The
Language of Common Sense
November 18,
1985
Monterey
Park, six miles east of downtown Los Angeles, was for years an
unexceptional suburb of Anglo and Latino families. Now part of its
business district is dominated by pagodas, and some of its shop
fronts and billboards by graceful Chinese calligraphy--the language
of newcomers from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The
change stirred resentment among some older residents to the point of
sponsoring a ballot initiative declaring English the community's
official language. Predictably, it is dividing Monterey Park.
A
Coalition for Harmony group opposes the initiative as a violation of
the Constitution, and has persuaded the Monterey Park City Council to
put a rival measure on the April ballot. The rival initiative is
producing the same predictable result--division and rancor.
Monterey
Park is now 40% Asian, 37% Latino, 22% Anglo and 1% black. Some of
its citizens are American-born, many are not. None of these
statistics have to do with the community's most serious problem, one
that it shares with virtually all others--how to cope with growth.
That can come only by uniting the community behind plans to manage
construction as well as traffic.
By
indulging themselves to the point where all answers to Monterey
Park's future turn on the question of its official language, the
community's more aggressive factions make that kind of unity
impossible.
To
the non-Asian population, signs in Chinese characters seem symbols of
exclusion. They argue that they should not have to be able to read
Chinese in order to shop in the city in which they live. Newcomers
from China argue that the familiar characters make them feel less
like strangers in a strange land.
Making
English Monterey Park's official language won't solve the problems
for either side.
What
might help would be for the initiative sponsors to spend the time
that they are devoting to division going door-to-door,
explaining--through an interpreter, if necessary--that the 60% of
Monterey Park's people who are not Asian cannot patronize shops whose
signs mean nothing to them and that a bit of English would be good
for business. No matter where he comes from, a merchant seldom has
trouble translating a message like that.
