Should English be the official language of the United States of America?
nation, in 1780, John Adams proposed an official, government sponsored academy of the English language. According to an ACLU briefing paper, the proposal was “rejected as undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty” by the Continental Congress. The Founding Fathers apparently saw the use of ancestral languages as a right, and didn’t want the country to have a single official language, just as it has no official religion. Since then, however, every time the U.S. goes through a recession and job prospects dwindle, an anti-immigrant backlash begins. Many white, English-speaking Americans would rather the immigrants just go home and leave the jobs to them. Along with this backlash often comes a push to adopt English as the official language of the U.S. – thus excluding people who primarily speak other languages, whether they are U.S. citizens, legal residents, or illegal residents. I’ve been aware of the English-only movement for several years, but it recently came to the front of my m
