Naturally the targets of this campaign – linguistic minorities, bilingual educators, civil libertarians, Indian tribes, and others – regard restrictionist legislation as a serious threat to their interests. Also not surprisingly, they have tended to characterize the English-only movement as a creature of the far right fringe of American politics, born of racial fear and loathing. Since the mid-1980s, when I started reporting on such groups and their activities, I have been asked whether they can be linked to identifiable villains such as the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party. Such connections would certainly be convenient for opponents. If the English-only campaign could be exposed as an extremist conspiracy, mobilizing against it would be a simple matter. Already this theme has featured in counter-attacks. For the most part, however, it is a product of wishful thinking.²

True, the language-restriction movement did grow directly out of the immigration-restriction movement, appealing to many of the same attitudes and followers. The immigration-restriction movement, in turn, has accepted support from eugenicists, Klan sympathizers, and other defenders of white supremacy (Crawford, 1992a). Unsavory associations, to be sure. As we shall see, these links have raised questions about the hidden agenda of Official English. And rightly so. Yet I have uncovered no evidence that groups promoting this campaign follow the leadership or share the ideology of racial extremists.

As I usually tell those who call to inquire about the ‘Nazi connection,’ I have found some ties that, to me, are far more alarming. The founder of the English-only movement was formerly a national leader in liberal groups including the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and Zero Population Growth. His organization, US English, has won the endorsement of luminaries across the political spectrum. Assorted bedfellows for the cause include former Senator Eugene McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon; literary figures Saul Bellow, Norman Cousins, and Gore Vidal; actors Whoopi Goldberg, Charleton Heston, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; public broadcasting personalities Julia Child and Alistair Cooke; and journalist Walter Cronkite, once dubbed ‘the most trusted man in America.’³

Reality must be faced: today’s anti-bilingual current is a mainstream phenomenon. How deep it runs and what it signifies are more complex questions. WhenAmericans are asked simply, ‘Should English be the official language?’ the idea seems extremely popular. Variations on the proposal have received 60–90 percent approval in opinion polls and ballot boxes. This pattern has held true across every demographic category – age, sex, income, education level, political, and ideological affiliation – except for ethnicity. Latinos have been the most consistent opponents of these measures, although even their views have sometimes wavered (Schmid, 1992). On the other hand, when pollsters ask whether government should restrict minority language use or terminate bilingual services to those who depend on them, support for English-only policies falls off significantly.⁴ It appears that declarations about the primacy of English are more broadly endorsed than edicts to enforce it.

While Congressional sponsors of Official English have usually been conservatives, the legislation has found enthusiastic champions and opponents on both sides of the aisle. Seldom did it function as a partisan issue before the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994, when the new majority began to stress bilingualism as a wedge issue to divide Democratic constituencies. The new House leadership pushed through a measure that largely prohibited the use of languages other than English by the federal government. In response, breaking his long silence on English-only legislation, President Clinton threatened a veto, and the bill died without Senate action.

The English-Only Debate
Of course, a mainstream idea is not necessarily a rational one, free of prejudice and paranoia. The campaign to ‘officialize’ English in the United States rests on the absurd claim that the most successful and dominant world language in history is under siege in its strongest bastion. Proponents argue that:

• English has always been our ‘social glue,’ our most important ‘common bond,’ which has allowed Americans of diverse back-grounds to understand each other and overcome differences (a notion seductive to liberals).
• Today’s immigrants refuse to learn English, unlike the good old immigrants of yesteryear (flattery for Euro-ethnics), and are discouraged from doing so by government-sponsored bilingual programs.
• Languages are best learned in a situation that forces one to do so – where there’s no escape from brutal necessity – unlike the situation in a bilingual classroom (reflexive appeal for ‘social issue’ conservatives).
• Ethnic leaders are promoting bilingualism for selfish ends: to provide jobs for their constituents and keep them dependent by discouraging them from learning English (courting the Hispanophobes).
• Language diversity inevitably leads to language conflict, ethnic hostility, and political separatism à la Québec (playing to paranoia of all stripes).

Language has seldom functioned as a symbolic identifier in the United States, as an emblem of national pride or a badge of exclusivity. America’s founders generally espoused an ideological brand of nationalism that stressed agreement on democratic principles rather than bonds of ethnicity (Morris, 1987; Heath, 1992). Exceptions to this pattern have occurred, first, when attempts were made to differentiate American English from the dialect of the mother country (usually a preoccupation of literati); and second, when language restrictions served as a surrogate for other goals, such as religious intolerance, economic advantage, political repression, or racial discrimination.

About 175 indigenous languages survive in the United States today, according to the best documented estimate (Krauss, 1996), perhaps half the number spoken when Europeans first arrived. Yet only about twenty of these are still being learned by children. Absent an ambitious effort to preserve them, the rest seem doomed to extinction within two or three generations. These are the truly threatened languages in the United States today.

Meanwhile, speakers of immigrant languages are on the increase, owing to relatively high levels of immigration.⁵ But according to the 1990 census, 97 percent of U.S. residents speak English ‘well’ or ‘very well.’ Only 0.8 of one percent speak no English at all, as compared with 3.6 percent in 1890, whenthe efficiency of counting immigrant populations was far inferior to today’s. Proportionally speaking, 4.5 times as many Americans were non-English speakers a century ago, when schooling in languages other than English was, if anything, more common.

Research on second-language acquisition has increasingly showcased the academic benefits of bilingual instruction. Indeed, when language-minority students fail, it is more likely from too little instruction in their native language than too little English. Along-term national study (Ramírez et al., 1991) has documented higher student achievement in developmental bilingual classrooms than in transitional bilingual or structured English immersion classrooms. Admittedly, such findings are counter-intuitive and poorly understood by a majority of the public. But this hardly explains the vehemence of the opposition, which typically has more to do with political than pedagogical considerations.

Finally, there is no evidence whatsoever of linguistic separatism. Unlike Canada and numerous other countries, the United States has no political parties organized along ethnic lines. Minority politicians and advocacy groups generally pursue an agenda of expanding their constituents’ access to, and advancement within, American society.

Why, then, are there growing worries about the erosion of English as our common language? What drives the demands for English-only mandates covering most federal and state government functions? Whence the unprecedented claims that English is the major unifying force among Americans and that, unless we protect it, we could soon face turmoil among warring groups? Where do fears about ethnic and linguistic separatism originate?

