Last May, Vietnamese American cousins Cindy and Hue Vo — who were co-valedictorians of their high school in southern Louisiana — unwittingly triggered an ugly backlash.
In her valedictory speech, LSU-bound Cindy Vo thanked her parents by reciting a Vietnamese phrase, and then translated it into English:
“Co len minh khong bang ai, co suon khong ai bang minh,” she said into the microphone.
Her speech did not raise any hackles at the time. In fact, Vietnamese Americans had been valedictorians before in the town of Houma, located in bayous southwest of New Orleans. (Vo’s parents catch shrimp for a living.)
But one month later, a local school board member came up with a startling proposal: to ban “foreign” languages from commencement speeches (hat tip to Your Right Hand Thief and reporter Matthew Pleasant).
Here’s what that school board member, Rickie Pitre, had to say: “I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English.”
Pitre’s faulty grammar aside, several ironies abound. First, consider Pitre’s “non-English” pedigree:
In fact, the town of Houma is part of Acadiana, a diverse region that was first settled by the “Cajuns”: French-speaking Catholics who were deported from Nova Scotia in 1755. From Associated Press: “As late as the 1950s, children who spoke French in school were routinely punished.” Intriguingly, Spanish is now spoken more often than French in Acadiana.
At best, Messr. Pitre’s Vietnamese vendetta smacks of gross ignorance. But here’s the ultimate irony: many Vietnamese Americans actually speak French! (After all, France colonized Vietnam long before the US got involved there.)
According to the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, the Louisiana Constitution recognizes “the right of the people to preserve, foster and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins“.
On this Fourth of July, please tell the Terrebonne School Board (985.876.7400) what you think of Rickie Pitre’s ill-advised, unnecessary, and un-American proposal.
– Gautam Dutta
