Do We Really Want an Order Declaring English as the US Official Language?

President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating English as the official language of the United States. This is the first such order in US history.

This move reverses a policy issued by former president Bill Clinton requiring agencies to offer programs to assist people with limited English proficiency. Trump’s order, though, permits agencies to voluntarily maintain those support systems.

“A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language,” Trump’s order stated.

Approximately one in 10 people living in the United States speak a language other than English, more than triple the amount compared to 1980, according to 2022 data from the US Census.

Trump’s order enacts his campaign pledge and it states that the order is meant to “promotes unity, cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens, ensure consistency in government operations, and create a pathway to civic engagement.”

But does this order actually promote unity, or, rather, is its purpose to continue Trump and MAGA’s extreme nationalist swing — for example, with the renaming to the “Gulf of American Hegemony” — and attack on “woke” diversity equity and inclusion initiatives while further demonizing immigrants generally and non-English as first language speakers specifically.

Roman Palomares, the leaders of the League of United Latin American Citizens, raises the point that Trump’s order restricts freedom of speech and is, therefore, discriminatory and possibly unconstitutional:

“Our Founding Fathers enshrined freedom of speech in the First Amendment without limiting it to one language. They envisioned a nation where diversity of thought, culture, and expression would be its greatest strength,” said Palomares.

“Declaring English as the only official language directly contradicts that vision,” he continued. “America thrives when we embrace inclusivity, not when we silence the voices of millions who contribute to its success.”

No Person is “Illegal”

No person is “illegitimate”! No person is “illegal”! No person is an “alien”!

Responding to this basic moral premise, in 2019, the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced new legal enforcement guidelines banning the term “illegal alien” in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, and law enforcement when intended to demean, humiliate, harass, or discriminate.

The language of law “prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived ‘alienage and citizenship status,’ and national origin….”

Employers, housing providers (including hotels), providers of public accommodations, and law enforcement officers can be held liable with punitive damages up to $250,000 per offense.

In 2022, New York State laws were amended to remove “alien” and “illegal alien” and replace them with “noncitizen” and “undocumented noncitizen.”

The law does not apply to areas outside those explicitly stated. It attempts to address an often forgotten but nonetheless harsh form of oppression known as “Linguicism”: prejudice and discrimination based on language, which runs rampant in the United States.

And Then There Is the United States.

I had the pleasure of visiting my cousin in Antwerp, Belgium. One sunny day as we walked the promenade in that beautiful city, Charles, a fluent speaker of seven languages, posed a riddle to me.

He asked, “What is it called when someone can speak three languages?”

“Trilingual?” I guessed.

“Okay,” he said. “Now what is it called when someone can speak two languages?”

I quipped, “Bilingual!”

He said, “Yes. Now what is it called when someone can speak one language?

“Monolingual?,” I replied tentatively.

“No,” he laughed. “It’s called American!”

His riddle, though intended partly in jest, shot to the very core of our national linguistic abilities, perceptions, and policies. While people from virtually all nations reside in the United States and contribute to our collective identity and economy, a seemingly linguistic isolationist code has taken hold of our national consciousness.

Though French “kisses” our northern and Spanish our southern territorial perimeters, a long-standing egocentric and arrogant English-as-the-only-“official”-language crusade has infused our landscape.

President Theodore Roosevelt clearly and firmly articulated this ethos in 1907:

“We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.”

More recently, in March 2012, Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum asserted that as a condition for U.S. statehood, Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking territory, must require English as its primary language.

Though some advocates prefer the term “Official English,” the English-only campaign surfaced as a movement around 1981 to push for a constitutional amendment banning all languages other than English in government proceedings and printed materials emanating from federal, state, and local governments.

Realizing how difficult and tiresome is the process of ratifying a constitutional amendment, proponents changed tactics by lobbying Congress for a “Language of Government” law mandating official English in the federal government, though such legislation has never passed both houses by a simple majority.

Since that time, English only activists have succeeded in passing laws mandating English as the “official” language in approximately 31 states, including my former home state of Iowa in 2002.

The Iowa law decrees English only in the printing of all government documents and forms, except for driver’s education materials, trade and tourism documents, and documents discussing the rights of victims of crimes, criminal defendants, and constitutional issues.

Backers of the law argue that it not only saves taxpayers the expense of printing materials in multiple languages, but that sharing a single and common language aids overall communications and brings people together into a unified patriotic community.

Making English the official language in the United States or any state is about as necessary as establishing popcorn as the official snack at movie theaters.

People will eat popcorn whether we codify it as “official,” just as native-born residents and immigrants to our shores understand the necessity of establishing a functional command of English as a prime requisite for success and advancement.

The “English Only” movement has the effect, however, of marginalizing and demeaning non-native English speakers, decreases the likelihood of creating and maintaining multilingual programs, and gives us all the false and discriminatory impression that languages beside English are unimportant to learn, even though most other countries on the planet promote multilingualism.

My friend, a man of Mexican descent who grew up in San Antonio, Texas, told me how the English-only mandate in his elementary school negatively and unalterably impacted his self-esteem. Though fluent in English, one afternoon during recess period while playing basketball on the school yard, he alerted his friend and teammate in Spanish to get ready to catch the ball.

Upon hearing this, a playground monitor ran up to him, grabbed him tightly by his left ear, and dragged him to the principal’s office where he was forced to attend “Spanish detention.” The overt and covert messages of this incident became crystal clear: your language and your culture are not welcome here!

A few years ago, I created an online petition directed to the Iowa House of Representative, State Senate, and Governor to abolish our state’s “English-only” law. The petition struck a chord with a significant list of co-signers. According to one:

“As a bilingual person, this law sickens me and demonstrates the ignorance of some Americans. Bilingualism and the use of languages other than English only promote our richness as a nation, our heritage, and ultimately help to protect our national security. No true patriot could support or tolerate this hateful law.”

Rather than resisting the concept of multilingualism and multiculturalism by viewing it as a challenge to our country’s unity and very existence, we need to embrace our rich diversity. According to the National Association for Multicultural Education:

“Multicultural education is a philosophical concept built on the ideals of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity as acknowledged in various documents, such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, constitutions of South Africa and the United States, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. It affirms our need to prepare students for their responsibilities in an interdependent world.”

Without a strong emphasis on multilingualism and multiculturalism in our schools and larger society, we will continue down the shameful historical path laid by those who have gone before us in the United States, which historian Joel Spring refer to as “cultural genocide” defined as “the attempt to destroy other cultures” through forced acquiescence and assimilation to majority rule and standards.

This cultural genocide works through the process of “deculturalization,” which Joel Spring describes as “the educational process of destroying a people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture.”

The Jewish immigrant and sociologist of Polish and Latvian heritage, Horace Kallen (1915), coined the term “cultural pluralism” to challenge the image of the so-called “melting pot,” which he considered inherently undemocratic.

Kallen envisioned a United States in the image of a great symphony orchestra, not sounding in unison (the “melting pot” with its monolingualism), but rather, one in which all the disparate languages and cultures play in harmony and retain their unique and distinctive tones and timbres.

We should expect any day now that President Donald Trump will sign another executive order, this time declaring Orange as the official US skin color!