Text, sub-text and the language barrier

cbs2.com - Spanish Media Organized Nationwide Mass Protests:
"(AP) LOS ANGELES The marching orders were clear: Carry American flags and pack the kids, pick up your trash and wear white for peace and for effect.
"Many of the 500,000 people who crammed downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to protest legislation that would make criminals out of illegal immigrants learned where, when and even how to demonstrate from the Spanish-language media.
"For English-speaking America, the mass protests in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities over the past few days have been surprising for their size and seeming spontaneity.
"But they were organized, promoted or publicized for weeks by Spanish-language radio hosts and TV anchors as a demonstration of Hispanic pride and power."

TEXT

For the benefit of us second class citizens who do not speak Spanish, the AP has provided a peek at the workings of the world around us. What appear to us mere Anglos* to be spontaneous outpourings of sentiment about pending immigration legislation have in fact been planned and publicly promoted for weeks - but promoted in Spanish.

THE LANGUAGE BARRIER

Now, don't get me wrong, the First Amendment protects speech in Spanish today just as it once protected my maternal ancestors speaking German in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Indiana. My beef is not with the Spanmish-language media per se.

However, this does illustrate how the political movement to promote Spanish to the exclusion of English in the growing Hispanic community serves to divide us further from one another. You can't maintain a public dialog effectively when a substantial minority are carrying on their own conversation among themselves which is not subject to engagement by the larger society.

And there is a decided one-sidedness to this process. For one example, much Enlish-language programming on television offers Spanish SAP, but how much Spanish-language programming comes with English SAP? Or, have you noticed, as I have, how characters speaking Spanish in English language programming say things in that language that would be bleeped out if said in English?

And, as the AP story notes later on, there is a serious lacuna in that the mainstream (English-language) media does not report to the English-only audience what is going on in the Spanish-language media.

SUB-TEXT

Return to the quoted matter above, and notice this part of the second paragraph: "... to protest legislation that would make criminals out of illegal immigrants ..." This is approximately what US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee shich has jurisdiction over immigration legislation, said within the last few days.

News Flash for Sen. Specter and the Associated Press - crossing the border without passing through immigration control is a crime, do it and you are a criminal; overstaying your visa is a crime, do it and you are a criminal; obtaining employment while here on a tourist visa is a crime, do it and you are a criminal. These "undocumented workers" are already criminals - the legislation they and their apologists are protesting is only designed to improve enforcement of existing law.