assimilation versus multiculturalism: bilingual education and the

Assimilation Versus Multiculturalism:Bilingual Education

and the Latino ChallengeJulia Burdick-Will

Latin American Studies Program and Department of SociologyUniversity of Chicago

Christina GómezDepartment of Sociology and Latino and Latin American Studies Program

Northeastern Illinois University

This article analyzes the public rhetoric during the November 2002 vote over bilin-gual education in Colorado and Massachusetts. We argue that the neoassimilationistviews displayed in both states represent a new step in the evolution of assimilationtheory and ideology—one that has adapted to both the current immigrant environ-ment and to multicultural criticism. In Colorado, where the bill English for theChildren failed to pass, the print media reveals a far greater tendency toward assimi-lation; in Massachusetts, multicultural values are used far more often as a defense forbilingual education programs, even though the bill overwhelmingly passed.

Key words: bilingual education, assimilation, multiculturalism, Latinos/Hispanics,English for the children, immigrants

I’m strongly in favor of people speaking English here. If you come here fromanywhere and you want to participate in the American dream, then youshould become an American. The price of coming here is to become part ofour culture. And the way you learn our culture is to speak our language. Andif you don’t want to, you can just pack up and go home.

Levi Brannam, Delta, CO1

JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION, 5(3), 209–231Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Correspondence should be addressed to Christina Gómez, Department of Sociology–CLS 2092,Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 North St. Louis, Chicago, IL 60625. E-mail: [email protected]

1Meadow, J. B. (2002, October 5). Opinions from the Delta: Town’s residents weigh in on every-thing from Hussein to methane. Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 32A.

As an African American woman, I support the right for people to learn theEnglish language and retain their native tongue. We African Americans haveno sense of our language, and English language immersion strips people of aconsciousrelationship to theirculture.We’vebeenherebefore,andit’s racist.

Attieno Davis, Boston, MA2

American education policy rarely has an exclusively pedagogical base and is fre-quently shaped by larger ideologies present in American society. Bilingual educa-tion is no exception. The first of the previously cited quotations comes from a salesmanager of a local radio station in rural western Colorado and the second from aresident of Boston, Massachusetts. Each of these statements was published whilethe two states were in the midst of a fiery debate regarding the best way to educateimmigrant children. In November of 2002, residents of each state voted on a bill,English for the Children, that would replace all forms of bilingual education withonly one year of structured English immersion.

Although neither Levi Brannam nor Attieno Davis was an activist on either sideof the campaign, Denver and Boston newspapers quoted them for their representa-tive opinions on the topic. Views on bilingual education are frequently based onconcerns about immigrants and assimilation (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,1995). Brannam evoked the American dream and the need to become an Ameri-can, and Davis referred to the country’s history of racial prejudice and native lan-guage maintenance. In doing so, they base their arguments on two very differentand conflicting theories regarding not only the process of immigrant incorporationbut also the cultural make-up of America: assimilation and multiculturalism, re-spectively.

The United States of America has always been a country of immigrants, but per-ceptions about how those immigrants should be integrated into American societyhave changed dramatically over time. According to Nathan Glazer in his book WeAre All Multiculturalists Now (1997), the sentiments of Davis are representative ofa cultural pluralism now referred to as multiculturalism that swept the nation in the1980s. Multicultural ideas revolutionized the way Americans understood their im-migrant past, present, and future by claiming that America’s strength lay in its cul-tural diversity and placing emphasis on ethnic identity rather than a uniform Amer-ican identity. Multiculturalism came about through the rejection of older, earlytwentieth century assimilation and Americanization theories. In contrast to multi-culturalism, assimilation theories claimed that an immigrant must give up his orher cultural heritage and native language as part of the price of becoming an Amer-

210 BURDICK-WILL AND GÓMEZ

2Tench, M. (2002, November 3). Campaign 2002 / Question 2: Heated battle over English immer-sion intensifies. Boston Globe, p. B6.

ican and in doing so ethnic minorities would all melt together to form a single, uni-fied American identity.

This article explores the public rhetoric as it relates to assimilation theory andmulticulturalism during the November 2002 vote over bilingual education policyin two states—Colorado and Massachusetts. Our initial hypothesis was that voterapproval of the antibilingual bill, English for the Children, would correlate with asentiment toward an assimilationist perspective of public education. In otherwords, the initiative’s failure in Colorado would indicate that Colorado residentsdemonstrated less acceptance of assimilationist sentiment and would favor moremulticultural approaches to education; Massachusetts’ acceptance of the billwould suggest that multicultural theory no longer dominated political debate inthat state. However, our analysis has shown this not to be true; the Colorado printmedia revealed a far greater tendency toward assimilation than Massachusetts, andmulticultural values are used far more often in Massachusetts as a defense for bi-lingual education programs. The very campaign used by anti-initiative advocatesin Colorado intentionally avoided any attempts at multiculturalism and reliedheavily on English speakers’ fears of the state’s growing Latino population. Mas-sachusetts’ opponents of the bill focused more of their attention on the importanceof cultural heritage but found themselves soundly defeated on Election Day. Thesecampaigns were about the racialization of Latinos and their continued segregation,masked in the language of assimilation.

The speed at which a student can learn English was not the issue, nor were prac-tical objections, such as the ability to sue teachers or the constitutional nature ofthe Colorado amendment. Instead, the language and symbolic imagery that domi-nated this debate were reflective of much larger trends in the perception of immi-grant incorporation in the United States. The neoassimilationist-based views dis-played in both Massachusetts and Colorado represented a new step in the evolutionof assimilation theory and ideology—one that has adapted to both the current La-tino immigrant environment (and other immigrants) and to the multicultural criti-cism of traditional assimilation theory. This is similar to what Omi and Winant(1986) have described as the neoconservative perspective and their redefining ofracial meanings. Despite the differing results of the elections, this analysis showsthat multicultural values no longer dominated, as they would have in the post-1960s.

