MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 122

or lawyer of color?

The fervent advocacy of bilingual education on the part of

Latino elites has been a baffling development. Determined that the

burgeoning population of young Mexican-Americans will not go

the way of other minority groups and eventually lose both their

native language and their ethnic identity, they press ever forward

with an agenda that deprives these immigrants of the fluency and

expertise in English that the past assimilationist and immersionist

models insisted upon. After thirty years of such agitation, and with

ample proof that California’s recent ending of most bilingualism

in its schools has raised Latino test scores, it is now legitimate to

question the very motives of some in the La Raza movement: do

they wish the best for the children of aliens who are poor, or con-

tinued spoils for themselves who are affluent?

Again, we butt up against a tragic paradox: the young Chicano

who visits the emergency room does not want to be treated by a

doctor who cannot read and understand the rather complex direc-

tions on a vial of lifesaving antibiotic that are likely to be printed

only in English. He hopes that his surgeon also understands

English perfectly and grasps intricate printed warnings about the

fatal interactions between various medicines. He expectsâ€"no,

demandsâ€"that his Hispanic nurse be able to communicate effort-

lessly with the supervising physician in English as she measures out

potentially deadly antitoxins. Even a Chicano-Latino professor,

should he need kidney surgery, would probably confess that he

hopes his urologist was an undergraduate biology or history major

rather than the possessor of a Chicano studies degree.

Instead of offering immigrants the chance to strive for com-

monly recognized excellence, we tell them that the cultures they

came from are all inherently equalâ€"almost so as to deny the very

reasons why these aliens arrived here in the first place. This mes-

sage is cynical at its core, for we know that some other cultures

and nations have been not merely different, but often far worse at

providing freedom and security for their people. But to maintain







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