There are controversies so ridiculous you can't believe that folks actually get worked up over them. But they do.
Take, for example, what is happening in Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana, where some are upset about the fact that two Vietnamese-American cousins, co-valedictorians at Ellender High School, delivered part of their commencement speeches – one sentence each – in Vietnamese.
There is a segment of society that is scared of its own shadow when it comes to culture and language. It's terrified that the country is changing and fear it might not find a place in the new version. In a futile attempt to keep things the way they are, it wants to do things like declare English the national language.
And so it tends to frown on valedictorians who deliver speeches in any language but English. Usually, the beef is over anything in Spanish but it could just as easily be about, say, Vietnamese.
Hue and Cindy Vo are the daughters of Vietnamese immigrants who, through what one imagines was a good amount of discipline and hard work, earned the privilege of addressing their high school classmates. They wanted to thank their parents for enduring hardships to immigrate from Vietnam and encouraging them to succeed. So each girl included one sentence in Vietnamese aimed directly at her parents, who are not fluent in English.
That raised the hackles of school board member Rickie Pitre, who told The Associated Press: “I don't like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English.”
Oh brother. U.S.-born kids struggle to keep up with their counterparts from India and China in terms of academics and work ethic. And they lag behind their European counterparts in terms of how many languages they speak.
They need more exposure to foreign languages, and less exposure to these silly controversies.