The utter failure of the Latino-based anti-initiative campaign and the accep-tance of views that shamed the Latino community for not learning English are a re-jection of multiculturalism and mobilization along racial lines. In Colorado,anti-initiative advocates demonstrating that the defeat of the bill was neither an ac-ceptance of multicultural principles nor a victory for Latino activists in the statespecifically and intentionally avoided multicultural views. The issue of segrega-tion was key in Amendment 31 being rejected; White, middle-class parents were

ASSIMILATION VERSUS MULTICULTURALISM 211

frightened by the thought of having brown children in the classroom with their ownchildren. In Massachusetts, multicultural views were presented far more fre-quently; however, they were almost always offset by assimilation- andneoassimilation-based views. In the words of Bonilla-Silva and Foreman (2000):

We believe (1) that there has been a rearticulation of the dominant racial themes (lessovert expression of racial resentment about issues anchored in the Jim Crow era suchas strict racial segregation in schools, neighborhoods, and social life in general, andmore resentment on new issues such as affirmative action, government interventionand welfare) and (2) that a new way of talking about racial issues in public venues—anew racetalk—has emerged. Nonetheless, the new racial ideology continues to helpin the reproduction of White supremacy. (p. 52)

These findings have implications that go beyond the future of bilingual education.The rejection of multiculturalism and the emergence of an adapted form ofneoassimilationist policies could lead not only to major changes in education pol-icy but to changes in the treatment of immigrants, and Latinos in general. Like Cal-ifornia’s Proposition 187, which attempted to ban undocumented immigrants fromsocial services, including schools, the public has become less and less tolerant ofnew arrivals. The language of race is not used in the discussion but rather acolor-blind rhetoric that hides a racist history and disempowers minority groups.

TO ASSIMILATE OR NOT

Straight-line assimilation theory that emerged during the early waves of immigra-tion was used to explain the way in which new ethnic and racial groups would reactto life in their new country. Social theory of the time was filled with the social evo-lution based idea that society was constantly becoming more modern, urban, andcivilized. Over generations, immigrant groups were thought to shed their old tradi-tional folk-society ways in favor of moving irreversibly toward a common Ameri-can culture (Zhou, 1997). Park (1928), Burgess, and their fellow Chicago Schoolurban sociologists believed that human migration led to catastrophic change in theevolutionary process and a breakdown of the social order. Without uniform cus-toms, including a common language, members of society could no longer rely ontraditional practices to govern their actions; the result would be social chaos.Americanization of immigrant groups was vital to the political and cultural stabil-ity of society (Gonzalez, 1997). To Park, every nation at some point in its historywas a melting pot that brought together different races and cultures, either by inva-sion or mass migration, and with the passage of time sifted these peoples into onesolid nationality; and the same should be true for America.


The popular understanding of these theories is best illustrated by IsraelZangwill’s highly successful Broadway play, The Melting Pot, first performed in1908. The play is the story of a Russian Jewish immigrant who embraces theAmericanization process while repeatedly declaring the virtues of his new coun-try—“America is God’s crucible, the great Melting Pot where all races of Europeare melting and reforming!” (Glazer, 1963, p. 289). Assimilation was seen not onlyas a process of adaptation to a new land but also as a great accomplishment of theAmerican culture and the cornerstone of American identity.

Despite the dominance of straight-line assimilation theory during the majorityof the 20th century, in recent decades, the terms assimilation and Americanizationhave acquired a negative and disreputable connotation post-1960s (Glazer, 1997).Theorists and the public preferred terms such as acculturation and theories of cul-tural pluralism or multiculturalism. Multiculturalism provides a new and very dif-ferent image of America as more accepting of difference. The melting-pot meta-phor is seen to be an aggressive imposition of Eurocentric dominant culture. Thesalad-bowl metaphor is used instead to emphasize the existence and value of dif-ferentiation among ethnic groups (Glazer, 1997). According to this perspective,American society is made up of the dominant European American majority alongwith a collection of racial and ethnic minority groups. These groups actively shapetheir own lives and identities instead of passively letting time melt them into a ho-mogeneous group; their differences are an asset to society and a defining charac-teristic of this country instead of the source of chaos (Zhou, 1997).

Multiculturalism has had its most powerful influence on public education andhas insisted on the representation of all cultural minorities in public school curric-ula. For example, many school systems now require that students learn more thanjust European history but also include lessons that emphasize the role of Blacks,Latinos, Asians, and women in social movements and scientific discoveries. Butsome conservatives maintain that the emphasis on cultural heritage has taken pre-cedent over real and relevant knowledge. They would argue that multicultural sup-port for bilingual education often has less to do with the language of instructionthan the content of the curriculum and the validation of cultural heritage and appre-ciation of ethnic minorities (Glazer, 1997).

However, does the opposite hold true as well? Is the recent outright ban of bilin-gual education also an underlying rejection of multicultural values and a surge in adiscourse of neoassimilationist policies?

IMMIGRATION: MASSACHUSETTS AND COLORADO

Massachusetts has a history of immigration that closely mirrors the patternsthroughout the rest of the United States. Colonial Massachusetts residents werelargely Protestant English and Native American. The state did not have a diverse


immigrant population until the first massive wave of immigration in the mid-19thcentury when the Boston area was flooded with Irish immigrants. As on the rest ofthe East Coast, non-English speaking immigrants from southern and eastern Eu-rope continued to arrive in Boston in large numbers until the restrictionist policiesof the 1920s drastically limited their numbers. In the 1960s, with the loosening ofimmigration policy, the foreign-born population of Massachusetts once again be-gan to rise, this time with largely Latin Americans and Asians and later citizens ofthe former Soviet Union.3 By the 1990s, Massachusetts was the seventh most pop-ular destination for refugees and immigrants in the United States. Although Bostonhas always been the most popular city of residence for these immigrants, citiessuch as Springfield and Worchester in the western part of the state have also be-come popular destinations in recent decades.4

In Colorado, non-English speakers have a much longer history. Long beforethe formation of the state, eastern Colorado passed back and forth between theSpanish and French Territories until the United States as part of the LouisianaPurchase obtained it. Until the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848,southern Colorado was part of Mexico. The gold rush of 1858 brought Eng-lish-speaking American settlers to join the already present Spanish-speaking res-idents of the territory, and in 1876 Colorado officially joined the United States.5

At that point there were still enough Spanish-speaking residents of the state toreceive mention in the original version of the state constitution, which providedfor the printing of all future laws and government documents in Spanish as wellas English until at least 1890.6 Considering the limit of less than 15 years forthis clause, it seems to be aimed at the Spanish-speaking population already inresidence and not those who would arrive later on. The founders of the state pre-sumably expected future residents to be English-speaking. It was during this pe-riod and slightly thereafter that the harsh Americanization practices against resi-dents of Mexican origin became popular.

