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Mierda de La Esquina
Admitted ephebophiliac and former Kung-Fu movie villain John Derbyshire weighs in at The Corner with one of the most interesting posts I have seen in some time. I quote it below in its entirety:
A nearby family has a sweet little girl aged 6 or 7, currently attending kindergarten or 1st grade (I’m not sure) in the local elementary school. She’s taking all her lessons (except English) in Spanish. It’s an option the school offers. Her parents are pleased: “She can already speak a lot of Spanish!”
No offense to anyone, but I think this is awful. I wouldn’t mind if it were being done with some other language—-Latin, say, or Hungarian, or Sumerian, or Chinese. Since it’s being done — and ONLY being done — in Spanish, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that this is part of a deliberate program of Hispanicization on the part of our political and bureaucratic elites.
The logical end-point of this path will be the situation in Quebec, where a person not bilingual — in our case, in English and Spanish — will be at a disadvantage in the job market. Is this a thing Americans actually want? Did anyone ask us?
When stuff like this is seeping in even to drowsy middle-class outer suburbs like mine, bilingual America is well on its way. Our masters are sick or our boring, unimaginative monolingualism, and they mean to do something about it, whether we like it or not.
I use the word “interesting,” of course, in the sense in which one would use the same word to describe a plot to loot widows’ pension funds to subsidize free heroin for kindergarteners, smuggled into the classroom in the bodies of stolen house pets, and the heroin is cut with Drano. The post is a rat’s nest of depravity, and it’s hard to know where to start in addressing the fractally complex dickheadedness Derbyshire exhibits therein.
What do I mean by that? Well, for one thing, given Derbyshire’s recent essays on such oppressive social institutions as the age of consent — the opening sentence qualifies as the creepiest ever to grace the constipated pages of The Corner. The notion that there is a bureaucratopolitical conspiracy to “Hispanicize” the United States only ramps up the nausea. Then there’s the Big Lie:
I wouldn’t mind if it were being done with some other language—-Latin, say, or Hungarian, or Sumerian, or Chinese. Since it’s being done — and ONLY being done — in Spanish,
Because there are no Cantonese bilingual programs in US elementary schools, nor Vietnamese, nor Arabic (though I imagine Derbyshire might come up with an objection or two to that notion on separate grounds), nor any other language. Just Spanish.
The fact that 12 percent of people in the United States speak Spanish already can’t be the reason for this, of course. Nor the fact that the US’s trading partners in the Western Hemisphere are predominantly Spanish-speaking nations. Or the fact that Spanish is rapidly becoming the second language of choice (after English) throughout the European Union. Or the fact that Spanish is the fourth-most-commonly spoken language in the world, and the two more popular non-English languages, Hindustani and Mandarin, would be significantly more difficult for English-speaking grade school students to learn, Hindustani being more a swarm of dialects than a language and Mandarin a tonal language whose nuances are often lost on native English speakers. And then there’s the little matter of the different alphabets. The fact that it just utterly makes sense for US elementary school students to learn Spanish cannot possibly be the reason so many kids are studying it. It must be a conspiracy of — how does Derbyshire put it?
part of a deliberate program of Hispanicization on the part of our political and bureaucratic elites.
The part of this increiblemente stupid post I found funniest, however, was this:
The logical end-point of this path will be the situation in Quebec, where a person not bilingual — in our case, in English and Spanish — will be at a disadvantage in the job market. Is this a thing Americans actually want? Did anyone ask us?
First off: We cannot, of course, allow ourselves to become more like Quebec. Why, any right thinking American certainly shudders in horror at the thought of being forced to endure the better food, the higher literacy (in both languages), the more active and enthusiastic political engagement, and the general I-Don’t-Know-What to be found in Montreal. Give us Bethesda! Dubuque! Provo!
Anyhow. Does Derbyshire honestly think that knowing Spanish doesn’t already confer an advantage to the job seeker? N.B. the reference to trade partners in the preceding text. Is this preference for people with actual communication skills a thing Americans actually want? ¿Que carajo quieres, pajero? Life handed to you on a silver platter? Conservatives once claimed to reward hard work and study and sacrifice. Here Americans are rising to the occasion, ready to ensure their kids’ place in the anticipated new global economy by helping them learn a crucial skill, and Derbyshire? Derbyshire gimotea como un cochinillo sobre las conspiraciónes.
