Language as Racism: A New Policy of Exclusion

Abstract

As Dinesh D’Souza and other cultural commissars falsely proclaim the end of racism, language has become the last refuge to wantonly discriminate with impunity. Often these cultural commissars rely on selective history, as Lou Dobbs, a CNN commentator, astutely quoted Theodore Roosevelt to make the case that to be an American “does not allow for divided loyalties” and that speaking a language other than English is tantamount to disloyalty. Leaving aside the blatant contradictions inherent in Roosevelt’s definition of what it means to be an American, what is never interrogated is the undemocratic proposition stating that in order to be, one must stop being. That is, to be an American requires that immigrants commit both cultural and linguistic suicide since, as Roosevelt insisted, “there is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism” (Crawford, 2004, p. 67). In essence, these cultural commissars fail to acknowledge that the requirement to blindly assimilate so that one can become an American represents also a quasi cultural genocide that is designed to enable the dominant cultural group to consolidate its cultural and linguistic hegemony. As correctly pointed out by Amilcar Cabral, the ideal for cultural domination can be reduced to the following: The dominant cultural group (1) liquidates practically all the population of the dominated country, thereby eliminating the possibilities for cultural resistance; or (2) succeeds in imposing itself without damage to the culture of the dominated people—that is, harmonizes economic and political domination of these people with their cultural personality (Cabral, 1973, p. 40).

In the first place we should insist if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated with an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against such man because of creed, or birth place, or origin … But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American but something else also, isn’t an American at all … We have room for but one language in this country and that is the English language … and we have room for but one loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1907