After reading Mr. George Will's
"A Vote For English in today's Washington Post I sent the following reply to the author.
I have posted it here as well for comment and discussion.
Mr. Will,
After reading your May 25th column in the Washington Post, I was dumbstruck at the openness and unabashed position you take and defend regarding the qualifications of citizenship for a country that thinks itself to be an open and true democracy.
A person's ability to read English should never be correlated into their worth as a citizen. We do not portion out Constitutional Rights on a prorated scale based on qualifications met. Why stop at English fluency? Why not require a history test, a comprehension exam of the Federalist Papers and a basic geography quiz? In November and again in 2008 millions of voters will weigh in on this endless war but could not easily find Iraq on a map. So while this seems okay, a Spanish speaking mother of two that worries about the conditions of the schools her children attend can not vote to improve them? Under your argument she has no voting rights because she can not read the phrase "Voting Rights".
It is not fair or productive to require aspiring new citizens to attain knowledge or skills that we do not require or enforce among others. In 1992 the National Institute of Literacy published a report indicating that about 22% of the adult population scored in Level 1 of their measuring scale indicating that while they can make out words they do not have the literate skills to "fill out a job application, read a food label or read a simple story to a child". At the time this amounted to over 44 million American adults that would struggle to make out the words of a ballot and clearly would be hard-pressed to read even your own column much less "comprehend the political discourse that proceeds the casting of ballots". Shall we deny them the right to vote as well?
I feel safe to assume your answer to my slanted rhetorical question would be an obvious, and rather dismissive, no but rather I take your point to be that the government should not be placed in a position of obligation to take any steps to accommodate those that do not meet some arbitrary and self-conjured minimum standard of citizenship.
My reaction to such a sentiment is nothing less then shame. If our government can not be forced, or in your case should not even be asked, to take any and all steps to provide such a fundamental right to all of its people, I would ask what possible service could it ever be expected to provide? Given the history and ideals of this country how can people still stand up in 2006 and argue for any kind of disenfranchisement? When will we learn that our system only grows stronger the more people participate? So I say print ballots in Spanish. Print them in every language. Print them in braille. Make them in audio-format for the blind. Make them color coded. Use pictures instead of names. Do everything and anything we can that will encourage and enable everyone to vote.
The common rebuke to those who sit out of our electoral process is that those that do not vote forfeit their right to complain. The conviction of this argument stems from the sense of consequence that must be faced by those that opt out. A "you can not have it both ways" argument that always wins true in the American mind. What then do we tell the second class citizens who do not vote not out of choice but because they do not have the language skills to earn it?
You say providing ballots in their native tongue gives them a "disincentive to become proficient in English". I say putting up barriers to our civic process gives them a disincentive to become Americans.
The last point I wish to make, in an aside manner similar to that with which you addressed it, is that Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act does in fact protect the language minority and the argument to remove it, as stated by Harry Reid, is racist at face value, regardless of intention or lack thereof. To take an affirmative step to deliberately remove something that helps bring minorities into an American process is racist by definition and no different then requiring a Grandfather clause to block out new arrivals, a poll tax to block out the poor or a reading test to block out the illiterate. Your logic is usually impeccable sir, I can not understand the lapse here where you try to undermine Senator Reid's comment by pointing out that Spanish speakers are not "members of a single race". So the removal of Section 203 will disenfranchise people from many hispanic races; does this somehow support your argument more then if it only disenfranchises one?
And so to answer your opening question sir of whether or not Alberto Gonzales meant "[Prohibiting bilingual ballots] is not something about which decent people differ?" your implied answer of no could in fact be defensible as stated. I would submit however, that this is not something about which citizens of an open democracy differ. Decency is a subjective quantity separate and apart from the issue; the issue here is simple civics.