A City Is Divided by Its Languages : English-Only Plan for Signs Stirs Opposition

Garden Grove businessman John Perrot has lived in the city for 27 years, and has seen it grow from a sleepy farming settlement of citrus groves and strawberry fields into a prosperous enclave of businesses and small industry.

But now Perrot, 51, says he is “up in arms over Garden Grove being turned into a Koreatown” and is pushing for a proposal that would require English to be used on all business signs in the city.

Believes Signs Too Large

Perrot, who has operated a carpet and linoleum shop on Brookhurst Street near Garden Grove Boulevard for 22 years, says Koreans now dominate the businesses and the boulevard is being overrun with large foreign-language signs.

“Nobody can understand these signs but Koreans. The use of English is what has kept us together. These are selfish immigrants who want to stay separate,” he said angrily at a recent community meeting attended by 250 residents to discuss city plans to revitalize a two-mile strip of Garden Grove Boulevard.

Perrot’s critics, however, contend that his proposal to require mostly English on business signs is a thinly veiled effort to expound racist views and impose them on the community. Some fear it is symptomatic of a growing racist sentiment in a city that has seen a heavy influx of Asian immigrants in recent years.

Perrot denies the accusations.

But Mayor Jonathan H. Cannon, for one, said Perrot simply doesn’t like the influx of immigrants. He said Perrot and others serving on a citizens’ committee to study redevelopment plans for the city’s commercial center are using the citizens’ panel to promote their English-only ordinance.

“I can understand people’s frustrations. But I think it has less to do with signs than with feelings of things happening that are different from what they are used to,” Cannon said.

“John Perrot has taken it upon himself to use the committee and his position to do something different (than consider redevelopment plans),” the mayor added.

Chang Hyon, who manages K D Market in the 9600 block of Garden Grove Boulevard, said the Korean language cannot be eliminated from business signs for markets like his.

“Most Koreans don’t understand English,” he said. “How are we supposed to communicate if we can’t put our language on the signs?”

Prejudice Called Prevalent

Hyon added that prejudice against Korean businessmen is prevalent in the area. He complained that some area residents have taunted him and his employees.

“Some people drive by and throw things at the store and cuss at us. They come by all the time and that’s not good, either,” Hyon said.

But Perrot argues: “What I see going on in this town is very disturbing. There is a new Koreatown that excludes other ethnic groups.”

To help restore what he sees as the appropriate balance, Perrot has recruited Frank J. Arcuri, a fiery, outspoken leader of English-only crusades in Monterey Park, to help with a similar campaign in Garden Grove.

Arcuri, a self-employed photographer, told those attending last week’s meeting that his town is “now fragmented” by the Chinese who make up 40% of the population in Monterey Park, a bedroom community east of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley. “They have separated us by race and by language, too,” he said.

Arcuri, 46, is not new to these movements. Last year, he campaigned on behalf of the state proposal to make English the official state language. A self-appointed watchdog in Monterey Park, he led a petition drive two years ago to have English recognized as the official language of the city.

The Monterey Park City Council last year passed a resolution “supporting” English as the official language of the United States, but later rescinded the action in the face of mounting public criticism, especially from the large Chinese community.

Arcuri said he is not against immigrants moving to Southern California “legally,” but he wants them to use the English language.

“The real racists are the foreigners who come over here and segregate us. A segregated city is something we gave up on a long time ago in this country,” Arcuri said. “Put these signs in a language we can understand.

“We are going to fight for English only. It’s what unites us as Americans.”

If the City Council will not pass the English-on-business-signs proposal that Perrot began campaigning for two months ago, Perrot said he will try to take the issue before the voters.

A 10-Year Plan

To make his point about the immediacy of the problem, Perrot said he has been told that the Korean business community has a 10-year plan to redevelop the two-mile strip of Garden Grove Boulevard into “a replica” of a Korean city.

But Cannon said he and other city officials do not subscribe to Perrot’s notion that the Koreans, who control about 80% of the Asian-owned businesses in Garden Grove, want to take over the city and keep other groups out.

“(They) are wanting to be part of the community. They are not trying to create islands or colonies of their own,” Cannon said.

