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Is it racist to ask for immigrants to speak English?

Is it racist to ask immigrants to speak English?

  • Total voters
    118
Saykine said:
It depends on the context; if it's for casual or academic use then they're free to speak their own language, the Chinese can speak Chinese and the Gypsies can speak their language (Romanian, Irish Gaelic?) but on official documents the national language is used. This isn't a pro-English thing, I'd expect any country to support their national language not just anglophone ones.

It would be racist and backwards if speaking other languages was banned, but that's not what we're talking about (or at least, it's not what I'm talking about..)
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gypsies have their own native language which has its roots in asia, india to be precise.

Romanian is the native language of Romanians which has its roots in latin.
 
It's not racist because there's nothing racial about language. It's just regular old ignorance, rather than racially motivated ignorance.
 
Rainman05 said:
gypsies have their own native language which has its roots in asia, india to be precise.

Romanian is the native language of Romanians which has its roots in latin.
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Ah, I assumed it to be either Irish Gaelic or Romanian because of the similar sounding name, the fact that the French govenment talked to the Romanian government over the Roma in France, and because Gypsies/travelers in Britain have a semi-Irish accent, with alot of family in Ireland.
 
Saykine said:
Ah, I assumed it to be either Irish Gaelic or Romanian because of the similar sounding name, the fact that the French govenment talked to the Romanian government over the Roma in France, and because Gypsies/travelers in Britain have a semi-Irish accent, with alot of family in Ireland.
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Having citizenship of a country doesn't make you an ethnic member of that country.

If you are a russian with Algerian citizenship, doesn't mean you are Algerian ethnically. You are a russian ethnic with algerian citizenship.
 
Rainman05 said:
Having citizenship of a country doesn't make you an ethnic member of that country.

If you are a russian with Algerian citizenship, doesn't mean you are Algerian ethnically. You are a russian ethnic with algerian citizenship.
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Ethnicity can be quite arbitrary, being based on political up-bringing. Though if by that you mean "the Roma are an Indo-European ethnic group" then yes, you're right.
 
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Boo Radley said:
It is really. Much harder for adults. Historically, the children learn.
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They can have a rudimentary knowledge of English. Whoever said everything in life would be easy anyway? That's not a guarantee, nor should it be an expectation.

And why should it be so easy?
 
No it should be a requirement to be a US citizen.
 
Are you intending for it to be racist?

Question answered.
 
ChrisL said:
They can have a rudimentary knowledge of English. Whoever said everything in life would be easy anyway? That's not a guarantee, nor should it be an expectation.

And why should it be so easy?
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They know it's not easy, but they function. Their children learn the language.
 
Boo Radley said:
They know it's not easy, but they function. Their children learn the language.
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And they should also know simple English. There is absolutely no good reason why they shouldn't.
 
ChrisL said:
And they should also know simple English. There is absolutely no good reason why they shouldn't.
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Beware absolutes. They tend to be wrong. Each immigrant has a story. As they say, there's 6 million story's in the naked city.
 
Boo Radley said:
Beware absolutes. They tend to be wrong. Each immigrant has a story. As they say, there's 6 million story's in the naked city.
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:lol: And what does this have to do with anything about immigrants knowing basic English skills?
 
ChrisL said:
:lol: And what does this have to do with anything about immigrants knowing basic English skills?
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That we can't know the stories that bring them here. Do you know ow may are pulled out of war torn areas, plopped den here and had no opportunity to learn the language?
 
ChrisL said:
Boo Radley said:
I know, because we can't understand what they are saying.



Plopped down here by whom?
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They got here legally, so I assume we played a role. The two I know personally came here via the military. But that's not a large enough sample to draw any real conclusions. However, they couldn't speak English.
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No. It has nothing to do with race, so why would it be racist? Bigoted, depends on the situation but certainly not racist.
 
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Look at immigration from another angle. Feds say we need 150K new jobs a month to
keep up with population growth. Then they welcome up to 100K legal immigrants a
month. Mostly third-worlders with little or no job skills. It has been suggested that
immigration be limited to 100K per year of their "best and brightest."
 
LoopyPaladin said:
I hear people talking about this subject all the time, and I'm just curious.

Is it racist to ask immigrants to speak English (or whatever language the country they immigrated to speaks) when in public places?
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Are you American Indian?
 
Boo Radley said:
ChrisL said:
They got here legally, so I assume we played a role. The two I know personally came here via the military. But that's not a large enough sample to draw any real conclusions. However, they couldn't speak English.
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Ahh. Different situation. Like during wartime maybe? That makes a big difference.
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ChrisL said:
Ahh. Different situation. Like during wartime maybe? That makes a big difference.
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Not our wars. But my point is there are a lot of reasons and ways this happens.
 
Boo Radley said:
Not our wars. But my point is there are a lot of reasons and ways this happens.
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But that's a different situation. It doesn't change anything I said. Immigrants knowing basic English skills helps them and us. :)
 
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