The current population in each state reflects the differences in their history. InMassachusetts, the number of foreign-born residents in the state, as of 2000, was12.2%, a full percentage point above the national average of 11.1%. Fully 18.7% ofthe population does not speak English at home. Despite these high rates of immi-gration, only 6.8% of Massachusetts’ residents are of Latino origin, approximately


3International Institute of Boston. (2003). Immigration to Boston: A short history. Retrieved fromhttp://www.iboston.org

4Torres, A. (1998). Latinos in Massachusetts: An update. Boston: Mauricio Gaston Institute, Uni-versity of Massachusetts, Mass Room 378.32M3 L38.

5How the state of Colorado came to be. (2003). Savert Technologies, Inc. Retrieved March 7, 2004.from www.coloradohistory.com

61876 Colorado constitution. (2003). Colorado State Department of Personnel and AdministrationDivision of Information Technologies. Retrieved March 7, 2004, from http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/history/constitution/1876.pdf

half of the 13% nationwide.7 Colorado is currently receiving far fewer immigrants,and the percentage of new foreign-born residents in Colorado is only 8.6%. How-ever, the percentage of residents of Latino origin is much higher at 17.1%.8

BILINGUAL EDUCATION:ENGLISH FOR THE CHILDREN?

The first state to garner the attention of the English for the Children initiative (Unz& Tuchman, 1997) was California in 1998. Ron Unz, a physicist from StanfordUniversity and owner of a small Silicon Valley software company, had read twoLos Angeles Times articles (published in 1996) that detailed parents’ frustrationthat their children were not learning English fast enough. What little English theirchildren did know came from television instead of their school. The articles re-counted a strike by students and parents claiming that schools were refusing to al-low students to switch out of bilingual programs and demanding English-onlyclasses.9 Approximately 1.3 million English learners spent an average of 5 to 7years in transitional bilingual programs.10 After the success of Unz’s campaign inCalifornia and the implementation of English immersion, 7.8% of those Californialimited English proficiency (LEP) students were classified as fluent in Englisheach year.11 Although this is a vast improvement in the transfer rate for California,there is also research that the rising test scores for limited-English students mayhave been caused by other improvements, such as smaller class sizes, and that thegap between nonnative and native English speakers is in fact widening.12

The state of bilingual education in Massachusetts and Colorado was not nearly asdire as in California at the time of the elections. In Colorado, there were only 23,000bilingual students at the time of the elections—just 3% of the state’s population.13 Afull 68% of the state’s 70,000 LEP students were already in English-only ESL pro-


7Massachusetts MapStats. (2004). FedStats. Retrieved March 7, 2004, from http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/25000.html

8Colorado MapStats. (2004). FedStats. Retrieved March 7, 2004, from http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/08000.html

9Pyle, A. (1996, January 16). Bilingual schooling is failing, parents say. Los Angeles Times, p. B1.California; Pyle, A. (1996, February 14). 80 students stay out of school in Latino boycott; Protest: Par-ents seek more English-only classes at Ninth Street Elementary Campus. Los Angeles Times, p. A1.

10Stewart, J. (1998, May 28). Krashen burn. Los Angeles Times, p. X. Nanette A. (1998, May 24).Problems in L.A. schools driving education initiatives. San Francisco Chronicle, p. 7/Z1.

11Hayward, E. (2002, October 25). Special report: Bilingual graduation rate is near equal of Cali-fornia Program. Boston Herald, p. 034.

12Vaishnav, A. (2002, October 1). Bilingual ed advocates marshal forces State House rally sparkswar of words. Boston Globe, p. B2.

13Cada, C. (2002, October 23). “Colorado ponders a ban on bilingual education like MassachusettsInitiative, November 5 question will substitute immersion. Boston Globe, p. A2.

grams.14 In Massachusetts, there were approximately 36,000 bilingual educationstudents enrolled in the public school system. Each year, 7.6% of all bilingual stu-dentsmove into themainstreamclassrooms.This isalmost identical to thepost-1998results in California. These statistics appeared to show the Massachusetts and Colo-rado programs as successfully transitioning students to the mainstream at a rela-tively rapid rate. However, many critics felt that even that was too long.

THE INITIATIVES

Despite the different situations in each of these states, the bills that were proposedin California, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Colorado are, except for the rare varia-tion in phrasing, identical in content. Each includes a preamble in which English isdeclared as the language of the American dream, and the current bilingual educa-tion system is referred to as a failure and as the cause of high dropout rates amongimmigrant groups. The bill then vaguely defines its proposed solution:

All children in [state] public schools shall be taught English by being taught in Eng-lish and all children shall be placed in English language classrooms. Children whoare English learners shall be educated through sheltered English immersion during atemporary transition period not normally intended to exceed one school year … OnceEnglish learners acquire a good working knowledge of English and are able to doregular school work in English, they shall no longer be classified as English learnersand shall be transferred to English language mainstream classrooms.15

In other words, all non-English proficient children must be placed in at least a year ofstructured immersion with other students at their English level. The details of the billare vague. There is no section regarding the content of these classes or what shouldbecome of the students once they become proficient in English, such as whether thisprogram should replace a normal year of schooling or the students should be heldback a year. The proposal only includes details in the sections regarding programwaivers and penalties for noncompliant teachers. Parents who wish their children tocontinue in bilingual programs may only obtain waivers if they have their childrencertified with special education needs, and any teacher found to be “willfully and re-peatedly” using a child’s native language for instruction may be personally sued bythe parent anytime before the child reaches 18 years of age.


14Museum enjoying a renaissance. (2002, October 14). Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 18D.15Montero, R., & Chavez J. (2001). English for the children of Colorado, Amendment 31. Denver,

Colorado. Full text: http://www.onenation.org/cotext.html; Tamayo, L., Porter, R., & Rossell, C.(2001). English for the children of Massachusetts: Ballot initiative campaign launched to dismantle bi-lingual education in Massachusetts. Boston. Full text: http://www.onenation.org/0107/pr073101.htm;Unz, R., & Tuchman, M. (1997). Proposition 227: English language education for children in publicschools. Sacramento, CA. Full text: http://www.onenation.org/fulltext.html

On November 5, 2002, both Massachusetts and Colorado voters went to thepolls and voted on whether to approve antibilingual education initiatives. In Mas-sachusetts the ballot passed by 63%, with initiative supporters outvoting its oppo-nents nearly two to one. This is approximately the margin by which voters ap-proved the almost identical bills in both California and Arizona. Furthermore,according to a national poll in May of 1998, 63% of adults nationwide believe thatnonnative English speakers in public schools should be taught through English im-mersion.16 In Colorado, on the other hand, the ballot was rejected by a vote of 56%to 44%.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

Of the four bills that have been brought to vote since 1998, Amendment 31 in Col-orado and Question 2 in Massachusetts lend themselves most easily to compara-tive analysis. First of all, the two elections took place on the same day, thereby con-trolling for any national political or social trends that might affect public opinion.Second, both have been greatly affected by the most recent immigrant wave, whichhas brought non-English speaking families in great numbers to many areas for thefirst time. This boom in young non-English speaking students has raised similarconcerns in both school systems. Third, the differences in the political atmo-spheres of the two states provide for interesting paradoxes. Massachusetts is ingeneral considered a liberal state, whereas Colorado is known for its conservatism.The results of these elections demonstrate the complicated nature of the bilingualeducation debates in which the two sides do not fit cleanly into standard lib-eral–conservative politics.

