[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 135 (Thursday, September 26, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ENGLISH AS THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. THOMAS M. BARRETT

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 25, 1996

  Mr. BARRETT of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring to 
the attention of my colleagues an article by John Gurda, an excellent 
author and historian in Milwaukee. The article appeared in the 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this year. This article takes an 
intriguing look at the issue of English as the official language of the 
United States. It reminds us that most of us have ancestry which stems 
from outside the United States. It is with this in mind that I provide 
the following article.

          [From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Apr. 1, 1996]

              How Soon the ``English First'' Crowd Forgets

                            (By John Gurda)

       Their names are Seratti, Skindrud, Zukowski, Ziegelbauer, 
     Gunderson, Goetsch, Buettner, Huebsch and Drzewiecki. They 
     represent some of Wisconsin's leading ethnic groups--German, 
     Norwegian, Polish and Italian--and it is a safe bet that none 
     of their ancestors spoke a word of English when they arrived.
       The irony is that the names belong to state legislators who 
     are sponsoring the ``English First'' bill. Their measure 
     would establish English as the ``official language of 
     Wisconsin'' and would, with a few carefully worded 
     exceptions, prohibit the use of other languages in ``all 
     written expression'' by any unit of state or local 
     government.
       It seems puzzling, at first, that the bill would get a 
     serious hearing in a state as ethnic as Wisconsin. It seems 
     even stranger that elected officials would deny some current 
     residents a privilege that their own ancestors enjoyed: the 
     right to be addressed in their native tongues.
       Linguistic diversity, officially endorsed, is older than 
     the state. When Solomon Juneau became Milwaukee's first mayor 
     in 1846, 1,000 copies of his inaugural address were printed--
     500 in English and 500 in German. The same policy was 
     observed when Wisconsin adopted a constitution two years 
     later. In the 1850s and '60s, the state published guidebooks 
     in German, Norwegian, French, Dutch and Swedish, as well as 
     in English, hoping to attract newcomers from Europe.
       Immigrants responded by the thousands, making Wisconsin one 
     of the most ``foreign'' states in the union and dotting the 
     countryside with such settlements as New Glarus, New 
     Holstein, Denmark, Belgium, Poland and Scandinavia. Ethnicity 
     is still one of our hallmarks--a focus of festivals, an 
     anchor of identity and, not least of all, a draw for 
     tourists.
       But diversity has always had a dark side as well. Wisconsin 
     has suffered periodic outbreaks of nativism throughout its 
     history; like some modern suburbanites, established residents 
     of every period have tried to pull up the gangplank as soon 
     as they were safely on the boat.
       In the 1840s, for instance, when Irish and German 
     immigrants demanded an equal voice in deliberations over 
     statehood, the Milwaukee Sentinel was horrified: ``This is 
     going too far. . . . One half of our population consists of 
     foreigners and if this continues they will gain the upper 
     hand and destroy our freedom. This thing is going too far.''
       Wisconsin's immigrants returned the fire when their rights 
     were threatened. In 1890, a Republican Legislature passed the 
     Bennett Law, making instruction in English compulsory. 
     Supporters of parochial schools were incensed. German, 
     Scandinavian, Irish and Polish voters joined forces at the 
     polls, making George Peck governor; he was the only Democrat 
     to hold the pot between 1876 and 1932.
       Intolerance reached a peak of sorts during and just after 
     World War I. Germans were, to put it bluntly, persecuted. 
     Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven were banned from the concert 
     stage. Sauerkraut was rechristened ``liberty cabbage.'' In 
     1919, the Milwaukee Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its 
     efforts to root out local Germans who sided with Kaiser 
     Wilhelm.
       Soon after the war, nativists broadened their fire to 
     include Poles, Italians, Greeks, Serbs and other ``new'' 
     immigrants, a group that one bigot dismissed as 
     ``historically downtrodden, atavistic and stagnant.'' Most 
     politicians agreed. In the 1920s, Congress virtually halted 
     the flow of immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The 
     ``golden door'' lighted by the Statue of Liberty was slammed 
     shut.
       Seventy years later, immigrants are once again suspect. The 
     English First campaign of 1996 is only the latest in a long 
     series of attempts to legislate conformity, attempts to 
     legislate conformity, attempts that seem to crest during 
     times of uncertainty. Patriots of every generation have 
     tried, in historian Gerd Korman's choice phrase, ``to replace 
     the melting pot with a pressure cooker.''
       The campaign has been blasted as small-minded, shortsighted 
     and racist by Hispanics, Asians and other language 
     minorities. The English First movement may be all of those 
     things, but it is most of all unnecessary. Anyone who has 
     spent time in the newer ethnic communities will tell you that 
     the pressures to conform are enormous. Through the media, 
     through the schools, through their own children, immigrant 
     families soon learn what America expects of them. If they 
     want a place at the table, if they want even a taste of the 
     American dream, English is mandatory.
       Why, then, the current outbreak of nativism? When you cut 
     through all the rhetoric about ``uniting'' our society, what 
     you sense is fear--fear that America is coming apart at the 
     seams. The country seems to be filling in with strangers who 
     show no eagerness to join the mainstream. That perception 
     gives rise to a great unspoken question: Why can't they be 
     like us?
       It is one of the oldest questions in America. Yankees asked 
     it of the Germans and the Irish, the Germans and Irish asked 
     it of the Poles and Italians, and everyone asks it of 
     Hispanics and Asians. The fact that so many groups once 
     considered ``they'' have joined the ranks of ``us'' is, I 
     would suggest, an obvious sign of America's power to absorb 
     differences. But there are always newcomers to question.
       And what should they answer? They should, in my opinion, 
     respond that they are challenging the rest of us to live up 
     to an ideal as old as the Republic: a belief that the many 
     can become one without rejecting their ancestors, that unity 
     and diversity can coexist in a creative and energizing 
     tension.
       There is only one noun in this country, and that is 
     American. But there are dozens of adjectives: African, 
     Belgian, Croatian, Danish, English, Filipino, German and on 
     down the alphabet. It is our differences, mediated by our 
     essential unity, that give this country its human appeal and 
     its human power.
       Those who would stifle diversity are denying themselves an 
     important gift. Those who would insist on ``English First'' 
     are betraying their own ignorance and their own pettiness, 
     but they display something even more disturbing: a lack of 
     faith in America.

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