Gingrich: Bilingualism is 'Ghetto'

[The_Elucidator]

Gingrich: Bilingualism is 'Ghetto' <LINK href="/stylesheetinfo.css" type=text/css rel=stylesheet>

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich equated bilingual education Saturday with "the language of living in a ghetto" and mocked requirements that ballots be printed in multiple languages.

"The government should quit mandating that various documents be printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows up" to vote, said Gingrich, who is considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He made the comments in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women.
"The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. ... We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said to cheers from the crowd of more than 100.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/4/1/151719.shtml?s=ic

Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, which supports bilingual education, said, "The tone of his comments was very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto."

It was not hateful, it was completely true! I run into many folks here in the RGV who absolutely refuse to learn/speak English even after living in this country for 20 years. This in turn translates into their kids speaking fluent spanish and very broken English.

Gingrich is spot on!

[MrSanity]

Bilingual education has no constitutional basis whatsoever. If you want to live in the freest nation in the history of mankind, you are expected to learn the language of the land, rather than impose your own upon millions of people. Special accommodations should be reserved for the disabled, not able-bodied, able-minded students - especially those who are here illegally.

Bilingual education is a one-way ticket back to the Tower of Babel.

[DoctorDoom]

Before long there will be no need for bilingualism. Everything will be in Spanish when the Mexicriminal majority takes charge of los Estados Unidos de México.

[Keb]

I took Newt's remarks a totally different way.

It would be nice to see Newt's whole speech but I can't seem to find more than this quote. I don't believe he's equating bilingual languages to ghetto or even bilingual to Spanish. I thought he was trying to say that we need to concentrate on English instead of learning a second language because we have kids who you can't understand when they are speaking English. Ebonics was the first thing that came to my mind and that certainly is spoken in the ghetto.

I'll be interested to see Newt's response to the firestorm the liberals seem to be crafting this into.

[DesertFox]

Shouldn't be any requirement for English, but neither should there be anything official done in any other language. That's sufficient.

[Naturalized-Texan]

Libs promote bilingual education in order to keep Hispanics poor and ignorant and dependent on government handouts.

[MrSanity]

Shouldn't be any requirement for English, but neither should there be anything official done in any other language. That's sufficient.Given the efforts to bilingualize education with enormous amounts of tax funding (and every year they want more, more, more), I would support a nation-wide policy of the English language as a requirement to obtain citizenship and tax-funded education. However, I would recommend that this policy does not infringe on tourism in any way, either.