The Homa Files

More important: does it matter?
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Earlier this week, liberal newser Tom Brokaw set off a firestorm when he dared to say on MTP:

“Hispanic immigrants need to do a better job of assimilating to the United States and teaching their children to speak English.”

The backlash — from the left no less – was fast and brutal.

Brokaw was accused of being a racist (really?) and of being insensitive to immigrants’ culture.

So, Brokaw backpedaled from his statement and apologized

Yipes.

Let’s take a step back and look at some data.

According to a WaPo analysis of Census Dept. data, about 1 in 5 U.S. households don’t speak English at home.

That’s up from 1 in 10 back in the 1980s.

A pretty steep increase that begs a bigger question: does it matter?

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Even the WaPo points out:

“English is the de facto language of the land. People who lack English proficiency may face all manner of social, educational and economic roadblocks as they attempt to navigate society.”

I think that’s the point that Brokaw was attempting to make.

It’s not a cultural diss … it’s a fact of life.

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WaPo counterpoints by citing more Census data:

“More than 60 percent of citizen and noncitizen U.S. residents who speak other languages at home also speak English “very well.” They’re bilingual”

In other words, much ado about nothing.

Hmmm.

Draw your own conclusion.

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This entry was posted on January 31, 2019 at 6:59 am and is filed under English, Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.