Multicultural Madness in NYC

Once upon a time, New York City was seen as proof of America's melting pot - a place where peoples from diverse cultures from every corner of the world came and were assimilated into Americans. The immigrants put aside their language and customs of their former homelands to adopt the culture of their country of choice. Not any more. Today's immigrants, particularly those from Spanish speaking countries, no longer feel compelled to assimilate into American culture, rather they demand that American culture adapt to them. These immigrants are aided by the advocates of America's pernicious native-born ideology of multiculturalism (an intellectual poison imbibed only by Europeans and their descendants). The multiculturalists insist that American society will be bettered by erasing the distinctive elements that created American culture in the first place, since those elements were "exclusionist," "zenophobic," "racist" and "imperialist" to begin with.. Anyone who wants to defend American culture is, ipso facto, a racist. To that end, new immigrantsn are encourged to keep their culture and not assimilate. Most important to the multiculturalist agende is making certain that new immigrants don't need to learn English. A common language ensures national cohesion, which is exactly what multiculturalists seek to undermine. To that end, they demand that all government documents be printed in a myriad of different languages and that non-English language media outlets be encouraged. Now, New York City's multicultural thugs have extended that demand even to schools.

City Council Republicans want to nix a popular bill that would mandate public schools to provide translation services in nine languages.

Noting that the United Nations has just six official languages, council Minority Leader James Oddo said the bill goes too far.

The bill, known as the "Education Equity Act," and opposed by the city Department of Education, would require schools to provide translators for languages including Bengali and Urdu for non-English-speaking parents.

"They call it the 'Education Equity Act,' I call it how to waste taxpayers' money in nine languages," said Oddo (R-S.I.). The measure is estimated to cost upward of $20 million and has support among Democratic council members and immigrant-advocacy groups.

If schools must provide translators (at taxpayer expense), they what incentive will the students have to learn English? None, of course. But that is exactly the intent of those pushing the bill. The objective is to prevent the learning of English and stymie any natural assimilation of the new immigrants. Ethnic and linguistic division is the goal, since it helps undermine the common idea of America. The only surprising thing here is to see Republicans trying to defend English. President Bush doesn't seem particularly interested in doing so, just as he shows no interest in defending America's borders.

Coming quickly on the heels of the "Education Equality Act" is a new barrage of campaign commercials from New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg ... in Spanish.

Making a raid onto the home turf of his chief Democratic rival [Fernando Ferrer], Mayor Bloomberg yesterday unleashed the first commercials of his re-election campaign — in which he speaks only in Spanish.

"Estimados amigos [dear friends]," Bloomberg begins in fractured Spanish, acting as co-narrator of the 30- and 60-second spots airing on three Spanish-language TV stations.

The ads focus on the city's low crime rate, improvements in public schools and economic vitality — standard fare for an incumbent at this early stage of the race.

But the choice to launch on Spanish-language stations — even before an upcoming $1 million, 10-day buy on English-language TV — certainly wasn't standard.

"We don't believe any city or statewide candidate has done Spanish ads first," boasted Stu Loeser, Bloomberg's campaign spokesman. One Democratic official said the message was clear — and aimed right at Democratic hopeful Fernando Ferrer, the narrow front-runner of his party's field.

The expectation in the Bloomberg camp, said one insider, is that Ferrer still has a "very good chance" of coming out on top in the September Democratic primary.

Mayor Bloomberg's staff is quick to assure reporters that the mayor's Spanish ramblings aren't merely a campaign trick.

Bloomberg is studying Spanish with a tutor "almost every day," said a mayoral aide. The mayor invariably tries to demonstrate his language skills when he gets before a Hispanic audience. The response is usually warm, even if the Spanish is sometimes so poorly accented as to be unrecognizable.

The New York Post's commentator Sandra Guzman gave the mayor an "A" for effort but noted, revealingly, that:

Bloomberg's accent is gringo, not in a cowboy way, more like a student who's really trying hard.

I guess calling a white American a gringo isn't considered racist. Imagine, however, if mayor Bloomberg had called any Latino by a similarly degrading term for Mexicans or Spanish. Racism, like multiculturalism, is a one way street driven by the left for strictly ideological purposes.