The relation among public opinion, voting patterns, and the media is still a verycomplicated and controversial issue. It is impossible to determine public opinionor the cause of election results solely from the print media; however, according toGamson and Modigliani (1989), the relation between public opinion and the mediais largely based on the creation of frames of cultural interpretation.

On most policy issues, there are competing packages available in this culture. Indeed,one can view policy issues, in part, as a symbolic contest over which interpretation willprevail … A [media] package offers a number of different condensing symbols thatsuggest core frame and positions in short hand, making it possible to display the pack-ageasawholewithadeftmetaphor,catchphrase,orothersymbolicdevice. (pp.2–3)

Although the media may not be directly related to public opinion, it providesthe public with the different cultural lenses and frameworks through which the is-


16Gallup, CNN, and USA Today Poll. (1998). Bilingual education. Retrieved fromPollingReport.com http://www.pollingreport.com/educatio.htm

sues are discussed. The metaphors and symbols used repeatedly in the media be-come part of the public discourse and the basis on which decisions are made. Inthis study, we analyze the newspaper accounts to identify and compare the newspa-per stories in Massachusetts and Colorado regarding bilingual education. We showthat the anti-initiative framework presented in Massachusetts was largely domi-nated by multicultural ideas, whereas the proinitiative media was framed in termsof more traditional assimilation theory. Whereas proinitiative advocates in Colo-rado framed the issue in a similar manner, the anti-initiative campaign was basedon the continued separation of native English-speaking students from immigrantchildren. Using these frames in connection with the election results, we hope todemonstrate that what has emerged is a type of neoassimilationist rhetoric and thedecline of multiculturalist policies.

The specific data available for this study comes from a Lexis–Nexis newssearch of all articles, including letters to the editor, mentioning either bilingual ed-ucation or the specific amendments by name at least once. In Massachusetts, thearticles come from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Patriot Ledger of Quincy,Massachusetts, Worchester Telegram, and Associated Press. In Colorado, thenewspapers represented are the Rocky Mountain News from Denver, the DenverPost, Denver Westward, and Associated Press. Although other newspapers werepublished during this period, our access to the articles was limited to the newspa-pers on file with Lexis–Nexis. Consequently, the majority of our articles comefrom Boston- or Denver-based newspapers and may have an urban bias. However,in examining the geographic locations listed in the letters to the editor of all of thenewspapers, it is clear that the circulation of the major papers, such as the BostonGlobe, Herald, Rocky Mountain News, and Denver Post, far exceed the city limits.The time frame was limited to the month prior and the month following the elec-tions, October and November 2002, because the month before the election is whenboth the public and the campaigners focus on the upcoming decision; the monthfollowing the election has been included to look at the immediate reactions to theresults.

Using the method of content analysis, articles were coded according to a seriesof terms and themes that we believed are symbolic of the larger issues at hand. Se-lection of these coding categories was based both on assimilation and multicultur-alism literature and on dominant themes that surfaced while analyzing the data. Inaddition, we searched for references to teaching methods to determine the impor-tance of pedagogy in the debate. The terms Latinos, Hispanics, and Spanish weresearched for in comparison to other language minority groups because it was clearfrom reading the articles that, despite the existence of bilingual programs in a vari-ety of languages, in the minds of many of the authors the issue of bilingual educa-tion was exclusively relevant to the education of Spanish-speaking students. Weanalyzed the presence, meanings, and relations of the coding categories. Aftercarefully coding the data eight categories emerged: teaching methods, two-way or


dual-immersion bilingual education, America, Spanish and other non-English lan-guages, Latino/Hispanic, dropout rates, if I can—you can, and segregation.

FINDINGS

Throughout the analysis of the different themes in the print media, we show thatColorado is no more accepting of bilingual education, Latino cultural identity, ormulticulturalism than Massachusetts. In fact, Colorado newspapers show a morefrequent dissatisfaction with two-way programs, overwhelmingly uses anassimilationist idea of America, and focuses on problematic aspects in the Latinocommunity such as high dropout rates. These recurring themes suggest that Colo-rado residents have a very traditional view of immigrant acculturation and that intheory they should accept the proposal, possibly more so than in Massachusetts.Despite this apparent contradiction, our analysis of the print media also providesan explanation for the traditional-minded rejection of the bill. Unlike Massachu-setts, where pluralist arguments were used to combat the bill and ultimately re-jected by voters, the campaign organizers of the anti-initiative movement, knownas English-Plus in Colorado, specifically targeted English-speaking American’sfears of linguistic integration to make even the most conservative voters doubt theproposal’s validity. In the following we discuss the major themes that emergedfrom our data.

Teaching Methods

In a debate over education reform, one would assume that the education systemand policies, both current and proposed, would be an integral part of the discus-sion—that voters would want to know about the theories surrounding bilingual ed-ucation and details of the program’s efficiency. Few articles focused on the differ-ing methods of education; the majority of the articles mention only the proposedchanges in the initiative by saying that it would replace bilingual education with 1year of English immersion. These articles do not define the current system or elab-orate on what the proposed immersion program would entail. Only 50 articles fromMassachusetts and 27 articles from Colorado go beyond the standard descriptionof the proposal to even briefly describe the terms they use. These counts include allarticles that discuss bilingual education in a more in-depth manner, whether it is asimple expansion of the definition of bilingual education or English immersion toinclude their goals or the theory behind them. In each state there is one newspaperthat contains over half of the total articles in this category: the Boston Globe had 32articles and the Rocky Mountain News had 15 articles.