Such ideas are hardly restricted to marginal followers; they are propagated by the leaders of the English-only movement. Former Senator Steve Symms of Idaho (1983: S 12643), in introducing a constitutional English Language Amendment, warned that ‘countless hundreds of thousands have lost their lives in the language riots of India. Real potential exists for a similar situation to be replayed in the United States.’ Linda Chávez (1995), conservative pundit and one-time president of US English, accused bilingual educators of seeking the retrocession of the southwestern United States to Mexico. The late semanticist S. I. Hayakawa, the movement’s elder statesman, never tired of quoting Theodore Roosevelt at his most intolerant: ‘We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house’ ([1919] 1926: XXIV, 554).

English-only arguments are so value-laden in their distaste for diversity, so crude in their analogies with other nations, so credulous about the power of social engineering, and so bereft of factual evidence that they are difficult to take seriously. Indeed, it is hard to find in the literature an intellectually coherent statement of the case for Official English legislation – as I learned in compiling an anthology on the subject (Crawford, 1992b).

What is really going on here? What do English-only advocates hope to gain from this campaign? What are its social and ideological roots? Does its popularity stem primarily from ethnocentrism, a (mostly) white backlash against immigrants from the Third World? Or primarily from a conception of ‘American identity’ that happens to differ from that of linguistic minorities?

After tracing voting patterns, attitude surveys, and legislative debates, social scientists remain divided over these questions. Schmid (1996) favors the former explanation, citing an ‘ideology of exclusion’ that manifests itself in ‘a symbolic clash between a dominant and minority culture’ (p. 54). Other factors driving the English-only movement include ‘the perceived costs’ of newcomers in increased welfare and unemployment, anxieties about cultural change, and ‘the ascendancy of anti-immigrant organizations’ (p. 63). By contrast, Citrin et al. (1990) characterize the English-only movement as essentially a nationalist phenomenon. ‘Without denying the role played by anti-minority sentiments,’ they argue, support for Official English mainly reflects a ‘positive attachment to the symbols of nationhood’ – in particular, ‘the consensual belief that the English language is and should remain a defining characteristic of American society’ (p. 549).

No doubt both conclusions are supportable on the basis of opinion polls, which reveal varied and contradictory attitudes on this issue. Yet the English-only movement cannot be clearly understood without looking beyond what its followers say about their beliefs and intentions.⁶ To discover the sources of English-only ideology, it is necessary to probe the underlying causes and uses of language restrictionism. In advancing my own answers to these questions, I will begin by reviewing the historical precedents that exist for language conflicts in the United States as they involve both immigrants and colonized peoples, and then draw on these themes in analyzing our contemporary language politics.

Historic Patterns of Language Conflict 
First, a word of caution. Historical authority has been much abused in the English-only debate, as partisans try to buttress their positions, pro or con, by citing ‘traditions’ of linguistic uniformity or diversity, ethnic assimilation or separatism, cultural intolerance or libertarianism. Since contradictory traditions have flourished, ample evidence can be marshaled to support, or debunk, any of these interpretations. Despite their differences, partisans on both sides tend to share a fundamentally ahistorical approach to language policy. They rely on free-floating ideologies (the melting pot, racism, ‘linguicism’) rather than on social, economic, or political factors to explain events. In fact, there has been little ideological consistency in responses toward minority languages in the United States. Policies have ranged from repression to restriction to tolerance to accommodation, depending on forces that usually have little to do with language.

Ideologies, which take on an autonomous life of their own, do play a significant causal role in intergroup conflicts. Yet it must be remembered that conceptions of race, ethnicity, and language are hardly universal, transcending time and circumstance. They are socially constructed. How we think about them is grounded in material realities – demographic patterns, political alignments, economic conditions – which are ever changing. Terms like bilingualism and language minority have acquired special meanings over the past two decades in the context of increased immigration and its transformation of once-homogeneous communities. Ethnocentrism took different forms in the 19th century, when few Americans would have thought of Norwegian homesteaders, Chinese contract laborers, Italian textile workers, New Mexican vaqueros, and Lakota warriors as a single class defined by their limited English skills. Attitudes and policies toward these groups varied significantly, depending on their numbers, political power, economic status, territorial position, land ownership, military prowess, ‘racial’ distinctiveness, and a host of other traits. Especially in the case of language, a secondary theme in U.S. ethnic conflicts, generalizations about an American tradition – whether bilingual or ‘unilingual’ – become meaningless.

Where historical analysis is valuable is in exposing the forces at work in shaping language attitudes and language policy. While each of these instances is unique, a product of its own period and place, taken together they exhibit significant parallels. Thus history can provide a kind of depth perception in viewing today’s English-only phenomenon – an approach that analyzes language politics in its social context and highlights its interdependence with non-linguistic factors. Along these lines, I will advance the following hypothesis: Language conflicts generally incorporate symbolic struggles over cultural, religious, ethnic, or national identity. Yet they represent more than contending philosophies of assimilation and pluralism, disagreements about the rights and responsibilities of citizens, or debates over the true meaning of ‘Americanism.’ Ultimately language politics are determined by material interests – struggles for social and economic supremacy – which normally lurk beneath the surface of the public debate.

In the American experience, English-only campaigns can be classed in two categories: as proxies for intergroup competition and as mechanisms of social control. Discrimination against minority language speakers can serve both as a means of privileging certain groups over others and as a tool for maintaining the hegemony of ruling elites. As numerous commentators have noted, racism and nativism – in particular, Hispanophobia – have featured prominently in the (not so well) hidden agenda of organizations like US English. Less obvious is the potential of language restrictionism to advance material interests, that is, to serve as a continuation of class warfare by other means. Of course, not all language battles involve direct struggles between classes. Some flare within classes, pitting capitalists against capitalists or workers against workers, across ethnic lines. Such conflicts may appear to be purely ‘symbolic,’ and yet the stakes involved are quite real: resources, power, and status. A second category of language politics functions to strengthen (or challenge) class domination, colonial rule, or military occupation. These include crusades of linguistic repression waged in the name of ‘civilizing the Indian’ or ‘Americanizing the immigrant.’

In sum, language restrictionism has been diverse in its causes, effects, and ideological justifications. But it never occurs independently of the material forces that govern U.S. history, as can be seen in the following sketches.

