Nicole Seymour Seymour is a fourth-year
American literature and culture student. She loves reruns of
"90210" on FX and hates physical exertion. E-mail comments to
saintblue@hotmail.com.
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It’s not rare to see a politician courting
“special-interest” groups with dubious or implausible
promises to attend to their needs. But a glaring example of this
has come to light in the past few weeks during George W.
Bush’s presidential campaign. His attempts to reach out to
voters of color, especially foreign-language voters, are completely
disingenuous, as the majority of his party’s platforms, and
his own record and policies on the issues do not demonstrate
concern for these same groups.
In the past, as governor of Texas, George W. Bush actively
courted Latino voters by expressing his support for bilingual
education, an issue Latinos have been shown to overwhelmingly
support (83 percent, according to a Univision poll), in a state
where the majority of citizens are Spanish speakers. But since
putting in his bid for the presidency of the United States, in
which English-speakers are still the majority, at least in voting,
Bush has become less vocal on the issue. His official Web site says
nothing about bilingual education, and he elsewhere advocated a
rather nebulous concept he calls “English-plus.”
Essentially, he means that English should be taught first and
foremost, and once that allegedly all-important task is
accomplished, then children can go on to focus on their native
cultural language. This concept is obviously a stab at
“compassionate conservatism,” but it’s still
conservatism.
Bush also displayed his quasi-positive position on bilingual
education in a speech in which he stated, “if a good
[English] immersion program works, I say fine. If a good bilingual
program works to teach children English, we should applaud it
““ the standard is English literacy. The goal is equal
opportunity in an atmosphere where every heritage is respected and
celebrated.”
But if “the standard” is English literacy and the
unspoken goal assimilation, how are these children from
“every heritage,” who may only read Spanish or
Cambodian, still respected and revered as intelligent human beings
by the politicians in power? And while Bush states that immersion
programs are good if they achieve the “right” end
(English), he ignores the fact that these programs often do not
achieve this end, and, furthermore, that foreign-language voters
overwhelmingly oppose them.
 Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin While Bush seems
gentle and even pro-diversity in his speech and some of his actions
(he did oppose Proposition 187), the standpoint is implicit:
Americans speak English, and should conform to that standard any
way they can.
Bush takes this chauvinistic, short-sighted standpoint even
further in his ideas about affirmative action. He uniformly opposes
all kinds of affirmative action programs in the name of
“fairness” and “equality” ““ ignoring
the fact that the destruction of affirmative action is mainly
deemed “fair” and “equal” in the eyes of
privileged, historically enfranchised and overwhelmingly white
people.
It’s a typical bourgeoisie, Republican sentiment to expect
everyone to be at the same level you are, even though they have not
had the same linguistic, economic or social advantages you have
had.
Bush is not only pro-white, pro-privileged in his affirmative
action policies, but in his immigration policies. If elected,
according to his own Web site (www.georgewbush.com), he will
continue to crack down on immigrants by supporting “increased
efforts along the border … [toward] limiting illegal
immigration.”
He will also support legislation to transform the INS into a
two-armed agency. One arm would deal with the “enforcement
components of border protection and interior enforcement” and
the other would “deal with the service components of
naturalization,” thereby strengthening and making more
monolithic an agency that has heretofore mainly served to target
and stigmatize “illegal” immigrants.
The message is clear: only certain human beings deserve the
prosperity and opportunities of American life, and more often than
not, those are highly skilled, English-speaking, educated
people.
Even more telling is Bush’s actual record on immigration.
While he has said he welcomes “legal” immigrants, his
gubernatorial record has shown he does not support them. According
to an Urban Institute study, after Congress passed the immigration
welfare reform act, “Texas did not replace most solely
federal programs barred by welfare reform to most immigrants, and
tightly restricted immigrants’ access to the one federal
program for which it did create substitutes.”
Bush’s above policies make the fact that he often speaks
in Spanish to Latino groups and campaigns using foreign language
materials simply astonishing. In fact, on recent stops to Orange
County’s Asian communities, Bush’s campaign posters and
banners were printed in Vietnamese and Cambodian.
If English is the “standard” language, and if he
wants to deny so-called “special” treatment even to
those with such disadvantages as poverty, lack of
“legal” citizenship and not knowing English as their
first language, why utilize foreign languages in attempts to court
these voters?
The answer is obvious. Many Asians vote conservatively,
especially in Orange County, and Latinos could represent an
important swing vote for Bush. In fact, according to a Washington
Press poll, four in 10 Latino voters favor him. Bush is interested
in courting the Spanish-speaking and Asian vote not because he
wants to help these groups (as he plans on stripping away
affirmative action and cracking down on “illegal”
immigrants, and shows no signs of campaigning pro-actively for
bilingual education), but because they may be able to help him get
elected.
The Bush campaign has gone to even crasser, exploitative lengths
than just using foreign-language banners and speeches to court
voters of color. At the recent Republican National Convention,
George Prescott Bush, the half-Mexican, half-white son of George W.
Bush’s brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, gave an adulatory
speech in which he switched back and forth from English to
Spanish.
Prescott Bush has been proffered by the George W. Bush campaign
and even by the media as the new face of the Republican party
““ young, hip, handsome and of color, but few have paid
attention to the fact that he is perfectly groomed to be so. While
he is (part) Latino, he does not have a Latino name or an accent
when speaking English.
While this does not automatically make him a race traitor, and
while he has every right to present his heritage as he wishes, the
fact remains that Prescott Bush does not represent the people who
will be adversely affected by the slashing of affirmative action
programs, those who will be stigmatized by strict immigration
policies, or those for whom bilingual education (largely a
Democratic concern) is of utmost importance.
This is an obvious example of Republicans only taking into
account the interests of the richest and most powerful, while
turning a concern-for-the-Everyman face to the public.
It’s obvious that George W. Bush and his supporters are
truly racial and social chauvinists at heart, who envision America
as a melting pot or a color-blind society, when in fact we suffer
from institutionalized racism, an obscenely unequal distribution of
wealth amongst the poor and people of color and the rich and white,
and the tragically de-enriching force of assimilation.
Bush will do nothing to remedy this situation, but he has
audaciously sought support from the people to whom it matters
most.