Multilingual Television

I'm a fellow Townhoiuse blogger interested in your comments. Please read my comments: aBrightWhitePaper.blogtownhall.com.

It's not multilingual television Americans protest, it's the difficult attitude of some immigrants who frankly don't want to speak English in an English-speaking country. They are not here to build America. Many of those illegals employed in construction and farming send most of their paychecks back home, which by itself is not a bad thing. Those people live in poverty in those small Mexican towns and can use every penny they can get. But, again, these kinds of people do not pay property taxes, do not attempt to assimilate as did the Africans, Italians, Irish, Polish,Swiss, Finns, and other immigrants. Today these ethnicities are intermingled into the American DNA along with English, French, German, and other Scandinavians. We're a large salad of bowl of once-strange peoples and we're proud of it. It's called America and we speak English, predominately

It's hard to see a more divisive element in American society than the Latinos who expect our nation to change to their liking.

I take one little exception to Anderson's article. That is his misunderstanding of the Italians in America during the early twentieth century. Please read E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime" for a better feel for the times and terrible conditions that Italians and other newcomers found in New York, for example. It wasn't pretty.

I don't disagree with shows that teach language as I also watched Sesame St, Zoom, and Electric Company. What I object to is the fact that after seven years in the US, a parent brings his 4yo who cannot speak english (and nor can he) to my office for medical help and I cannot. My spanish is limited to conversational.
Most Europeans who come here have a great working knowledge of English. SOme immigrants still sport heavy accents, but they do speak well enough for me to understand them.
My issue is that most mexicans do not even try and expect us to have signs all over the place in spanish. I don't remeotely like the fact that my food labels are now dual. Cater to them and they will never take the initiative.
I do try to learn enough of a language to converse. I can understand Italian,Gaelic, and speak German, Dutch, Afrikaans. I know, I am the exception, but still, I don't go to other countries and expect them to cater to me.

Welcome to the blog and thank you for the comment.

It appears that we are in agreement.

I do have one question, however. Where did you get the impression that I said Italians faced a good environment? I mentioned Italians three times:

1. When I said there was opposition to Italian immigration at time

2. When Is poke on my mother-in-law, but she came here in the late 40's, which was definitely not a heyday for Italian hatred

3. When I said Italians maintained a cultural identity which did not engender hatred.

In the third case, I speak not so much of at the time of immigration, as they would obviously have a clear ethnic identity then, as in the following generations. And, despite the conditions Italian immigrants faced on their arrival, the hatred of Italians, as of the Irish, Eastern Europeans and others, was a short lived phenomenon. It vanished almost as soon as the massive influx of the late 19th century ended. Yes, it was rough at the time, but it did not last.

And I still stand by my statement that the US was more accepting of immigrants than any other nation. As I said, there were transient periods of oppositions to specific groups, but I can imagine no other nation allowing immigration on such massive scale without applying any legal disabilities based on nation of origin.

Well, thanks for the comment. I hope to hear from you again soon.

Good to hear form you again, it has been a while.

And it appears we agree as well.

As I said, while the objections I hear from time to time are targeted at the language itself, I think most actually share your opinion yet are unwilling to say it.

Hope to hear form you again soon.

Having not read Doctorow's book, I do not know whether you refer to hatred of Italians or simply grim circumstances. As for the first, as I said, yes it existed, but it was not a long term phenomenon, it seems to have appeared with the massive influx of immigrants in the early 1880's, and to have vanished no later than the very early twentieth century.

As far as squalor is concerned, I think that may not be so much a function of nationality, as it was the general state of the urban poor at the time. Cities suffered from both an influx of domestic farm labor and huge waves of immigration and had not yet changed to handle those conditions. As so many socialist reformers of that time wrote, the lot of the native born poor was very grim as well.

Well, just a second thought I had. As I don't have "Ragtime" at hand to consult, I can't easily tell what terrible conditions they faced, so if it was in part squalor, I just had to point out that foreign born city dwellers were not alone in that. As they often lacked any assets after paying for transit across the Atlantic, they may have been slightly worse off than natives, but not much.