Furthermore, the Rocky Mountain News and the Boston Globe were the onlynewspapers to feature articles entirely dedicated to the discussion of the merits of


each method. Of the 15 Rocky Mountain News articles that discuss pedagogy, 6discuss the programs in depth, including research on the effectiveness of bilingualeducation, the merits of English as a second language and dual-immersion pro-grams, and the results of the English immersion implementation in California andArizona. The Boston Globe features only 4 articles that focus on dual-immersionprograms, the difference between colloquial and academic English skills, previousimplementation results, and existing bilingual education research. No other news-paper in either state devotes a full article to pedagogical theory. Given the rela-tively few number of articles that focus on the actual pedagogy of learning the Eng-lish language, these bills were masking other concerns of the citizens.

Two-Way Bilingual–Dual Immersion

The teaching method that drew the most attention in both states is that in which thefewest number of students were actually registered—two-way bilingual, as it iscalled in Massachusetts, or dual-immersion in Colorado. Most articles just men-tion the existence of these programs and warn that they may not be able to functionif the bills were to pass. However, there were three ways in which the destruction ofthis program was reported. One argument was that two-way bilingual education isan extremely successful program that teaches English-speaking and non-Englishspeaking children both languages without problems. The second argument byprobilingual education advocates uses multicultural claims about the importanceof bilingualism and claims this program is the crown jewel of bilingual education;dismantling it would be detrimental to both sets of students and society as a whole.Advocates of the initiatives, on the other hand, viewed the dual-immersion pro-grams as detrimental to Hispanic children: “Unz is not convinced that Hispanicchildren get as much out of dual-language schools as Anglo kids. Immigrant par-ents enroll their children in them because they are told that dual-language schoolswill help them learn English, he said. But the parents later regret their decision toenroll their children, he said.”17 Instead of helping Hispanic children learn English,advocates of the bill claimed that these programs were just a way for White, uppermiddle class students to become bilingual. The probilingual multicultural opinionshows up strongly in two Massachusetts articles, whereas one article discussesboth views equally. In Colorado, on the other hand, there are two articles that fea-ture the antibilingual stance and one that shows the dual-immersion program in aslightly more positive light.


17Whaley, M. (2002, November 1). Bilingual debate has racial element amendment backer: Anglosbenefitting. Denver Post, p. B-01.

America

The term America is frequently utilized in both states. Journalists and residentswriting to the editor on both sides of the debate cite “America,” “American soci-ety,” the “American dream,” or some other form of the term a total of 43 times inMassachusetts and 38 times in Colorado. But what is the “America” that these au-thors are referring to? Does it always carry with it the same symbolism, or is thesame term used in a variety of ways?

Through a careful examination at the context of each usage, we found there arethree key ways in which the term is used. The first is as a neutral geographicaldescriptor meant to identify the set of people or institutions that exist within theUnited States of America. Although this may seem to be the most basic usage ofthe word, it occurs least frequently, with a total of only 6 occurrences in Massachu-setts and 16 in Colorado. The second, referred to as “multicultural America,” con-sists of a fundamental understanding of this country and its residents’ values as aplace and people tolerant of difference in which each group that makes up the com-bination of various heritages should be on equal footing and have equal opportuni-ties no matter what language they speak. References are included in this category ifthey mention that immigrants should maintain their connection to their heritage, orif they conclude or imply that the United States would benefit from multi- or bilin-gualism. For example, in a pre-election letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, areader wrote, “[the author of an earlier article] shows a misunderstanding of Amer-ican culture. He supports the goal of becoming monocultural, an expectation bythe people in power that those outside the dominant group will surrender their eth-nic and cultural values and adopt the values of white male Euro-Americans … Weare a multicultural society.”18 The basic understanding of this multicultural Amer-ica is that the diversity present in the United States is undeniable and that Americaonly benefits from linguistic and cultural diversity. However, the following quota-tion demonstrates a very different image of America: “My father had to acquire thecommon American tongue. His life has been better for it.”19 This third and finalcategory is the “assimilationist America.” In this view, America is a monolingual,English-speaking country, which gains its strength from the unification and accul-turation of various immigrant groups. There is also often an emphasis on immi-grants “becoming American” by shedding their cultural and linguistic ties to theirnative countries.

In general, the use of the assimilationist America appears in proinitiative arti-cles, but it is often included in articles that support the continuation of bilingualeducation. Furthermore, almost every newspaper balances the various themes.


18Letters to the editor / Talk about bilingual education; we are a multicultural society. (2002, Octo-ber 20). Boston Globe, p. D12.

19Jacoby, J. (2002, October 3). English 101. Boston Globe, p. A15.

For example, the Boston Globe includes America in 22 of its articles and theBoston Herald only has 7 articles that mention America. However, because theBoston Globe has a 9:8 ratio of multiculturalism to assimilation, and the BostonHerald has a 1:2 ratio, both newspapers maintain a relatively equal balance be-tween the two perspectives. The only newspaper to overwhelmingly use one def-inition is the Rocky Mountain News; of the 15 articles that mention the termAmerica, 9 of those are in favor of assimilation and the rest are neutral. In noneof the articles does a mention of a multicultural America appear. Clearly, in thecase of Colorado, an assimilationist view of America did not necessarily lead toan acceptance of the bill.

Spanish and Other Language Groups

In all of the newspaper articles in both states, Spanish is mentioned far more of-ten than any other language group. A total of 19 non-Spanish languages arementioned in 34 articles in all of the Massachusetts newspapers, and 15 differentlanguages are mentioned in only 9 articles in the Colorado print media. In con-trast, Colorado authors refer to Spanish 300 times in 63 different articles—onethird of all Colorado articles—and Massachusetts authors 184 times in 58 arti-cles—one fourth of all articles. There is a clear assumption or generalization inthe newspaper accounts and also by many advocates on both sides of the debatethat the issue is essentially only relevant to Spanish-speaking students. “‘Bilin-gual’ is a misnomer; the reality is that during the critical first years of school, in-struction is mostly in one language—Spanish.”20 Although it is true that the ma-jority of bilingual students are Spanish-speakers, there are at least 140languages21 spoken in the Massachusetts and Colorado public schools, and bilin-gual programs in both states include Portuguese, Vietnamese, and HaitianCreole, among others. Nevertheless, as it is clear from the imbalance in the arti-cles, the bilingual education debates almost always revolve around the fate ofSpanish-speaking students who are Latino.

In the majority of cases, other language groups are only mentioned in compari-son to Spanish-speaking students. The most frequent comparison is drawn be-tween Latino and Asian immigrants and is usually used to illustrate Asian immi-grants’ relative success in American schools. Some authors understand that therethe two groups have more dissimilarities than in their language and culture:


20Bilingual ed hasn’t kept it’s promise. (2002, October 25). Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p.52A.

