Editorial by Dr. Richard D. Brecht.
This piece is one of several that explore the deep societal, cultural, and human consequences of language suppression in the U.S., framing multilingualism not as a challenge, but as an asset — one that must be protected and nurtured. It ties language access to social justice, education, national identity, and public health.
Race, Class, and Ethnicity have been the root cause of conflict with regard to equal rights and access to privileges of U.S. society, constituting challenges to social justice in a liberal democracy. To this trio must be added Language as a less appreciated source of discrimination. It is particularly relevant as it directly involves the ability of humans to interact with each other across differences in background, outlook, and existing prejudices. A society’s failure to recognize and facilitate effective communication among all its populations must be among its primary social justice foci.
This issue is particularly relevant in nations whose very character has been determined by immigration, like the US, Australia, and Canada. In fact, the U.S. is a nation of 360 million, almost all U.S. residents are the offspring of immigrants, most of whom spoke a language other than English when they landed on our shores. Nevertheless, along with the almost total erasure of indigenous languages, the pressure on immigrants to convert from their home languages to English has been a fact of life for immigrants. Accordingly, the history of language in the US, while inconsistent, has effectively resulted in a society of a majority of monolingual English speakers on the one hand and a significant minority of arriving speakers of many other languages on the other.
While slavery, Native American erasure, and immigration have been a part of our history since its founding, the popular notion of the “melting pot” assumed that all would learn English and abandon their home languages. This, in large part, they did. Even so, U.S. immigration policy remained largely restrictive for most of its history until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act). This legislation made clear that our borders were, in fact, open to any and all who enter legally, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, or country of origin. This opening of borders has resulted in an increase in speakers of a greater diversity of languages from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The latest U.S. Census (2023) shows that approximately forty-seven million U.S. residents are ‘foreign born’ immigrants of the total population of 340 million. As a result, thousands of communities across this nation have become multicultural and multilingual. They build on the indigenous and immigrant diversity established on these shores centuries ago and continuing throughout its history.
The personal benefits of bilingualism and language learning have been a major preoccupation of researchers for the past several decades. The best summary of this research is to be found in the Foreign Language Annals of 2019, where the benefits the authors note include cognitive abilities, educational achievement, and employment.
On the societal level, in addition to the benefits of a more skilled workforce for national security and global competitiveness, the fact that a second language produces an understanding and appreciation of ‘difference’ between other cultures and one’s own. This perspective is especially welcome in these times of political, social, and racial division. Multilingualism, one of our richest and productive characteristics, can hold us together as much as its denial tears us apart.
This ‘heritage’ process of home language maintenance and the Community-Based Heritage Language Schools (CBHLS) it engenders has, for over 100 years, demonstrated how new immigrant communities can successfully integrate into this English-dominant society and gain acceptance and appreciation. Add to this the latest data showing that immigrants from Latin America and Africa admitted after 1965 succeed and contribute to U.S. society to the same extent as did the white populations from Northern and Southern Europe in the Great Immigration of the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries. (Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan. Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success. 2022)
The rise of domestic nationalism, nativism, and illiberalism has emerged as the most recent threat to language rights as clearly defined in basic U.S. legislation, constitutes an existential threat to bilingualism and language diversity in the United States. Politically, the attachment of language to the fraught reaction to immigration has been particularly obvious, as witnessed by the recent declaration of English as the nation’s official language and budget cuts in English and other language education. The broader attack on DLI that directly involves not only race, class, and ethnicity provides broader cover for language retrenchment since 1965.
To be sure, immigration has always been a two-edged sword, threatening established residents while enabling their prosperity. However, the opening of immigration since the Immigration and Nationality Act legislation to countries beyond Europe has had two negative consequences: First, it has reenergized the displacement fears of earlier times. Second, it has increased the number and diversity of immigrants. Because of their languages, these immigrants are finding it more difficult to access the vital social and educational services that enable immigrants to do what they have always done: contribute to the economic and social strength of our society.
In the U.S. and around the world, increasing emigration from unsafe and poverty-stricken environments to adjacent or distant destinations continues. This movement of people produces societies as well as major urban areas and local towns with unprecedentedly diverse populations, which challenge and disrupt the social services that these societies normally grant to their residents. The tradition of leaving language ‘discordance’ in the United States to be solved by generational transitions to English fluency results in years of limited access to medical and legal services. This situation ultimately places even more burdens on the healthcare and judicial systems and makes clear the threat to social injustice in these and other vital areas.
Historically, calls for more language recognition have not worked. It is time for a new approach based on political and social realities. The first of these recognizes the challenge of the new administration’s focus on nationalism and Official English. The second is based on awareness of the benefits of bilingualism, both personal and societal, as well as the social inequities inherent in the failure to accommodate language in the provision of social services. This awareness of the obstacles and, most importantly, the benefits of bilingualism can build more equitable social services. In addition, the benefits of bilingualism can also attract and involve parents who are concerned for their children’s success through education. Language services and heritage communities have shown the way, and now monolingual communities can follow with the goal of making social services more accessible and children better educated and therefore more successful in life in a society with broadened social justice aspirations.
Perhaps nowhere better is the argument made for language as a social justice issue in the U.S. than in healthcare. Here, the data on the need and benefit of “language concordance” is most abundant and persuasive for systems that rely on companies like Jeenie to face their language challenges. These data can serve as a lightning rod for attracting attention to language as a social justice issue in the United States.