Because Derbyshire es un hipócrita. Jamas nunca estaba sobre el trabajo duro. Ha estado siempre sobre sembrar las semillas del odio. Y la cosa peor: tantos Americanos son ignorantes, y entonces lo creerán.
Que lástima.
Que maravillosa ese ensayo: tan mucho odio cabe en solamente doscientas palabras.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
(Y mi Español chupe el culo. Lo siento.)
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 05 31
Roman Hruska rides again.
By: By Ron Sullivan on 2006 05 31
[comment mocking people who don’t want to learn foreign languages considered, written, then not included]
Fractally complex dickheadedness, indeed. One detail you didn’t comment on was the question about whether Americans really want this. Aren’t these immersion programs largely a product of the school choice movement conservatives otherwise champion?
By: By Charles on 2006 05 31
I’ve been thinking that deep down some people, who think and talk/text like the Derb, are essentially worried about having to acknowledge that there really are a greater number of direct descendents of the first americans than they wish. The fact that they speak Spanish does not diminish their close DNA link to tribal peoples of Central and southern North America. The mestizos are here, and they have not gone away. The land grant holders may have passed on, but the descendents (those who served the masters) of the tribes remain, speaking a language common to hundreds of millions throughout the world.
The pretentious tone of Derb, feigning this great affront to his own heritage, reveals his own pathetic insecurities. Maybe he should do an very quick online search, find a TESL school in some Latin American country, and teach English to those whose native language is Spanish. These schools are begging for English speaking people to serve as teachers.
By: By spyder on 2006 05 31
a recent (white, anglo) immigrant to southern california, i can safely say that the entrenched WASP culture could use a little spice.
i say “hola!” to our new spanish-speaking overlords!
By: By rob on 2006 05 31
Ay, mierda. Mr. Derbyshire is apparently frightened that he’ll be the only person in the neighborhood who doesn’t understand what’s being said at the holiday picnics. I grew up in Southern California in the 1950s and picked up Spanish from my Spanish-speaking classmates and friends. By the time I took Spanish classes in high school, I had a really good start and, I’m told, an impeccable accent. All of us kids though it was very cool that we had friends whose families spoke a language other than English and were gracious enough to allow us to practice speaking with them. How sad that Derbyshire doesn’t find that something to encourage.
(I admit, I had to look up “pajero”. Perfect word, Chris. Perfect.)
By: By Emily on 2006 05 31
One of the many reasons I’m glad I found your blog, Chris, was because of a link to Kat’s blog, where I found an article on whether or not being bi-lingual means someone can have two personalities--one in each language.
Few things taught me more about English than learning French, and few things taught me more about the inherent...strangeness of language itself than learning Mandarin. I’m one of the people who thinks foreign language study should be mandatory, and begin early.
I didn’t study Spanish systematically, but it’s a beautiful language, thoroughly useful, and fairly accessible. It’s not like learning Spanish early means you can’t learn another language later.
By: By Holly on 2006 06 02
I was going to make a snarky point about Miami, which really does live up to the stereotype Derbyshire et al. are so frantic about (culturally, politically, linguistically, and economically, Miami is less an American city than a Latin American one) - and how the Right doesn’t get its collective panties in a twist about Miami because the Cuban Exile community has always been reliably Republican.
But then I realized commenting on the facts (or lack thereof) in Derbyshire’s essay miss the point entirely.
It’s not about bi- or multilingualism. It’s about fear. Every day, in every way, Derbyshire and his fellow travelers on the Right only show how eternally and infinitely afraid they are.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’re such fearful people. They are, SFAIK, all from comfortable, if not privileged backgrounds; they’ve never had the police break down their doors; never had to lie awake at night worrying about losing a job, losing a home, losing basic security; never faced someone who meant to do them grievious bodily harm.
I wonder if that itself is the reason. They’ve never had anything real to be afraid of. I think one of the ways people reach adulthood by facing, and overcoming, real fears; by learning what they’re made of. I think it might even be something hardwired into us, and without it there are part of our psyches that stay unformed.
Maybe it’s that evolutionary/biological imperative of fear, never tested, that leads them to fill the gap with imagined ones. And since those fears are imaginary, there’s no way to face and overcome them… so they keep multiplying, as if the unconscious is trying to find something it can test and define itself against.
By: By CaseyL on 2006 06 02
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