21ESL preferred choice: Bilingual not used in many districts outside Denver. (2002, October 11).Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 6A.

There is a big difference between Latino immigrants and Asian immigrants whocome from the professional classes of Hong Kong and Taiwan. They are doing prettywell, they have had education.22

However, the majority tends to blame Latinos themselves for their lack of success-ful integration:

Hispanics are the only group of U.S. immigrants in history who do not have to learnAmerican ways. They have their own TV and radio stations, churches, stores, holi-days, language and flag … Spanish-speaking people can go from cradle to grave andnever have to speak English.23

It is not just young Spanish-speaking bilingual education students that are re-ferred to in this statement; it is an attack against Latinos in the United States as awhole. This statement and others that immigrants, especially Mexicans, do not as-similate or learn to speak English is far from correct. Research has clearly shownthat Latinos, especially the second generation, speak English. In fact, according tosociologists Portes and Hao (1998), among most immigrant nationalities, knowl-edge of and preference for English is nearly universal, and only a minority remainfluent in their parents’ languages:

Viewed from this perspective, the main language problem associated with contempo-rary immigration may not be the threat that it poses to the dominance of English butthe rapid disappearance of fluent bilingualism among second generation. (pp.269–270)

Hispanic/Latino

Almost all of the Colorado articles use the term Hispanic whereas in Massachu-setts there is a clear preference for the term Latino. This difference is most likelydue to regional preferences. These terms appears in approximately 40% of all theMassachusetts articles and 30% of all the Colorado articles. While a difference of10% in the overall count of articles on its own may not be significant enough todraw conclusions, the difference in the content of these articles makes the contrastbetween the two states far more evident. Many of the Colorado articles only men-tion Hispanic once and often only do so to cite a statistic about the group or iden-tify an organization. On the other hand, almost all Massachusetts articles that men-


22Hayward, E. (2002, October 24). Special report: Structure, parents seen as key to bilingual suc-cess. Boston Herald, p. 001.

23Thomason, L. (2002, November 14). Hispanics coddled as no others in U.S. Rocky MountainNews, [Denver] p. 46A.

tion Latino do so at least twice, often to describe more details about the Latinopopulation as an ethnic minority. They use Latino as a positive ethnic identifier, of-ten citing Latino leaders, or the expectation of high Latino voter turnout. Seven ofthe articles that specifically focused on Latinos use the term in their headline inMassachusetts, whereas only two do so in Colorado.

The fact that Massachusetts’ articles refer to Latinos more frequently and in amore positive light than those in Colorado is important. It reflects the way in whichthe image of Latinos was used in each state and the extent to which ethnic identitywas used in support of bilingual education. Latinos in Massachusetts are oftencited to gain support for the anti-initiative movement. Latino-oriented voter regis-tration campaigns, such as the Initiativa Latina, received feature articles highlight-ing their work in their communities. Ethnic identity and the need to maintain asense of cultural history were often the overriding themes of these articles. For ex-ample, one bilingual parent was quoted as saying, “[My daughter] is in the bilin-gual program because I’m very proud of the fact my family is Puerto Rican. This isa way to preserve our language and our culture as well as to continue to study bothlanguages.”24 For parents and activists such as these, learning English is as impor-tant as understanding their heritage and maintaining their native language.

In Colorado, such praise of Latino heritage is much less frequent. The Eng-lish-Plus campaign actually stayed away from ethnic politics intentionally. It waspart of their strategy to minimize the association of bilingual education with resi-dents of Latino heritage (Escamilla, 2003). Although this did not prevent the ap-pearance of Latinos in the print media, it may have indirectly led to a negative im-age of Latinos in the Colorado print media. A large percentage of the articles thatmention Hispanics in Colorado cited the group for socially negative behavior. Oneexample is “Indicators show that Hispanic students are in a dire state of emer-gency.”25 The most frequently noted indicator of this “crisis” is above average highschool dropout rates; 30% of the Colorado articles that make reference to Latinos;15 out of 49 also mention the group’s high school dropout rates. The dropout prob-lem is mentioned only five times without relation to Hispanics. In Massachusetts,dropout rates are only mentioned in nine articles overall and only four refer di-rectly to Latinos, a frequency significantly smaller than that of Colorado. Annualdropout rates for Latinos in 2001–2002 were 7.3% in Massachusetts and 4.6% inColorado.26 However, projected 4-year dropout rates (the percentage of ninth grad-ers projected to drop out over a 4-year period) are much higher, 26% to 33% for


24Hayward, E. (2002, October 25). Special report: Bilingual graduation rate is near equal of Cali-fornia program. Boston Herald, p. 034.

25Hayward, E. (2002, October 23). Special report: Educational crisis plagues Hispanic kids in BayState. Boston Herald, p. 001.

26Massachusetts Department of Education, 2001–2002 Annual Dropout Rates; Colorado Depart-ment of Education, 2001–2002 Dropout Rate. Research and Evaluation Unit.

Latinos, respectively. Even though the figures are lower in Colorado, the mediaseems to interpret these figures as a Latino problem. The new language programsare expected to improve these high dropout rates, but some Colorado residents as-sume that many Latino students will not complete their schooling. For example,one editorial stated that “Even if some [Hispanics] should drop out before gradua-tion, at least they’ll have learned the language and be better able to assimilate inour society.”27 In other words, it is important to make sure all students receive 1 fullyear of English because they may not stay in school long enough to learn it later.

If I Can—You Can

One of the more interesting mentions of Latino/Hispanic occurs in a hypotheticalcontext: “If I were Hispanic …” Two Massachusetts editorials, one in the Wor-chester Telegram and one in the Boston Globe, focus their arguments on what theauthors would do if they were Hispanic and the humiliation they would feel forhaving the option to use their native language in this country. Although written bydifferent journalists, both cite the differences between Hispanics and other immi-grant groups and claim that the large number of services available in Spanishmeans that Hispanics do not speak English and are incapable of learning it. Bothseem to be blaming American institutions for making it too easy for Hispanic im-migrants to not want to learn the language badly enough.

