Our Views: Strike a blow for tolerance
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The recent observance of the Fourth of July weekend was as good a time as any to remember that we are, in large part, a nation of immigrants, and that our greatness lies in the diversity of our people.
That reality seems to have been lost on a Terrebonne Parish School Board member who was miffed when two valedictorians at Ellender High offered a few words of their commencement speeches in Vietnamese.
Co-valedictorians and cousins Hue and Cindy Vo, whose parents came from Vietnam, gave parts of their speeches in Vietnamese during the high school’s recent commencement exercise. Cindy Vo offered just one sentence in Vietnamese, translating it for her classmates as a command to always be your own person. Hue Vo spoke a bit longer in her parents’ native tongue, and without translation, Terrebonne Parish School Board President Clark Bonvillain and Superintendent Ed Richard said. Later, Hu Voe said that her remarks in Vietnamese expressed gratitude to her parents and mentioned the hardships they faced. Maybe Hue Vo should have spoken more briefly in Vietnamese and offered translation for the rest of the audience, but the young can be forgiven such small oversights. We see no reason to make a state case of this.
It seems to us that Hue and Cindy Vo’s small acknowledgement of their ancestry is a nice expression of the American dream — that the children of immigrants can reach great heights in this land of liberty. We see nothing threatening in this, no dark prospect of English being threatened as the nation’s primary language. In fact, in a youth culture where self-absorption is so often the order of the day, we find it refreshing that two high school graduates would recognize so deeply the debt to their origins.
But in response to the commencement speeches, Terrebonne Parish School Board member Rickie Pitre is suggesting that only English should be allowed in graduation speeches in the school system.
“I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English,” Pitre said during a recent School Board committee meeting.
This is just the kind of narrow thinking that led to the suppression of French as a spoken language in Terrebonne Parish and throughout Acadiana for many years.
That’s a tradition of intolerance that’s not worth keeping.
That reality seems to have been lost on a Terrebonne Parish School Board member who was miffed when two valedictorians at Ellender High offered a few words of their commencement speeches in Vietnamese.
Co-valedictorians and cousins Hue and Cindy Vo, whose parents came from Vietnam, gave parts of their speeches in Vietnamese during the high school’s recent commencement exercise. Cindy Vo offered just one sentence in Vietnamese, translating it for her classmates as a command to always be your own person. Hue Vo spoke a bit longer in her parents’ native tongue, and without translation, Terrebonne Parish School Board President Clark Bonvillain and Superintendent Ed Richard said. Later, Hu Voe said that her remarks in Vietnamese expressed gratitude to her parents and mentioned the hardships they faced. Maybe Hue Vo should have spoken more briefly in Vietnamese and offered translation for the rest of the audience, but the young can be forgiven such small oversights. We see no reason to make a state case of this.
It seems to us that Hue and Cindy Vo’s small acknowledgement of their ancestry is a nice expression of the American dream — that the children of immigrants can reach great heights in this land of liberty. We see nothing threatening in this, no dark prospect of English being threatened as the nation’s primary language. In fact, in a youth culture where self-absorption is so often the order of the day, we find it refreshing that two high school graduates would recognize so deeply the debt to their origins.
But in response to the commencement speeches, Terrebonne Parish School Board member Rickie Pitre is suggesting that only English should be allowed in graduation speeches in the school system.
“I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English,” Pitre said during a recent School Board committee meeting.
This is just the kind of narrow thinking that led to the suppression of French as a spoken language in Terrebonne Parish and throughout Acadiana for many years.
That’s a tradition of intolerance that’s not worth keeping.
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