Pennsylvania Germans. One of the earliest English-only campaigns erupted in colonial Penn-sylvania,
a scene of feverish ethnic rivalry. No less a figure than Benjamin Franklin circulated pamphlets expressing alarm that German settlers, now representing a third of the colony’s population, were failing to learn the language of their English neighbors. ‘Great disorders and inconveniences may one day arise among us,’ he warned, unless the Germans could be assimilated:

Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, 'tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. (Franklin, [1753] 1961: IV, 483–484) 

Franklin’s appeals for linguistic unity mayhave sounded high-minded to his friends, but they had a distinctly practical purpose. With German immigrants arriving at the rate of 7000 a year, bringing with them numerous religious sects, he feared for English hegemony in Pennsylvania: ‘Unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other Colonies ... they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious’ (IV, 484–485). In a more incendiary tract, he added:

[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.⁷ (IV, 234; emphasis in original)

Franklin’s intemperate writings backfired when the ‘Palatine Boors’ mobilized to vote him out of the colonial assembly in 1764. But his attitudes changed late in life, with a change in Pennsylvania’s political alignments following the American Revolution. Franklin’s chief opponents were now radicals who opposed a centralized form of government; German Americans were potential allies. Not coincidentally, he came to support Benjamin Rush in advocating a publicly funded experiment in bilingual higher education. This was advertised as a way to ‘open the eyes of the Germans to the importance and utility of the English language and become perhaps the only possible means, consistent with their liberty, of spreading a knowledge of the English language among them’ (Rush, [1785] 1951: I, 366; emphasis in original). Thus, in 1787, Franklin became a benefactor and namesake of Franklin and Marshall College. He espoused a different – though equally ‘principled’ – position on the language question, now embracing rather than condemning diversity. Meanwhile, he successfully courted the Germans’ support for Federalism.

Louisianans. For the United States, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 posed an early test of the nation’s commitment to its founding principles. Would democracy be extended without reservation to cultural and linguistic minorities? Would President Jefferson honor his own rhetoric about ‘unalienable rights’? Apparently not. His policy toward the Louisiana Territory illustrates a classic choice of expediency over principle.

Rather than extend representative democracy, as Louisianans had anticipated, Jefferson ruled out local elections and vested most authority in a colonial governor unable to speak the language of most inhabitants. On arriving in New Orleans, the official decreed that all public affairs would henceforth be transacted in English instead of French. The result was to create substantial advantages for the 15 percent minority of Anglo-American planters and entrepreneurs, and to provoke an outcry from the francophones. Mass meetings were held and a manifesto known as the Louisiana Remonstrance was drafted, enumerating the grievances of property owners over linguistic and economic discrimination. An embarrassed Jefferson retreated quickly, ordering his governor to rescind the English-only policy. He also supported the election of local officials and promised to grant Louisiana statehood after its free population reached 60,000. Simultaneously, however, the president sought to tip the ethnic balance by paying an English-speaking ‘frontier militia’ to settle there; Congress refused to fund the plan (Newton, 1980).

Thus Louisiana entered the Union in 1812 as the first – and last – state with a non-anglophone majority. Congress required it to adopt a constitution specifying that all laws and official records be published in the language ‘in which the Constitution of the United States is written.’ But this was far from an English-only requirement, and French continued to be used extensively in state government. Louisiana’s second governor, Jacques Villeré (1816–1820), had no choice in the matter, since he spoke no English. As ethnic rivalries weakened among the propertied classes, along with the hold of the French language, anglophones were inclined to be magnanimous. Louisiana’s 1845 constitution guaranteed that the legislature would continue to operate bilingually, which it did until the Civil War. An 1847 law authorized French–English instruction in public schools. But the Radical Republican constitutions imposed by Union troops in 1864 and 1868 abolished French language rights, as a way of punishing francophones for their support of the Confederacy. At the end of Reconstruction, when Democrats returned to power, the 1879 constitution restored several types of official status for French; these remained in force until 1921 (Kloss, 1998).

As in Pennsylvania, linguistic tolerance tended to prevail in Louisiana as, after some initial friction, ethnic elites came to an accommodation with each other. The general result was to foster assimilation. By the early 20th century, French thrived only in the dialects of backwoods Cajuns and Creoles, just as German in Pennsylvania was confined mainly to religious communities such as the Amish.

Californios. Under similar circumstances, Spanish speakers in California experienced an entirely different fate. This conquered group, representing a slight majority of the population at the end of the Mexican–American War, was initially treated with respect by Anglo elites, who had often intermarried with the local population and learned its vernacular. The 1849 constitution recognized Spanish language rights, including a guarantee for the bilingual publication of state laws. By the following year, however, the Californios’ political status plummeted as the Gold Rush made them a minority of about 15 percent. Experienced Spanish-speaking miners, especially from Mexico and Peru, became targets for the animosity of fortune-seeking gringos. The state legislature began to pass so-called ‘greaser laws,’ along with a Foreign Miner’s tax, to harass the Latin Americans. In 1855, the state officially discontinued Spanish-language schooling (Leibowitz, 1969), although some localities ignored the decree.

Perhaps most damaging, the federal California Land Act of 1851 required all landowners to prove title to their holdings in English-language courts. Over the next generation, the Spanish-speaking gentry lost title to virtually all of the large haciendas, totaling 14 million acres, that they had held at the end of the Mexican–American War; 40 percent of these lands had to be sold simply to pay the fees of English-speaking lawyers (Pitt, 1966).

