Tom Bvrokaw’s comment about assimilation struck a nerve, as well it should. As one whose entire life has been shaped by the issue, I find at the age of 76 that it is timely to offer another perspective.
I am a descendant of one of the founders of New Orleans and of Louisiana. That means my ancestor, Francois Desmarestz, arrived in 1721, three years after Bienville laid out the City. Since that year, generations of my family have spoken only French in Louisiana in the Creole colonies of France and Spain and the Creole state that was suppressed by Northern soldiers after the Confederacy lost the War.
Through all those governments, my family continued to speak French until my mother, who learned English under torturous circumstances in a Louisiana school designed to force assimilation on the French-speaking population of South Louisiana.
Despite the torture, everyone continued to speak French at home, so I am the first person in my line since 1721 to speak English as a native language in addition to French. The State told us our French was a bastard language incomprehensible in France, and I believed the State. So at Tulane University, where the Jewish students are rightfully held in high esteem, I passed for Jewish.
It embarrasses me a little today to realize I was denying my family by being ashamed of them, and my only consolation is that they were complicit in forced assimilation in their own way. My passing for Jewish was simply a more obvious way of doing what they were doing. Doubtlessly the Jewish fraternity boys were amused to see a non-Jew do what their own ancestors had done when they passed for non-Jew to avoid persecution.
When I was accepted to Tulane Medical School, my confusion about assimilation was so great that I chose not to accept the appointment. There was no way I could focus in the appropriate way on medicine while trying to clarify issues of personal identity, in which half of me judged the other half as incompetent, unacceptable and un-American. I became a language teacher instead, spending 35 years teaching French, German, Latin and English.
I did not tell my fiancée that I spoke French. For our honeymoon, she wanted to spend our teachers’ summer vacation in France. When we arrived in Paris, I understood almost everything. Words for objects invented since 1721, I did not recognize easily, but normal daily conversations flowed easily. Parisians thought my accent cute, and I detested being cute in Paris, but we discussed politics and poetry with ease. I realized the State of Louisiana had lied to us to force us to abandon French. It had been state propaganda
So I had to make a judgment about assimilation. I decided it had been and still is unnecessary. So, Mr. Brokaw and everyone else with his opinion, please put that in your pipe and smoke it.
In conversations in Paris about the realization that the government of Louisiana had lied to us, I found Bretons, Alsatians and Occitans who told me that the French government had done the same thing to them. Then I read about how the Chinese government attempts to eliminate all variations of Chinese except Mandarin. So I say to all of you, wherever you are in the world, you are fanatics, narrow-minded and evidently terribly fearful. Get over It, please!
There is only one reason for assimilation: Fear of difference. Fear of the Not-me!
Fear of national disunity is a delusion. All of you out there in the greater world, please note that the United States has had only two great threats to what might be called national unity: The Revolutionary War, which was really a split within the English nation’s two parts in Europe and in North American, and the Civil War, which was a split within the United States. In both cases, the common language of English only facilitated communication of hostilities.
Fear that there will inevitably be disunion of the nation is unfounded. The best example is Switzerland, where three official languages and multiple dialects of the official languages have not led to destruction of Switzerland, the oldest democratic republic in the world, pre-dating the United States by two hundred years. Respect for the different cultures within the country leads to stability and prosperity that suppression can never achieve.
India is another case to consider, though clearly less prosperous in part because of its caste system. The number of languages in India is difficult to count, so English is the common official language. However, an official language is not the same thing as a cultural language. An official language is for official purposes, and a cultural language is for personal identity, for poetry, for novels and for love.
Actually, Louisiana was an officially bilingual American state from acceptance into the Union till its conquest by the Union forces in the 1860’s. Punishing Louisiana for its participation in the rebellion, the Union generals set out to suppress French. General Samuel Butler detested the Creoles. Louisiana could have continued as a bilingual Creole-American state, and I would probably be a physician today!
So I say to all who speak languages other than English in the United States, please do not iisten to the likes of Tom Brokaw. The Tea-Partiers and their buddies who want us to become all the same do not represent the needs of the United States of America. They represent their personal need to have everyone be identical. So they will not be afraid.
Corporations probably have had more to do with assimilation than governments. As corporations have sought to create docile work forces, one way to do it is to make everyone speak the language of the corporate bosses. Since they are fabulously wealthy, they bribe governments to outlaw other languages and cultures.
Do not fall for it. I sing the Star-Spangled Banner and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in French. I do not need to assimilate. It is enough to be able to function in English for practical purposes, and my poetry and my love will be in French or English as the spirit dictates,
One of our poets, Kirby Jambon, received the Prix Henri de Gagnier from the Académie française in 2015. He has written, “Nous sommes Americans, mais nous ne sommes pas américains.” We are Amercians, but we are not américains. We are proud citizens of these United States, but we celebrate our own language and identity.