Interestingly enough, neither of these authors considers himself a fully Ameri-can native. The first author, Robert Nemeth, of the Worchester Telegram, is a Pol-ish refugee who came to the United States at the age of 29. Jeff Jacoby, of theBoston Globe, is the son of a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia. Each uses hisfamily’s personal experience as evidence of successful assimilation processes. AsJacoby says of his father, “The only English he knew were the words he picked upon the boat coming over. But like millions of immigrants before him, and likescores of others he met after settling in Cleveland, he made learning English an ur-gent priority.” Jacoby implies that it was purely through hard work, determination,and perseverance his father was able to overcome his problems with English.Whereas Nemeth does not recount how he learned English well enough to be writ-ing for the newspaper, he does explain that his son became fluent in 9 months whileimmersed in all English classes when he entered kindergarten. It is unclear exactlyhow much English Nemeth himself knew at the time or whether his son has re-tained any Polish, but the theme of both these articles is certainly one of “If we can,why can’t you?”28 Other articles and a good number of letters to the editor repeat-edly display this attitude either through personal stories or historical comparisons


27Amendment 31: Round 2. (2002, November 8). Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 37A.28Nemeth, R. (2002, October 27). Failed bilingual system requires drastic change. Worchester Tele-

gram, p. C2.

to other ethnic groups. The general consensus seems to be that bilingual educationis only helping Hispanics avoid the traditional struggle with assimilation that ev-eryone else had to pass through and thus preventing them from joining Americansociety and reaping its rewards. Issues of race and ethnicity, reception to the hostcountry, changing economic conditions, or access to cultural capital are never dis-cussed in conjunction with this theme.

Segregation

In Massachusetts, where assimilation theory and multiculturalism were mostopenly debated, proponents of the initiative often used language reminiscent of theCivil Rights Movement to discredit bilingual education. “Bilingual kids are segre-gated much like black children used to be in the South”29 and “Bilingual educationis a system designated to keep a whole class of people in the language ghetto”30 arerepresentative of sentiments repeated throughout each state’s newspapers. Lin-guistic ghettos and segregated classrooms are cited with relative frequency in Mas-sachusetts’ newspapers, and the words segregate and ghetto appear a total of 18times. In Colorado, these words are only mentioned 10 times, but it is still impor-tant to note their presence in the discourse. As mentioned previously, multicultur-alism is thought to have arisen from a frustration with the results of the Civil RightsMovement. Therefore, the use of clearly civil rights language by supporters of thebill, many of whom also include assimilationist arguments, is significant. Theseclaims of continued segregation use multicultural arguments against bilingual edu-cation by designating the bilingual education itself, and perhaps any other institu-tion that does not promote the full assimilation of immigrant groups, as dis-criminatory. The proinitiative supporters have appropriated the language ofmulticulturalism to promote a neoassimilationist position.

Election Results

After the elections, newspapers in both states published articles about the largenumbers of Latinos who voted against the bill. In Colorado, a poll cited manytimes by newspapers stated that 92% of the 600 Latinos questioned as they left thepolls said they voted against the bill. The evidence for Latino disapproval of thebill was also supported by the fact that districts with large Latino populations votedheavily against it. The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Rocky MountainNews all ran articles citing the large percentage of Latinos who voted against the


29Nemeth, R. (2002, October 27). Failed bilingual system requires drastic change. Worchester Tele-gram, p. C2.

30Cada, C. (2002, October 23). Colorado ponders a ban on bilingual education like MassachusettsInitiative, November 5 question will substitute immersion. Boston Globe, p. A2.

bill. The Rocky Mountain News even went so far as to list the election results for the10 districts most heavily populated with Latinos, claiming that the high rejectionrates in these counties was a reflection of high levels of Latino disapproval ofAmendment 31. Although this may be the case, it is also true that in every one ofthese counties, the percentage of voters who rejected the initiative was at leasttwice that of the percentage of Hispanic residents in the county. Therefore it is notpossible that the rejection of the ballot was caused solely by Latino voters.

On November 19, 2 weeks after the elections, Rep. Richard Decker of the Colo-rado State legislature proposed banning all languages other than English in publicschool classrooms until the end of elementary school. In defense of his native lan-guage, Decker even tried to have foreign language study by native Eng-lish-speaking students banned. He claimed that this statute was in response to theColorado residents who believed in the goals of Amendment 31 but did not want tomake it part of the constitution.31 The statute was ruled unconstitutional and neverformally presented to the legislature, but the fact that Decker thought that thiswould be publicly accepted is telling, especially because it is almost identical tothe Nebraska bill passed in 1921, in the heyday of the assimilationist ideologies(Daniels, 1997).

Some of the articles that were published discussing the campaign strategy of theanti-31 organizers in Colorado also show a similar picture. The television cam-paign that began in early October was titled “Chaos in the Classroom.” In a seriesof ads, anti-initiative ads claimed that the passage of the amendment would bringswarms of unprepared students into mainstream classrooms, creating educationalchaos and detracting from other students’ learning. A transcript of one of the ads inthe Rocky Mountain News described it as follows: “We know Amendment 31 willknowingly force children who can barely speak English into regular classrooms,creating chaos and disrupting learning.”32 The ads were clearly playing on a gen-eral fear of non-English speaking immigrants, especially Latinos. One editorialclearly stated these concerns about the ads in its description of the next ad released.“The second week’s ad continued the theme of chaos and disruption, with visualsof children looking apprehensively at classmates. We hope that these ads were notdeliberately crafted to appeal covertly to ethnic prejudice, but at the very least theyattempt to frighten people.”33 Instead of attempting to convince the public that bi-lingual education is a positive thing for immigrant students, as was done in Massa-


31Eric H. (2002, November 19). Legislator pushes English-only in the classroom Decker: No othertongues in grammar school. Denver Post, p. B-02.

32Abbott, K. (2002, October 3). What you speak may determine where you stand. Rocky MountainNews, [Denver] p. 24A.

33The lies told about Amendment 31; Political ads pick wrong target for critique. (2002, October22). Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 36A.

chusetts, the Colorado campaign decided to focus on the supposed negative effectsof English immersion on “regular” Americans.

The goals of this campaign and the proposal to the legislature fit smoothly withthe evidence from the newspapers that Colorado residents are in fact more willingto implement traditional assimilation theory. When the fear of cultural differencesis added to the negative portrayal of Latinos and already existent ideas about howAmericans as a whole have been formed by the assimilation process, the decisionto vote against Amendment 31 seems entirely logical.

Massachusetts campaign managers did not use this tactic. Instead the major slo-gan of the Massachusetts anti-initiative organizers was “Don’t Sue Teachers.” Be-yond discussions of the punitive clause of the bill, the overall tone of probilingualeducation articles was one that advocated the appreciation of individual ethnicgroups’ heritage and multilingualism among all Americans. Although many werewilling to concede that the existing bilingual programs were not performing aswell as they should be, they advocated small-scale reforms instead of an entirelynew system.

