education has been instructing school districts to reassign teachers with heavily accented English.
These may be the actions of one state, but the reactions of many citizens across the country (34% of Americans favor the law in a survey conducted by Opinion Dynamics) shows that this reflects a disturbing trend in American attitudes towards immigrants.
I’m sure most of you remember being told as a child that America is a “melting pot.” People come from all over the world to mesh together and form one country. Many people give up some of their culture in order to fit in. More preferable is the “mixed salad” way of thinking, where people come together and coexist as one nation while proudly retaining the culture of their nation of origin.
Recently, Republican Tim James, who is running for governor of Alabama, aired an ad in which he tells viewers, “This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it.”
It may interest you to know that the United States of America has no federally recognized official language. Yes, as our de facto language, it does take some knowledge of English to get by in this country. But many of us, as native English speakers, don’t fully appreciate how difficult a language English is to learn.
People from all over the world immigrate here to pursue a better life. Instead, many find themselves facing poverty, intolerance, and sometimes blatant racism.
In the wake of RWC’s World Fest celebration, we should be reminded that we are all Americans and, with the exception of Native Americans, we all emigrated from another part of the world.
My great grandparents on my mother’s side came here from Germany. I enjoy sauerkraut and brats, and for New Years, we make pork chops with applesauce. So before you tell someone to go back where they came from, take a moment to ask yourself where your family came from.