In 1878–79, the California constitution was rewritten under the influence of the nativist Workingmen’s Party. Not one of the 150-odd delegates came from a Spanish-language background. Among the amendments adopted by the convention was a sweeping English-only mandate: ‘All laws of the State of California, and all official writings, and the executive, legislative, and judicial proceedings shall be conducted, preserved, and published in no other than the English language’ (Crawford, 1992b: 52). No exceptions were allowed, despite pleas that the provision would wreak havoc with local government in Spanish-dominant areas such as Los Angeles County. A few delegates objected, citing the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War and guaranteed certain rights to the Spanish-speaking citizens thereby annexed into the United States; this seemed to imply a right to maintain the Spanish language without restriction. But the majority rejected this interpretation, as illustrated by the following exchange:

Mr Tinnin: Thirty years have elapsed since this portion of the country became a portion of the Government of the United States, and the different residents whowere here at that time have had ample time to be conversant with the English language if they desired to do so. This is an English-speaking Government, and persons who are incapable of speaking the English language certainly are not competent to discharge public duties. We have here in the Capitol now tons and tons of documents published in Spanish for the benefit of foreigners.
Mr Rolfe: Doyou call the native population of this State foreigners?
Mr Tinnin: They had ample time to learn the language. (Quoted in Crawford, 1992b: 53)

American Indians. Amore openly repressive approach can be found in the language policies directed at Native Americans beginning in the late 19th century. In earlier periods, Christian missionaries such as John Eliot of Massachusetts had learned indigenous vernaculars in order to proselytize their Gospel. Other missionaries established vernacular schools for Indian children, often with support from the federal government. But following the Civil War, as Indians resisted white expansion into the West, authorities began to rethink this language policy. The Indian Peace Commission of 1868 concluded that inculcating the ways of ‘civilization’ was the only wayto pacify the warlike Plains tribes. As one means to that end, it recommended English-only schooling: ‘Through sameness of language is produced sameness of sentiment, and thought; customs and habits are moulded and assimilated in the same way, and thus in process of time the differences producing trouble would have been gradually obliterated’ (Atkins, 1887: 18).

Beginning in the 1880s, the U.S. government began putting this philosophy into practice. It hired bounty hunters to round up Indian children and pack them off to boarding schools far from home – in effect, holding many of them hostage to ensure their tribes’ ‘good behavior.’ Students were harshly punished when caught speaking indigenous tongues, practicing tribal religions, or participating in native ceremonies. The commissioner of Indian affairs explained the rationale:

[T]eaching an Indian youth in his own barbarous dialect is a positive detriment to him. The first step to be taken toward civilization, toward teaching the Indians the mischief and folly of continuing in their barbarous practices, is to teach them the English language. … But it has been suggested that this order, being mandatory, gives a cruel blow to the sacred rights of the Indians. Is it cruelty to the Indian to force him to give up his scalping-knife and tomahawk? Is it cruelty to force him to abandon the vicious and barbarous sun dance, where he lacerates his flesh, and dances and tortures himself even unto death? Is it cruelty to the Indian to force him to have his daughters educated and married under the laws of the land, instead of selling them at a tender age for a stipulated price into concubinage to gratify the brutal lusts of ignorance and barbarism? (Atkins, 1887: 21–22)

True Americans all feel that the Constitution, laws, and institutions of the United States, in their adaptation to the wants and requirements of man, are superior to those of any other country; and they should understand that by the spread of the English language will these laws and institutions be more firmly established and widely disseminated. Nothing so surely and perfectly stamps upon an individual a national characteristic as language. So manifest and important is this that nations the world over, in both ancient and modern times, have ever imposed the strictest requirements upon their public schools as to the teaching of the national tongue. (p. 19)

The Bureau of Indian Affairs enforced its regime of coercive anglicization, officially or unofficially, until the 1960s. While often ineffective in eradicating a child’s language, it did instill a sense of shame that often resulted in the next generation being reared in English only. So its delayed effects are still being felt.

Policies of linguistic genocide – that is, attempts to coerce language shift among subject peoples – have been largely ineffective in the near term. Colonized masses rarely learn the standard language of the colonizer. The few individuals who do so continue to face racial, cultural, or economic barriers to entering the wider society, not to mention rejection by their own peoples. Considering these persistent failures, one might ask why U.S. officials have so doggedly promoted the assimilation of the colonized. The answer is that such policies have yielded substantial benefits to the colonizer. First has been the missionary-style gratification that comes from projects to bestow Western culture, religion, and political ‘ideals’ on purportedly backward natives (ungrateful though they may be). Such an ideology has served more than once to justify the exploitation of lands and resources, the denial of self-government, and the abrogation of civil rights – acts that otherwise contradict America’s founding myths. Second, the cultural assault has served to demoralize conquered peoples, cultivate dependency, and weaken their resistance to external domination.

Puerto Ricans. In an especially futile attempt at social engineering, U.S. officials sponsored a fifty-year-long attempt to anglicize Puerto Rico through its educational system. Immediately after the Spanish–American War, English was declared ‘the official language of the school room’ throughout the island. In 1902, the US-appointed education commissioner candidly explained: ‘Colonization carried forward by the armies of war is vastly more costly than that carried forward by the armies of peace, whose outposts and garrisons are the public schools of the advancing nation’ (Negrón de Montilla, 1971: 62). Later apologists stressed the policy’s benefits to island residents: ‘English is the chief source, practically the only source, of democratic ideas in Porto Rico,’ asserted a report by the Brookings Institution (Clark et al., 1930: 81). But democracy for Puerto Ricans – to the extent that meant self-determination over their own affairs – was hardly on Washington’s agenda. As colonialism flowered, so did an ideology of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana summed it up as follows:

God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. … He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples. (Bowers, 1932: 121)

In Puerto Rico, variations of the English-instruction mandate were enforced by territorial officials, despite repeated protests from the insular legislature and strikes by students and teachers. Naturally the hated policy failed to make many inroads for English among Puerto Ricans. It did succeed, however, in depriving generations of children of a meaningful education; most instruction consisted of rote repetition of a language they had no opportunity to use outside the classroom. A 1925 study found that 84 percent of students dropped out by the end of the third grade (Osuna, 1949). Nevertheless, territorial governor Theodore Roosevelt, Jr, described the island’s American-style education system as ‘the greatest blessing …within our gift. We could do no higher, or nobler work than to model these other people on ourselves’ (Steiner, 1974: 380).

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a new education commissioner for Puerto Rico, with an admonition to intensify English instruction. After thirty-eight years of U.S. rule, Roosevelt found it ‘regrettable’ that:

hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have little and often virtually no knowledge of the English language. …Only through the acquisition of this language will Puerto Rican Americans secure a better understanding of American ideals and principles. …Puerto Rico is a densely populated Island. Many of its sons and daughters will desire to seek economic opportunity on the mainland. They will be greatly handicapped if they have not mastered English. … [T]he American citizens of Puerto Rico should profit from their unique geographical situation and the unique historical circumstance which has brought to them the blessings of American citizenship by becoming bilingual. (Roosevelt, 1937: 160–161)

Native Hawaiians. The United States annexed the independent nation of Hawai‘i in 1898, five years after U.S. Marines were used in a coup to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy. The cultural penetration of the islands had occurred decades earlier, via American missionaries and sugar planters. In the 1820s the missionaries developed an orthography for the Hawaiian language and began to translate religious texts and publish newspapers in the vernacular. Owing to mass enthusiasm among adults and a compulsory schooling law for children, by 1850 the great majority of Hawaiians were reportedly literate in their mother tongue (Kloss, 1998).