Many of the arguments against bilingual education refer directly to its relationto multicultural values. “Diehard defenders of moribund bilingual education pro-grams have their own agenda, steeped in ethnic politics, multicultural ideology,and good old-fashioned labor-union job protection.”34 The assimilationist argu-ments used in this editorial in Colorado do not mean that Glazer’s (1997) analysisof the spread of multiculturalism in the 1990s is incorrect. The fact that a journalistwho strongly supports English-only policies and the removal of bilingual educa-tion must include reference to multiculturalism and ethnic politics in some wayssupports Glazer’s claim that multiculturalism has seeped into every corner of thecountry and every aspect of politics. However, in the context of this study, this ex-tension of multicultural language multiculturalism does not support Glazer’s claimthat it represents the weakness of assimilation theory. Instead it represents the per-sistence of a new form of assimilationism that has evolved over the past centuryand adapted to the opposition presented by multiculturalism and the changes in thepolitical and social context of this country. The neoassimilationist perspective thatis present in both Colorado and Massachusetts is composed of the basic principlesof straight-line assimilation theory but includes important variations. Much of thetheory in the early 20th century focused on the future creation of the Americanpeople through the melting of the European races. As articulated in Zangwill’splay, “The real America has not arrived yet … He will be the fusion of all the races,the coming superman” (Glazer, 1963, p. 289). During the height of assimilationtheory, America was seen as not yet formed; however, over the decades, the fusionof European immigrant groups occurred and what it meant to be American became


34Amendment 31: Round 2. (2002, October 22). Rocky Mountain News, [Denver] p. 37A.

clearer. Even among multicultural advocates, European Americans are usuallygrouped together to represent the majority of Americans (Glazer, 1963).

The uncertain future used by straight-line assimilationists is converted byneoassimilationists into an idealization of past. “If I can—you can,” ideas repre-sented in many of the articles refer to the successful assimilation of immigrantswho arrived in this country during the first two waves of immigration. The meltingof these immigrants has already occurred and worked; therefore, future immi-grants should follow the preestablished pattern. Groups such as Latinos that do notfollow that pattern are looked down on and seen as purposely avoiding the assimi-lation process through programs like bilingual education.Precisely because current-day neoassimilationists have already seen results of as-similation, they do not see this process in the same way as Park (1928) or Zangwillsaw it. Assimilation is no longer a process of minority groups melting together toform a new and different American identity, independent from any of the partsfrom which it is made up. Currently, immigrants are expected to shed their culturalheritage to “become American,” without altering the definition of what it means tobe American. Neoassimilationism represents the evolution of the language of as-similation. Neoassimilationists have co-opted a multicultural language as a reac-tion to the dominance of multiculturalism in the past, and, by using the opposi-tion’s own arguments against them, they strengthen the appeal of neoassimilationtheory. Furthermore, as Glazer (1997) predicted, the word assimilation itself is al-most never mentioned. The word only appears four times in the Boston Globe andnowhere in any other newspaper. This absence of the term assimilation strengthenstheir theory by making it harder for opponents to identify its theoretical base.

CONCLUSION

Although both Massachusetts and Colorado can be seen in the midst of a return to as-similation, it is important to note that they are not at the same point in that process. InMassachusetts the two ideologies are still very much in a process of struggle. Multi-culturalism may be losing that fight, but at least at the time of the elections it had notyet been entirely rejected. In the case of Colorado, however, it is clear that neo-assimilationism has already succeeded in making multiculturalism invalid, even foradvocates of bilingual education and other members of the Latino community. Be-cause of its geographic location and racist history with Mexicans, it is not surprisingthat Colorado would be more nativist than its northeastern neighbor.

Yet the November 2002 elections were just one sign of anti-Latino sentiment onthe rise. Beginning in 1992, the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program collectedhate-crime statistics reported by participating law enforcement agencies across theUnited States. In 2002, 7,459 single-bias incidents were reported: Racial bias ac-counted for 48.8%, religious bias 19.1%, sexual-orientation bias 16.7%, and bias


against an ethnicity or national origin (under which anti-Hispanic incidents are re-corded) were 14.8% of the total.35 The hate crimes reported in 2002 to the FBI rep-resent a drop of nearly 25% from 2001 when 9,730 hate crimes were reported. Thehigh number of incidents reported in 2001 was thought to be due to the September11 backlash and anti-Islamic in nature.36 When the numbers are examined care-fully, we find that in 2002 of the 1,102 incidents that were of ethnicity or nationalorigin, 480 incidents or 43.5% were anti-Hispanic in nature. This is a considerablerise from 2001, when 28.5% or 597 out of 2,098 (of the ethnicity or national origin)incidents were anti-Hispanic. So whereas hate crimes in general decreased in2002, anti-Hispanic-motivated hate crimes increased.

More recently anti-Hispanic, or more precisely anti-Mexican, rhetoric has creptback into national discussions of immigration and what it means to be American.Samuel P. Huntington (2004a), chairman of the Harvard Academy for Interna-tional and Area Studies, wrote

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the Untied Statesinto two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups,Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, form-ing instead their own political and linguistic enclaves- from Los Angeles to Mi-ami-and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. TheUnited States ignores this challenge at its peril. (p. 30)

His article, and then his book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s NationalIdentity (2004b), warned us that “the cultural divide between Hispanics and An-glos could replace the racial division between blacks and white as the most seriouscleavage in U.S. society” (p. 32). His concerns about language, specifically bilin-gualism and bilingual education, and culture ignore research on immigrants andEnglish-language acquisition, the cognitive achievement of students with fluencyin two languages, and the “Americanization” of Latinos in the United States(Portes & MacLeod, 1996). Political scientists Rodolfo de la Garza, Angelo Fal-con, and F. Chris Garcia (1996) have shown that Mexican Americans, regardless ofwhat language they speak, support American core values as Anglos do. Hunting-ton’s exaggerated “us versus them” rhetoric will only fuel an anti-Latino agendathat feeds on a narrow neoassimilationist agenda and false assumptions. His posi-tions (or fears) in the end do not support Anglos, Latinos, or the continuation of theAmerican dream, regardless of what language it is stated in.

The November 2002 vote over bilingual education was more than a vote over howto teach immigrant children English; it was about what it means to be American,aboutwhobelongs,andabouthowLatinosare reshaping theAmerican landscape.


35Hate Crime Statistics. (2002). FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program.36Hate crimes decrease in 2002. (2004, July 20). www.cnn.com

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assimilation versus multiculturalism: bilingual education and the

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