English Only 4
Cheesy ruckus up the road from me:
The city’s human relations commission found evidence that the owner of Geno’s Steaks may have discriminated against immigrants by posting a sign telling customers, “This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING ’PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,â€â€™ according to a letter sent to owner Joe Vento last week.
(snippage)
Vento’s legal team would not rule out some sort of mediation, but they said Vento, the fiery grandson of Italian immigrants, would not take the sign down.
I doubt this would classify as discrimination unless he actually refused to serve someone who ordered in Italian.
No doubt his grandparents were fluent in English when they stepped off the boat.
Ahhhh, the sweet smell of prejudice in the morning.
February 8, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I heard about this story the first time (probably from you,) but I’m still a little lost… are businesses there required to know certain other languages or what?
February 9, 2007 at 5:01 pm
No, the issue isn’t that a shopkeeper has to know other languages. The (dubious) legal issue is that he has posted a sign saying, basically, that people who don’t order in English will be turned away.
(Who would go into a shop and try to order in a foreign language I don’t know–they’d probably just point at the menu.)
Should he actually turn someone away, that could be discrimination based on national origin, which is illegal until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended.
No one seriously believes he would, say, turn away a tourist from France. What has created the stir is that his sign is perceived as a slur on Spanish speaking persons, legal or illegal.
And what I find galling about it is the two-faced hypocrisy that actions such as this show.
But then that’s what I usually find galling about
the far right wingthese sorts of things.My ex’s grandmother (she was two at the time) and great grandmother came over on the boat from Napoli. They didn’t speak English. Great grandmother never really learned it. They lived through horrible bigotry and prejudice from those who preceded them–who came on earlier boats. I have heard the stories from persons who were there.
And this descandent of immigrants (and remember that in those days just about anyone was accepted–there were no quotas, well, as long you were European and looked white) now turns and treats others as his ancestors were treated.
It is just not right.
February 9, 2007 at 9:20 pm
About 20 years ago some University of Illinois students complained that their grades and learning were suffering because they couldn’t understand the accents of some of their immigrant professors. They were basically told to take a hike.
February 10, 2007 at 9:16 am
We part ways again, Frank. I knew it was too good to last.
What galls me are the Spanish speaking people who hop the border (like that’s a challenge) live here, work here, take free medical from a system too burdened to handle it, send their money to Mexico, or where ever they’re from, & REFUSE to speak English. To top matters off, they also want to bring live animals to the grocery stores so they can have “freshly killed” poultry.
If Mexico, or the countries they left, are so good that they have to bring them here, then why not go back to them?
Yes, I’m aware that this country was founded by immigrants. But the immigrants of long ago didn’t come in looking for a handout, & they melded themselves to their new country. Not the immigrants of today. Today they come in, live here, kill here, then run back to Mexico, where their government demands that a trial be held, but with no possibility of the death penalty, or life behind bars, because it’s “inhumane”.
What’s happening today can’t be compared to the immigrants that founded this country.