Signs Are Signals of Vitality

The city of Garden Grove has become home for many of the county’s new Asian residents, especially Koreans. Their presence is most visible along Garden Grove Boulevard where empty and run-down storefronts have been revitalized by Korean businesses. The new residents and their commerce bring an ethnic and economic vitality to the city that should be encouraged, not resented.

But some resentment does exist, as evidenced at a recent neighborhood meeting of a citizens committee formed to make recommendations on a city plan to rejuvenate a stretch of Garden Grove Boulevard.

One committee member complained that Koreans dominate businesses in the area and that the boulevard is being overrun with foreign-language signs. He wants the signs on Korean businesses to be printed in English. He also brought along to the meeting an English-only advocate who had been active in Monterey Park, the Los Angeles County community that was so torn last year over the presence of signs in Chinese that its City Council passed a resolution supporting the adoption of English as the official language of the nation. Four months later, the council rescinded the action.

Anti-Asian sentiment in Garden Grove is not nearly as severe or widespread as it seems to be in Monterey Park and should not be overdrawn. Nor does the situation in Garden Grove resemble the atmosphere several years ago in Westminster, where a petition before the City Council demanded that the city stop issuing business licenses to some Indochinese refugees. The council properly ignored the racist effort.

Garden Grove officials and residents should follow that example. And they should show support for the Asian community, as Mayor Jonathan H. Cannon has done. Such support could help discourage the kind of prejudice reported by one Korean grocer who told of taunts against him and his employees, and of people driving by and throwing things at the store.

The real issue is how to best redevelop and revitalize Garden Grove Boulevard, not whether signs along the street are in Korean or English.

At present, most signs along the street are in both Korean and English, although the Korean lettering usually is more prominent. Some Anglo residents see this as an act of separatism. It is not. The signs simply serve as an aid for a majority of customers who still are not proficient in English. Most signs contain enough English to tell Anglo customers what the store sells, and to direct police, fire and other emergency crews. Arguing over whether signs should be only in English, or contain more English than Korean, or vice versa, is needlessly divisive.

The city’s longstanding sign ordinance controls the location, size and design of signs. City policy also requires new signs in a foreign language to include, in English, the kind of business, in print large enough to be visible from the street. That’s reasonable. Garden Grove’s population isn’t entirely Anglo. Its signs shouldn’t pretend that such is the case.