As Americans gained influence, however, and Hawaiian elites surrendered more land for plantations and more power to foreign appointees, there were pressures to anglicize the population. Hawai‘i’s superintendent of education, the Reverend Richard Armstrong, advocated the gradual replacement of Hawaiian with ‘a better language …what is now, to a great extent, the business language of the Islands, and which would open to [the native child’s] mind new and exhaustless treasures of moral and intellectual wealth’ (Reinecke, 1969: 45). In 1853, English instruction was introduced for Hawaiian children. In 1896, it became the sole medium of public schooling, by decree of the so-called Republic of Hawaii, the colonial government-in-waiting (Huebner, 1985). 

By that time, following the large-scale importation of immigrant labor by the sugar plantations – notably Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Puerto Ricans, Spanish, Koreans, and Filipinos – full-blooded Hawaiians had been reduced to less than 20 percent of the population. Hawaiian Pidgin English (HPE) flowered in response to the communication needs of these diverse groups, an unstable medium that grafted Hawaiian and English words onto each speaker’s native grammar (Sato, 1985). Children then developed HPE into Hawaiian Creole English (HCE), a fully expressive language, which in practice became the vernacular of most Hawaiian schools in the early 20th century.

This situation provoked complaints from haole (white anglophone) parents, a small but influential minority who wanted their children educated in standard English, without the ‘corrupting influences’ of HPE and HCE speakers – that is, the offspring of plantation laborers (Stueber, 1981: 27). Adopting a recommendation by the federal Bureau of Education, in 1920 the Territory of Hawaii established a two-tier system in which students were ostensibly assigned to schools on the basis of English proficiency. In practice, this meant racial segregation, with haoles assigned to ‘English standard schools’ and non-whites to other public schools. By the time this discriminatory system was dismantled in the 1950s, language had become an especially salient

marker of socioeconomic status in Hawaiian society. Being labeled a ‘Pidgin’ [HCE] speaker was considered by many a liability in the job market, associated as it was with the plantation and with the minimal intelligence assumed necessary for manual labor. …[A]s the middle class’s identity with [standard English] developed, so the working class’s alienation from it increased. More than ever before, HCE came to delineate class as well as ethnic differences among the people of Hawaii. (Sato, 1985: 265)

European immigrants. White immigrants to the United States in general, and German speakers in particular, met with far more tolerance, linguistic and other-wise, than conquered peoples. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many settled in rural enclaves and ran their own affairs, including non-English schools in manycases; rarely were they subjected to language restrictions. Indeed, these groups were frequently accommodated. In 1839, Ohio became the first of several states to pass laws authorizing German–English instruction where parents requested it. This statute became the model for Louisiana’s 1847 law, which simply substituted ‘French’ for ‘German.’ With or without state authorization, public schools used numerous immigrant vernaculars as mediums of instruction, including Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Italian, and Czech (Kloss, 1998).

This pattern began to change in the late 1880s, when Wisconsin and Illinois passed English-only instruction laws for both public and parochial schools. The legislation was inspired by an anti-Catholic secret society known as the American Protective Association. Unintentionally it united Lutherans as well as Catholics in opposition – both ran sectarian, German-language schools – and their combined outcry was intense. German-speaking Civil War heroes stepped forward to testify that Americanism did not imply anglicization. The Republican Party, which had heavily promoted these laws, lost nearly every state and federal office in the next election. Incoming Democrats soon repealed the English-only statutes. Elsewhere language restrictions were enacted in response to pressures from native laborers who resented the competition of foreigners (especially when used as strike-breakers). In 1897, for example, Pennsylvania imposed an English-speaking requirement for coal miners, a measure designed to exclude Italians and Hungarians.

The major push for Anglo-conformity came in the first two decades of the 20th century, as capitalists began to fear the revolutionary potential of immigrant workers, as exemplified in the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike of 1912. The Industrial Workers of the World emerged victorious by overcoming ethnic divisions; strike meetings were translated in up to twenty languages (Boyer and Morais, 1955). Meanwhile, city dwellers reacted with growing alarm to the poverty and exotic customs of the ‘new immigrant’ groups, now increasingly diverse and coming especially from eastern and southern Europe. Settlement houses and service organizations like the Young Men’s Christian Association began working to improve immigrants’ conditions. One important form of assistance, also supported by progressive states like Massachusetts, was to establish evening classes in English for adults and out-of-school youth.

Gradually, however, efforts to encourage assimilation became more coercive and overbearing. Frances Kellor (1916), an early organizer for what became known as the Americanization campaign, argued that anglicization could provide an antidote for labor unrest: ‘Strikes and plots that have been fostered and developed by un-American agitators and foreign propaganda are not easily carried on among men who have acquired, with the English language and citizenship, an understanding of American industrial standards and an American point of view’ (p. 24). Embracing this philosophy, the federal Bureau of Education got behind the Americanization effort, producing publications and patriotic events aimed at immigrant workers, and funded entirely by outside ‘philanthropists, ’ that is, by financiers and industrialists. Henry Ford was one of the most enthusiastic backers. Like many employers of the time, he required his foreign-born workers to attend classes in English and ‘free enterprise’ values (Higham, 1988). This was at the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s fabled attacks on ‘hyphenated Americanism,’ calling on newcomers to shed all traits of ethnicity – especially foreign languages, which he saw as a symptom of divided loyalties. Roosevelt ([1917] 1926: XXI, 54) advocated giving ‘every immigrant, by day schools for the young and night-schools for the adult, the chance to learn English; and if after, say, five years, he has not learned English, he should be sent back to the land from whence he came.’

During World War I, Americanization received a substantial boost from the xenophobia unleashed against German Americans, who for the first time bore the brunt of repressive language policies. Public uses of German were banned by emergency decree in numerous communities and some Midwestern states. German-language newspapers, schools, cultural institutions, and even churches came under assault (Wiley, 1998). Formerly the most prestigious modern language, studied by one in four U.S. secondary students in 1915, German was virtually banned in schools throughout the country. Some school boards sponsored the burning of German textbooks (Wittke, 1936).