Cannon and Stewart O. Miller, the city’s director of development services, said that most of the Korean business signs have enough English to allow patrons to know what the businesses are offering.

Miller said Garden Grove has an 18-year-old ordinance that regulates “the size, location, height, design and illumination” of business signs, but makes no provision for language. He said the city moves to enforce the ordinance only when complaints are registered.

“We have been given two more (employees) to enforce the code, but until now we were only able to respond to complaints,” he said.

Perrot is well-acquainted with Miller, whose enforcement officers cited Perrot’s store eight times in late 1985 for hanging small white-and-blue plastic flags from the shingles of his building.

The citations against Perrot were dropped when he demanded a jury trial. Miller said that Perrot, when told that the city responded to complaints about his signs being in violation of the city code, went out and recorded the names of businesses he claimed violated the sign code.

‘Selective Enforcement’

But the only names Perrot reported to Miller’s office were the names of Asian businesses, Miller said. “I told him that was selective enforcement. It was not a case of there being a problem; it was a case of ‘get even,’ ” Miller said.

Perrot countered that Miller’s department has been told not “to touch the Korean businesses. That’s what disturbed me. It just wasn’t fair. I agree with the sign ordinance, but they don’t enforce it fairly.”

An ordinance that would regulate the English content of signs is viewed with concern by many of the Korean and Asian business people in town, and some feel the preponderance of Asian-language signs is something that will pass in time.

J. B. Lee owns Do Re Mi Grocery in a small shopping center in the 9500 block of Garden Grove Boulevard. He immigrated to the United States in 1972, and opened his store seven years ago. Since then, he has seen it prosper.

Lee said that about 75% of his business, which includes a large and varied selection of fresh fish, comes from Korean customers. He said it would hurt his business to have to use English-only signs.

“That would not be too good,” Lee said. “If you have English and Korean in the same size (lettering), then that would be OK. But not all English.”

Change in Language

Lee also said many of the recent Korean immigrants do not speak English, but that Korean language signs will not be needed in “10 or 20 years,” when a new generation is spawned and English becomes the Koreans’ primary language.

At last week’s community meeting, the fifth such gathering to discuss the downtown redevelopment plan, Robert D. Tonsing told the audience that racist remarks were drawing attention from the main issue: to determine how best to clean up and revitalize the central commercial strip.

Tonsing, who now lives on the edge of Garden Grove but hopes to move into the city soon, told the audience that phrases such as “Why don’t they act like Americans?” or “Why don’t they go back where they came from?” are spoken and repeated by racists.

“Racism is a cancer in our society, which we certainly don’t need at these meetings,” he added.

Tonsing then submitted a list of businesses on the boulevard that he said were “ugly looking.” Only four of the 25 business he named were Asian-owned. Of nine businesses he described as “nice places,” five were owned by Asians.

“It may be coincidence, but whatever their national heritage, I can safely say that many of these new business owners seem to have a little more pride in the appearance of their businesses than do the old ones,” Tonsing said.

Limitation Opposed

Ho Young Chung, former president of the Korean Chamber of Commerce and now a board director, said that perhaps more English is required on Korean business signs. But he said an English-only code would hurt Korean firms.

“I have always recommended to Korean businessmen to use bigger letters for English. But to have English only would not be right,” he said.

Chung, an insurance agent who claims his business is divided equally between an Anglo and Korean clientele, also said Koreans do want to integrate more into the community and are not isolating themselves.

“Visibly, people might think that we want to stay apart because they only see us as a group,” he said. “But we are trying to cultivate ourselves and open our eyes to all the community.

“The Korean community leaders, and I consider myself one, have a vision to work with all the community,” Chung said.

Market owner Lee echoed the sentiment.

“We just don’t want to be in business. We want our people to be policemen and firemen. We are trying to be part of this community,” he said.

Mayor’s View

Mayor Cannon said the Koreans, most of whom moved here for religious and economic freedom, are trying “to be good neighbors.” He also said that both groups must “come together and get to know one another” for relations to improve.

In the meantime, Miller said, the citizens’ committee and a team of redevelopment consultants will continue to discuss how best to handle the controversy over language on business signs.

“It has become very much an issue at these meetings,” he said, “and the committee will deal with it.”