English Only Racists - Univision??
Spanish-language channel Univision is setting up a Democratic presidential debate for September 9 in Miami, one of the most polylingual cities in our wonderfully polylingual country. Oddly enough, Univision has decided to REQUIRE "that all presidential candidates in a debate on the Spanish-language television network Univision speak in English."
Too funny.
Labels: presidential race
posted by Dan at 6/16/2007 11:52:00 AM
4 Comments:
Fascinating question, Travelingal, and one I think a lot of people who think about these things struggle with. Apparently, many Hispanics do not consider themselves Caucasian, while some do.
I suppose it's a positive sign that the concept of race is such a weak one, and, perhaps, beginning to break down as a meaningful term. My children went to the KCMO school district, and would refer to kids specifically by skin color as one of the means of identification, like height and hair color.
Here's my theory - their may be one or two causes.
(1) Spanish is a much more indirect, nuanced and romantic language than English. It takes on average about 20-30% more words to articulate the same thing in Spanish than it does in English.
Additonally, there are many different forms of Spanish - many different varieties of Mexican Spanish; Puerto Rican Spanish; Spain Spanish, which most Mexicans deplore; and a bunch of other Spanish variations with many different arts of use.
For accuracy, and for the candidates to get their message across uniformly English could be preferred.
Remember, many of us Anglo's tend to think there's just one Spanish, and one large set of Mexicans that speak the same language.
Nothing could be farther from the truth - the differences in Spanish are much more varied than the differences between Boston, Southern and Western English.
And Univision addresses the entire, very diverse, Spanish speaking communities in the U.S.
(2) Many second generation mexicans et al don't speak Spanish all that well.
Just my two cents.
Mainstream -
Thanks for trying to shed light, but your thoughts are undermined by the fact that the debate will be broadcast translated . . . into Spanish.
Legal Hispanic Said:
Spanish Language Media is a direct beneficiary of the illegal immigration boom. As such, their reporting is far from balanced and their programing SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS since it tends to demonize those who would thwart their contituency of theri "right" to cross our border "undocumented" and come do "Jobs not even blacks will do" (loosely quoted from former Mex-President Vicente Fox). It is this self-serving, smarmy smugness that leads this Media's constituency to think that they can hold sway over a legislative debate in a country which is not theirs.
And why should they not think so; for years, They've been king-makers in Mexican politics and reaped the plunder of such objectionabel inherence in the electoral process. Last year, Mexico passed the so-called "Televisa Law" (Televisa is a part owner of Univision) a law that was openly considered as a pay-back for its collusion with the Fox government and which has failed the scrutiny of the Mexican Supreme Court.
Yet here, the ethnic hucksters who bring us widespread unlawful permanence of illegal alien labor to obliterate the hopes of our least skilled laborers, defend a fifth column trojan horse like UNIVISION.
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