Re: Judge Bork on Ebonics

[azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)]

Rich,

Thanks for your passionate and intelligent response.  Before I attempt to
address some of your objections to the passages Mr. Bork's book, let me say
that while I agree with some of his observations I find his objections and
perscriptions (including a legislative check on Supreme Court decisions)
too little too late.

BTW, the lead in and Bork material was taken from an article on
alt.libertian (i.e., not my words or sentiment).

>From the book's liner notes:

        The root of our decline, Bork argues, is the rise of
        modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical
        egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather
        than opportunities) and radical individualism (the
        drastic reduction of the limits of personal gratification). The
        roots of modern liberalism are deeply embedded in the
        past two and a half centuries-and perhaps-arise from
        the very nature of Western civilization itself.


[snip]
>> Vietnamese and Polish children were put into English-speaking
>> classes and were competent into English long before the Hispanics
>> in bilingual schools.
>
>No evidence for this assertion exists.

See, generally, "The Failure of Bilingual Education," ed. Jorge Amselle
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Equal Opportunities, 1996).

>
>> That leaves the partisans of bilingualism only
>> the choice of saying that Hispanic children are not as capable as
>> others or admitting that they, the educators, are driven by hostility
>> to American culture, and the rewards to be had by teachers' unions
>> and educational bureaucrats.
>
>No. I choose to call you on the bullshit assertion that Hispanic
>children don't learn English. This prejudice is rooted in the small
>but visible segment of the Hispanic population that comprises recent
>immigrants. It is indubitably true that illegal immigrants doing odd
>jobs and domestic work -- the segment of the Hispanic population most
>visible to sensitive anglos -- tend not to speak English.
>Extrapolations from this population, though, are invalid.
>
>> Often, the bilingualists do not care whether immigrant chil-
>> dren learn English. The key to success for the students is "self-
>> esteem. . . . Children do badly in school because of their feelings
>> of 'shame' at belonging to a minority group rather than the 'domi-
>> nant group.' For the children to do better, teachers must "con-
>> sciously challenge the power structure both in their classrooms
>> and schools and in the society at large." As Richard Bernstein
>> writes, "Bilingual education ... is an act of rebellion against white,
>> Anglo cultural domination."
>
>Note the only evidence offered by Bork to bolster this straw man
>he's building is a similar slew of bald, unsupported assertions by a
>friend of his. He might as well be quoting himself.

See Richard Berstein, "Dictatorship of the Virtue: Multiculturalism and the
Battle for America's Future," (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 244.
The interior quotation is from Jim Cummins, "Empowering Minority Students,"
California Association for Bilingual Education, Sacramento, 1989, p. ix.

[snip]
>
>> Public dissatisfaction with the linguistic fracturing of society
>> has led to calls for an English-only amendment to the Constitu-
>> tion. The frustration is understandable, but there is no need to
>> amend the Constitution to achieve an English-speaking nation. All
>> that need be done is the abolition of bilingual education and the
>> repeal of the Voting Rights Act's requirement of different language
>> ballots.
>
>You'd better hurry, too, so that you can disenfranchise people before
>they know about it.
>
>> once they begin to see its results. Immigrant parents want their
>> children to learn English and become Americans. The opposition
>> to that, manifested in bilingual education, comes from American
>> elites who form an adversarial culture, alienated from the culture
>> of the West and wishing to weaken it.
>
>Who are these "American elites"? Who's in on the conspiracy? What's
>in it for them?

Ah, a very good question, and one which Bork spends a considerable time
upon.  In the short, they are the radicals of the '60s who have taken over
or heavily modified the cultural institutions they once sought to destroy
(e.g., Clinton, many intellectuals, the media (esp. Hollywood), university
faculties, etc.).  Special attention is given the Supreme Court (although
obviously they are older than the '60s radicals) and its misguided and, in
his opinion, unconstitutional basis supporting many liberal decisions
(e.g., abortion and affirmative action) in the past 20 or so years.


>
>> In 1989, the Commissioners Task Force on Minorities in New
>> York concluded: "African Americans, Asian Americans, Puerto
>> kicans/Latinos, and Native Americans have all been the victims of
>> an intellectual and educational oppression that has characterized
>> the culture and institutions of the United States and the European
>> American world for centuries." All young people were being
>> "miseducated" because of a "systematic bias toward European cul-
>> ture and its derivatives." Bernstein asks, rhetorically, "Could the
>> multicultural animus against 'European culture and its derivatives'
>> emerge more clearly than that? Here we have a direct statement
>> that the Western culture is harmful to nonwhite children ."
>
>The interesting thing about this attack is that you need to accept
>the Task Force's mode of analysis in order to accept Bernstein's
>conclusion. What if you don't? What if you say that this "European
>culture and its derivatives" thing is bullshit, all we really have is
>modern culture, and be done with it? Then Bernstein's statement and
>the Task Force's statments are equally nonsensical.

True, but its not clear what "modern culture" is, as its constantly
evolving.  As you correctly point out, and Bork discusses elsewhere, there
is no single "Eurpoean" culture.  However, no society has prospered by
failing to formally educate its youth in its cultural basis.  Without
substantial cultural unity a fractured and contentious society is a likely
result. In Federalist No. 2, Publius (John Jay) wrote:

        Providence has been pleased to give this one connected coun-
        try, to one united people, a people decended from the same
        ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same reli-
        gion, attached to the same princinple of government, very simi-
        lar in their manners and customs...
           This country and this people seem to have been made for
        each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence,
        that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of
        bretheren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never
        be split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties.

Despite the fact that we have increasingly become a hetrogeneous society,
our culture and law is clearly Protestent English-based.  It was not
European or, as we now say, Eurocenteric.

-- Steve