Suspicion toward foreign tongues broadened and deepened during the postwar Red Scare. In the year 1919 alone, fifteen states adopted English-only instruction laws (Leibowitz, 1969). Linguistic uniformity was seen as essential to rooting out alien conspiracies and containing a radical labor movement. It was during this period that, for the first time, an ideological link was established between speaking ‘good English’ and being a ‘good American.’

In the early 1920s Congress enacted the strictest immigration quotas in U.S. history, which limited the entry of non-English-speaking Europeans – Italians, Poles, Jews, Greeks – and totally excluded Asians. This effectively ended popular pressures for Americanization, along with elite worries about revolution. With few reinforcements coming in, non-anglophone groups dwindled in size. Children not only learned English but lost their mother tongue in the process. Native-language instruction disappeared, except in a handful of rural and parochial schools. Bilingualism – had anyone thought to call it that – thus became a moot issue. Only after 1965, when racial criteria were expunged from U.S. immigration policy, did non-anglophone communities begin to grow once more.

Sources of the Modern English-Only Movement 
Earlier I characterized today’s English-only campaign as a mainstream phenomenon. It would be more precise to call it a broad current fed by numerous social and ideological sources. These include class-based resentments toward prosperous immigrant groups as well as class-based fears about the poorest. Agrarian populism and revolutionary syndicalism have long since died out in the United States. Yet, just as in the Americanization era, outlets are needed for the economic frustrations and insecurities of Anglo-American workers and small producers, whose real incomes have been on a downward trajectory since 1973. Hence the xenophobic reaction crystallized by Patrick Buchanan’s ‘take back America’ rhetoric.⁹ Moreover, there are new middle-class anxieties about the declining quality of life, overcrowding, crime, rootlessness, and incivility, all of which find a scapegoat in our growing multiculturalism (Fishman, 1992).

The modern English-only movement dates from 1983, when former Senator S. I. Hayakawa of California teamed up with Dr John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist, environmentalist, and population control activist, to found US English. This lobby has spearheaded the Official English offensive in Congress, state legislatures, and ballot campaigns. It has proved remarkably successful. Within four years of its founding, US English claimed 400,000 dues-paying members and an annual budget of $5 million; its proposals had been considered by forty-eight of the fifty states. Voters have passed several English-only measures, generally by overwhelming margins,¹⁰ and numerous legislatures have followed suit. In 1998, Alaska became the twenty-third state to adopt a law designating English as its official language. 

Why the zealous ‘defense’ of English? Who would think to become lobbyists for a language that the vast majority of Americans take for granted, a seemingly thankless task? What are the incentives for such activity? To all appearances, US English is not an organization of educa-tors, literary figures, or language lovers. It professes no particular reverence for English – just for some generic common language (Nunberg, 1992). What motivates the English-only leadership?

Investigation of their internal documents, funding sources, and organizational ties reveals a covert agenda: determination to resist racial and cultural diversity in the United States. Consider the close, but frequently denied, connections between language restrictionists and immigration restrictionists. At one time or another, US English and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have shared a suite of offices, a general counsel, a direct-mail wizard, a political-action-committee director, a writer-publicist, several rich contributors, and Dr Tanton himself as founder and chairman. Yet each group has repeatedly disclaimed any association with the other. The ideological affinity between the two became clear in an internal memorandum, leaked to the news media, in which Tanton (1986) warned of a Hispanic political takeover of the United States through immigration and high birthrates:

Gobernar es poblar translates ‘to govern is to populate.’ … In this society where the majority rules, does this hold? Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? …Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down! …As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? …We’re building in a deadly disunity. All great empires disintegrate, we want stability. (Tanton, 1986: 3–6)

While both groups have sought to project a bipartisan image, FAIR has been more willing to court benefactors on the far right.¹¹ Over the years it accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation created in 1937 to promote ‘racial betterment’ through eugenics. After working to popularize what it called ‘Applied Genetics in Present-Day Germany’ – the Nazis’ Lebensborn and forced sterilization programs – Pioneer broadened its focus to support restrictive immigration policies, anti-busing activities, and research into ‘racial’ differences in intelligence. In the 1980s it financed a publication glorifying the founder of the Ku Klux Klan (Crawford, 1992a). Although Tanton claimed to be unaware of these activities when they came to light, FAIR continued to accept large grants from the Pioneer Fund. It should be noted that such associations hardly prove a unity of purpose with Nazis and Klansmen. On the other hand, they say a great deal about the sensibilities of Tanton and his cohorts, who seem to find racial extremism less worrisome than racial diversity.

Not long before these disclosures, US English commissioned an internal membership survey to learn more about its sources of support. Asked why they had sent in donations, 42 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: ‘I wanted America to stand strong and not cave in to Hispanics who shouldn’t be here’ (Lawrence Co., 1988). Here we find a none-too-subtle indicator of what the pollster termed ‘the redneck factor.’ Yet the organization’s membership was hardly representative of lower-class Americans, according to the survey. The US English ranks turned out to be disproportionately affluent, male, conservative, college-educated, northern European in origin, and elderly (75 percent were at least sixty years of age).

For English-only leaders and activists, prejudice against speakers of Spanish and other minority languages appears to be a significant motivator. But what of the much broader group of Americans who vote for, or merely express agreement with, campaigns for Official English? Are they equally intolerant of immigrants and eager to make their lives difficult? Or merely ignorant of the movement’s implications?

Alarm about the new immigration is closely associated with English-only fervor. In a study of California voting patterns, Hero et al. (1996) found that county-level support for Proposition 63, the Official English measure passed in 1986, was a ‘very strong’ (r = 0.82) predictor of support for Proposition 187, the ‘border control’ measure passed in 1994. Striking as that finding may be, it unfortunately provides no way to differentiate between intentions that are benign (e.g. a desire to promote English acquisition among newcomers) and those that are mean-spirited (e.g. a desire to discriminate, or at least put out the ‘unwelcome’ mat). Nor, in all likelihood, can many English-only supporters make such distinctions themselves; motives in this campaign are often mixed. Seldom does today’s nativism take the form of a pure and undiluted hatred of foreigners. Rather, it is a volatile brew of anxieties and animosities, insecurities and prejudices, which flow from class as well as ethnicity. Such ingredients also find potent expression in language politics.

