Seeing the Light

Bravo for Norman Cousins. The noted author and editor has resigned from the advisory board of U.S. English, the organization promoting Proposition 63 on next month’s general election ballot, because he finds the English-only initiative repugnant.

Proposition 63 would declare English the “official” language of California, order the Legislature to enforce that status, and give anyone the right to sue if he doesn’t like the way it is being enforced. Proposition 63 is unnecessary, because it affirms the obvious. It is misleading, because its proponents portray it as benign when it is divisive and potentially costly. And Proposition 63 is dangerous, because it encourages complex lawsuits against multilingual services that most reasonable people would agree are necessary, like bilingual emergency-telephone operators.

Consider the thoughtful argument made by Cousins, former editor of The Saturday Review, in denouncing it:

“I now recognize that Proposition 63 has a negative symbolic significance,” Cousins said. While Cousins still seeks to protect English against disintegrating tendencies, he added that “I am now forced to recognize that legislation is not the proper or effective means for dealing with this problem.”

“Not until we provide educational facilities for all who are now standing in line to take lessons in English,” Cousins concluded, “should we presume to pass judgment on the non-English speaking people in our midst.”

Clearly Cousins was moved, as we were, by recent news reports that that thousands of people who want to learn English are being turned away from adult schools across the state because of a shortage of education money to pay for classes in English as a second language. There is the living, breathing proof that a mistaken and even mean-spirited fallacy underlies Proposition 63--the notion that newly arrived foreign residents of the state don’t want to learn English. In fact, the English language is not endangered in California, or anywhere else in the world. If anything, it would flourish even more if we did positive things to promote it, such as giving our schools even more money to teach it.

But Proposition 63 does absolutely nothing positive. It is a negative initiative whose enactment would lead California’s many foreign-born residents, and even many Latino and Asian-American citizens, to feel “disadvantaged, denigrated and demeaned,” to once again use Cousins’ eloquent words.

Cousins originally lent his name to U.S. English out of a sincere concern for the future of the English language.

Those same good intentions probably motivate the many Californians who are inclined--as public opinion polls indicate--to vote for Proposition 63. But if California voters study the vague language of Proposition 63, and ponder its implications, they will come to the same conclusion Cousins did and refuse to endorse it. We again urge the defeat of Proposition 63.