From the WSJ Opinion Archives
DE GUSTIBUS
Speaking in Tongues
A State of the Union response in Spanish? Multiculturalism has gone too far.
On Tuesday, Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic alcalde (or mayor) of Los Angeles, delivered to his city a "Respuesta al Estado de la Nación"--a response in Spanish to President Bush's State of the Union address. This alternative discourse, this act of ethno-political affectation, should lead us all to think upon some questions: What, and where, are the limits to civic Otherness in America?
Why not a gay response? A Teamster response? A vegan response? A gangsta response? More nitty-grittily: Why not a response in Farsi or Korean--languages spoken by people toward whom Mr. Villaraigosa has no fewer mayoral duties than he does toward his Hispanophones? There is, also, a radical question from which there should be no glib escape: If response there must be from the mayor of Los Angeles, why not one in plain old English?
I am a first-generation migrant to this country. I believe that in settling abroad, foreigners make a brutal contract with their land of adoption. They may speak their language, eat their food and practice their religion--but at home or by private arrangement. That is as far as I would go with multiculturalism. All else--including an insistence on a public affirmation of ethnic frills and fancies--cripples the process of integration.
America's Hispanics are a special problem in this regard, and the mulish adherence of their political leaders to bilingualism is ultimately damaging to the advancement of their children (not that our teachers will ever admit this). From this perspective, the Chinese in America, or the Indians, are more pragmatic. (Why can't we let more of them in?)
Of course, there are differences that are not of our election: We did not choose our name, native language, skin color or religion. But there are more potent differences that we do create and nurture, such as the ideologies that are attached to one or another of the former types of difference. When we choose to exploit the natural diversity within us and base political identities on them--as Mr. Villaraigosa has done (and as every Anglo politician does when he mangles Spanish on the stump)--we widen manageable differences into unbridgeable chasms. The Cambodian- and Iranian-Americans who live in Los Angeles are just as proud of their heritage as the Mexican-Americans. Now they, along with the rest of us, have been taught that their mayor is biased in favor of Spanish-speaking people. (What's "Take a hike!" in Hmong?)
Mr. Villaraigosa chose to emit his message specifically in Spanish, and by doing so he sent a clear signal of his chosen tribal identity (and not just the accident of his birth). That may help him with his vote bank, but it will not help his city. Ultimately, it will distance his primarily Mexican-American audience from their neighbors, including other immigrants. Is that what the mayor and his friends want? Perhaps.
The left's great failing is that it envisions America as a collection of alienated subgroups who would, if only they could kvetch in perfect harmony about their problems with this country, achieve justice and world peace. This sub-grouping urge is a kind of tyranny. Perhaps it made sense in less tolerant times to talk of "people of color"--the way demagogues did and do--as shorthand for nonwhite. But what an offensively blunt formulation it is now. As if any identity could lie in a notion that seeks to cohere blacks, Native Americans, and Hispanics. And consider the term "Hispanics": It suggests that, for purposes of maximum political clout, Ecuadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Dominicans--"latinos"--should unite under a flag of grievance, then reorient themselves again into subcultures but never define themselves as individuals or mere Americans.
Political exigency defines identity. Women, lesbians, gays and cross-dressers--"what's the connection?" you might ask. Yet for a certain political way of life in the U.S., these four groups fall into a seamless commonality. Since identity politics are an alternative route to power in American life--exclusive to minorities and to whites who are liberal--such politics are an incentive not to embrace the broader American identity. "To think of oneself as an American and an individual is to lose power," observed Shelby Steele, America's foremost commentator on race, in an email exchange I had with him. "The mayor of L.A. is being obeisant to this alternative power."
Which leaves me with a last question: Do you think that a day will come when the State of the Union will be simultaneously relayed in the Rotunda of the Congress in Spanish? A disconcerting thought. Not because of the language--Spanish, after all, is a lovely, languid tongue. Disconcerting I say because of the process that will have brought it there.
Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.