These conflicts vary widely from one community to another, as illustrated by the following vignettes (for additional details, see Crawford, 1992a, 1992b).

Monterey Park, California, was transformed in the 1980s from a lackluster bedroom community of Los Angeles into a dynamic magnet for Taiwanese immigrants – ‘the Chinese Beverly Hills,’ as one realtor promoted it. It also became a financial center for Asian entrepreneurs, home to more than a dozen Chinese-owned banks. Asian Americans, who represented just 3 percent of Monterey Park’s population in 1960, expanded into a majority by 1986. Instead of opening corner grocery stores, as immigrants are expected to do, the newcomers bought out American supermarkets and restocked them with Asian goods. Chinese developers built high-density ‘mini-malls’ catering primarily to immigrant consumers. Not surprisingly, property values and rents soared; many longtime Anglo-Americans found they could no longer afford to live in the city. Worse, they said, they felt like strangers in their own community – a resentment that has found in language a convenient symbol for all the unsettling cultural and demographic changes.

An English-only reaction, beginning in the mid-1980s, focused on the prominence of Asian characters on business signs and on a donation of Chinese-language books to the public library, both of which city officials tried to restrict. These skirmishes, though seemingly petty, had great significance for Chinese Americans and, to a lesser extent, Mexican Americans, as well as for the local Anglos who resented their success. The impact was highly divisive, notwithstanding English-only proponents’ rhetoric about ‘unity’ through a common language. By 1990, however, Monterey Park’s immigrants had finally begun to acquire political clout proportionate to their numbers, and they succeeded in voting out the most vocal nativists. Tensions over language have since receded.

In Dade County, Florida, a similar reaction set in against the fast-growing Latino population, which dislodged white Anglo-Americans from majority status by the early 1980s. But the class factors in Miami’s language battles have been more complex. Earlier the community had welcomed the first waves of Cuban exiles, who were typically middle-class and well educated, if temporarily short on cash. In 1973, the Metro-Dade Commission declared the county officially bilingual and bicultural. But the Mariel boatlift of 1980 brought Cubans who were darker, poorer, younger, and, in some instances, criminal (as Fidel Castro seized the opportunity to empty his jails). More than 100,000 ended up in South Florida, which felt a jarring impact on its schools, justice system, and social service agencies. Anglos often reacted with resentment, especially at the costs of helping Marielitos adjust.

In 1980, Dade County voters passed the so-called Anti-Bilingual Ordinance, arguably the most draconian language law in U.S. history. It prohibited – without exception – any county expenditure ‘for the purpose of utilizing any language other than English, or promoting any culture other than that of the United States.’ This led, among many other restrictions, to a ban on hurricane warnings and bus schedules in Spanish, an embargo on prenatal care pamphlets in Haitian Creole, and the removal of non-English-language signs at the Dade Metrozoo, where some vigilant citizens had complained about the Latin species names posted outside animal cages.

Ironically, Spanish continued to thrive as a language of business, turning Miami into a banking, trade, and media center for all of Latin America. Bilingualism and biculturalism were an enormous local boon, as Anglo elites (like the editorial board of the Miami Herald) quickly recognized. It was the petit-bourgeois and working-class anglophones who felt the pinch, as Spanish skills became necessary for advancement. To get a lowly job as a cashier or gas station attendant, bilingualism was increasingly required, just as it was to prosper as a doctor, lawyer, or small business owner. For many Anglos, this kindled an ethnocentric reaction against all things Hispanic.¹² Some left the area, while others learned to adjust. With relatively little public commotion (at least by Miami standards), the Anti-Bilingual Ordinance was finally repealed in 1993.

Lowell, Massachusetts, exemplifies a more familiar pattern of haves reacting to an influx of have-nots. In this case, the latter were primarily Southeast Asian and secondarily Latino. As a textile center – indeed, a birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in this country – Lowell had been built by successive waves of immigrants, notably Irish, Poles, French Canadians, Lithuanians, Portuguese, Russian Jews, and Armenians. Among the last to arrive, before Congress slammed the ‘golden door’ in the early 1920s, were the Greeks. Their immigration resumed after World WarII, making Lowell one of the largest Greek-speaking communities in the country, which it remains. Ironically, they also became prominent in the local English-only campaign, which was led by a Greek American member of the school board. Again the trigger of contention was demographic change. Southeast Asian refugees, began arriving in the late 1970s. Within ten years they represented one-quarter of the local population, making Lowell one of the nation’s largest settlements of Cambodians.

Among the forces driving language conflict were native fears about crime, welfare dependency, and competition for scarce jobs. These were often accompanied by a sense of injustice that today’s newcomers appeared to be getting a better deal than those who arrived at the turn of the 20th century and allegedly struggled to succeed without help from government.¹³ Resentment focused on the rising costs of public schools, which featured bilingual programs in five languages (not including Greek, which was taught in parochial schools). In 1989, the city’s voters overwhelmingly approved an Official English declaration. The measure was non-binding, but the emotions it stirred continue to poison relations between Lowell’s old and new ethnics.

Language Rights and the English-Only Mentality
Each of these examples raises substantive questions of language policy: What kinds of bilingual accommodations are reasonable and necessary to ensure minorities’ access to government and education? What criteria should be used to decide when and how to provide such services, to which language groups, and at what cost? How can language barriers be overcome, or at least mitigated, in the private sector? What kinds of educational programs appear promising for diverse groups of students and which should be offered in the public schools? Each of these issues has practical implications for newcomers and natives alike. Yet rarely are the details – costs and benefits – seriously discussed before hostilities erupt. Such mundane concerns, in themselves, rarely seem to provoke language conflicts.

What seems to gall English-only advocates is not the translation of street signs or tax forms or children’s lessons, but what these accommodations symbolize: a public recognition that limited-English speakers are part of the community and therefore entitled to services from government, even if that may entail ‘special’ programs and expenditures. Why would anyone find this threatening? Perhaps because it legitimizes diversity, notwithstanding the challenges involved. It implies certain rights that were not previously acknowledged. Thus in a small way, when government offers bilingual assistance, it elevates the status of language minorities. It suggests that immigrants and Native peoples need not abandon their heritage to be considered American – or at least to be given access to democratic institutions. In short, it alters structures of power, class, and ethnicity. The demand for language restrictions, by contrast, is a demand to reinforce the existing social order.

