Freddie Prinze, the late, great Latino comedian, used to tell a little story that says a lot about what kind of people we Americans are.
As the story goes, two Korean men were talking to each other in their native tongue on a street in East Los Angeles until a Hispanic man interrupted them.
“Hey! You’re in America now!” the man shouted. “Speak Spanish!”
Yes, that’s what kind of people we Americans are. We are all kinds of people. Sometimes our many different languages and cultures rub up against each other. Sometimes that can be a problem, especially at those times when efforts to make some people feel included leave some other people feeling left out.
“When I hear people talking in another language,” I once heard another comic say. “I always imagine they’re talking about me.”
His audience laughed and applauded. They probably felt as I did that, yes, yes, I, too, have had that feeling. Every time I get into a taxi and hear a foreign-born cabbie chattering away over his two-way with his dispatcher in their native tongue, I think, Oh, yes, he’s talking about how he’s got a real dimwit in the backseat and is going to take me for a long ride to nowhere.
One day, I listened more carefully and realized my driver was merely trying to get directions and checking traffic conditions to the place I wanted to go. Once I agreed to make a halfway attempt to figure out what the man really was talking about, I felt much better. I imagine he did, too.
But sometimes annoyance at another tongue can get out of hand. That’s why I suspect we’re probably going to be hearing more stories like those of the workers who were fired recently in Illinois and Texas for speaking Spanish to each other on the job.
In a story first reported in !Exito!, a Chicago-based Spanish newspaper, three assembly-line workers–two males and one female–at Watlow, a factory manufacturing heating components in suburban Batavia, were fired for refusing to sign an agreement to avoid using any language but English while speaking to each other on the job.
At about the same time, a small insurance agency in Amarillo, Texas, was being picketed because its owner fired two women who also refused to sign a promise not to speak Spanish on the job.
Both employers deny they have broken any fair employment laws or have any intention to discriminate. Watlow’s management declined to comment to me other than to release a brief statement describing itself as “an equal opportunity employer” that has “at all times” acted in accordance with pertinent employment laws.
In Texas, Pat Polk, owner of the four-employee insurance agency, sent letters to area politicians denying this was “a racial thing.” Rather, he simply felt left out. “The Spanish women were chatting in Spanish a great portion of the day amongst themselves, while I, my wife and the other woman were left out of the conversations, as we don’t understand Spanish.”
More Top Picks Deck Light
Both employers have been careful to couch their dismissal orders in terms of insubordination, which should help them if these cases head to court. Neither civil rights law or, for that matter, free speech law is very clear in this area, but, the way society is changing these days, they may be forced to catch up.
For example, in a decision that should delight English-only xenophobes everywhere, the Texas Workforce Commission has sided with the employer. Agency officials denied the women unemployment benefits in writing because “Our investigation found you left your last work rather than carry out a reasonable request from your employer.”
Reasonable? I guess that depends on which side you’re on. Both stories sound to me like cases for the etiquette books, not the law books.
As a practical matter, both employers could very well win in court but lose big time in public relations. The irony in Amarillo, for example, is that the two women were fired for using a talent that helped get them hired. Allied Insurance wanted to attract more Spanish-speaking customers. They ended up attracting Spanish-speaking pickets.
At the same time, no matter what language you speak, using it in the presence of others who don’t speak it can be like whispering at the dinner table, something many of our parents told us not to do at home, simply because it is rude.
With that in mind, it is not prudent to be rude to your boss when you don’t have to be, just as it is not prudent for a boss to jeopardize worker morale and customer relations unnecessarily.
Cooler heads can avoid a culture war. Otherwise we shall see more skirmishes on the ethnic frontiers as our country still tries to learn how to live with itself.