US English and similar groups have repeatedly disavowed the English-only label. In part, this is a public relations ploy,¹⁴ but it also provides a clue to their ideology. Individual bilingualism is fine, even laudable, they say. Everyone should speak a ‘foreign language.’ It is ‘societal bilingualism’ that divides us into warring groups, they explain. Let minorities speak their languages in private contexts – at home, in churches, in private schools – but do not encourage Babel in the public square. By offering bilingual assistance, the restrictionists warn, government sends a message that civic life is acceptable in languages other than English. Thus they denounce as ‘official bilingualism’ the tiniest concession to diversity.

No matter that such accommodations can benefit and, indeed, unify society as a whole. The precedent is what troubles the English-only mentality. Who knows where the slippery slope might lead – social equality? fewer advantages for white Anglo-Americans? linguistic human rights for everyone? These are nightmarish prospects for the privileged and the powerful, and for those who share their worldview.
 

Notes
1. In chronological order they are: Nebraska (constitutional amendment, 1920); Illinois (statute, 1969); Virginia (statute, 1981); Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee (statutes, 1984); California and Georgia (constitutional amendment and ceremonial resolution, 1986); Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, and South Carolina (statutes, 1987); Arizona, Colorado, and Florida (constitutional amendments, 1988); Alabama (constitutional amendment, 1990); New Hampshire, Montana, and South Dakota (statutes, 1995); Wyoming (statute, 1996); and Alaska and Missouri (statutes, 1998). Arizona's Article 28 was struck down as unconstitutional in 1998, leaving a total of 22 states with active official-English laws.

2. In early 1996, the long-sought ‘Nazi connection’ seemed to emerge. Just before the New Hampshire primary, it was disclosed that Larry Pratt, a co-chairman of Patrick Buchanan’s presidential campaign, had addressed conferences of the Aryan Nations and Christian Identity movements, where white supremacist ideas, neo-Nazi symbols, and armed militia organizing were prominent. Pratt also happens to be the founder and president of English First, a small political action committee that promotes Official English legislation. English First publications, like Buchanan’s stump speeches, have featured racist innuendoes directed at Latinos in particular. Opponents of the English-only campaign seized on this revelation, hoping that Pratt’s unsavory associations might help to reduce the momentum of English-only bills on Capitol Hill. I myself wrote a newspaper column to publicize the news (Crawford, 1996a). Nevertheless, Pratt’s flirtation with extremists is essentially irrelevant. He is a minor player in this field, who seems mainly interested in competing for direct-mail dollars with more established lobbies that target gun control, abortion rights, homosexuals, immigrants, and language minorities. In my estimation, he is basically a businessman who specializes in Right-wing goods and is not very choosy about his clientele.

3. In the late 1980s, Cousins, Vidal, and Cronkite, who appear to have had little knowledge of US English activities, asked that their names be removed from the group’s letterhead following publicity about its founder’s anti-Hispanic comments.

4. For example, a New York Times/CBS News poll (11–14 May, 1987) asked 1254 adults: ‘Would you favor or oppose an amendment to the Constitution that requires federal, state, and local governments to conduct business in English and not use other languages, even in places where many people don’t speak English?’ Respondents were evenly split, at 47 percent. Arizona’s Article 28, the most restrictive English-only measure to date, passed with only 50.5 percent of the vote in 1988 and was later ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court.

5. An estimated 7.3 million immigrants (documented and undocumented) entered the United States during the 1980s, according to the USImmigration and Naturalization Service (1993). This number was second only to the 1900–1910 decade, when 8.8 million arrived. In proportion to the total US population, however, the immigration of the 1980s was less than 30 percent the level of 1900–1910.

6. For example, Citrin et al. (1990: 549) take at face value respondents’ claims that they would welcome ‘today’s new immigrants’ into their neighborhoods; that it was ‘a good thing’ for immigrants to preserve their native languages and customs; and that learning English was key to ‘making someone a true American.’

7. This diatribe comes from the conclusion of Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751), Franklin’s most Malthusian work. He elaborates a ‘racial’ line of argument against German immigration that seems bizarre (if also sadly familiar) in today’s context:

The number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make up the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? Why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. (Franklin, [1751] 1961: IV, 234; emphasis in original)

8. It should be noted that language discrimination was among the least of the Chinese immigrants’ problems. The 1879 constitution prohibited them from working in public or corporate employment and sought – unconstitutionally, as it turned out – to ban their settlement in the state of California (Sandmeyer, 1939).

9. English-only themes featured prominently in Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign, with television commercials promising to ‘declare a “time-out” on new immigration, secure America’s borders, and insist on one language, English, for all Americans’ (Washington Post, 27 February 1996).

10. In California, the vote in favor was 73 percent; in Florida, 84 percent; in Colorado, 61 percent; in Alabama, 89 percent; and in Alaska, 69 percent. Of the six ballot campaigns thus far, only Arizona’s was close, with the English-only measure garnering 50.5 percent of the vote; it was later ruled unconstitutional.

11. It is worth noting, however, that both FAIR and US English received major, long-term support from the Laurel Foundation, whose other philanthropic projects included population control in the Third World and the distribution of a futuristic novel depicting the destruction of the white race by Third World immigrants (Crawford, 1992a).

12. It has also led to some fascinating role reversals. To the extent that English-only legislation has been a partisan issue in South Florida, Republicans have opposed it as an infringement of civil liberties while Democrats have favored it as a symbolic statement of Americanism. When Florida passed its Official English amendment in 1988, it won overwhelmingly in liberal Jewish Miami Beach, which was carried easily by Michael Dukakis; it lost by even larger margins in Cuban precincts that supported George Bush. This vote mirrors a divergence that is typical among Miami Jews and Cubans on most issues. It also reflects status anxieties and resentments directed, as in Monterey Park, toward affluent newcomers whodo not conform to classic immigrant patterns.

13. In fact, turn-of-the-century immigrants enjoyed a good deal more assistance than their descendants imagine, including state-financed night schools taught by Greek-speaking teachers – a form of bilingual education.

14. US English was first to popularize the term during a 1984 ballot campaign in California, entitled ‘Voting Materials in English Only.’ Only later did it see the downside of truth in advertising.
 

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