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Nashville’s unkind English-Only move would hurt refugees
Kurdish children and me. Belmont neighborhood, Nashville. 1992
Nashville will vote Jan. 22 on whether to create an English-Only Metro government. Nothing will convince me that this is about uniting our city or saving money. No winning argument has been offered and nothing but anecdote and race-baiting has been delivered. This is pure ugly and dark in the heart.
My sadness and outrage over this campaign is made worse when I think of the thousands of refugees who make Nashville their home.
The refugees are from countries such as Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Vietnam, and Laos. They all are here legally, resettled by the federal government, because Nashville’s diverse economy provides a good place to start anew. The federal government also tends to resettle refugees where there already is a refugee and immigrant community, so that countryman can help countryman. That has been the case here. Refugees with more years and experience here have helped newcomers. Charities and volunteers filled in necessary gaps.
Let me tell you about a refugee family I know, a family who is an example of the American dream come true, and a family who would have been affected and insulted had they arrived during an era of “English-Only.”
In the summer of 1992, reporter’s notebook in hand, I walked into a Nashville apartment complex called Colonial Village and saw Kurdish women in head scarves and long dresses sitting on the lawn while dozens of their little children — gorgeous and multi-colored blonds, brunettes, redheads — played about them. Across the parking lot, outside another building there was a big group of Vietnamese Amerasian young people. They were giving each other hair cuts. I later met Armenians and Laotians there.
This apartment complex could not have had a better name, Colonial Village, for it was often the first home to refugees fleeing war and persecution in their homelands and resettled in Nashville by the federal government.
Nashville, with its diverse and booming 1990s economy, was a popular resettlement city and my assignment that day was to write about the refugees and their new lives.
I wrote that story and many more about refugees in Nashville during my years as a newspaper reporter.
Those stories helped catalog the beginning of quick changes in Nashville, a city long used to only one kind of “Southern,” and they created a richer experience for me in a city where even I — a Cuban American from Miami and Jersey — felt foreign.
One particular family I met on that hill back in 1992 adopted me and always made room for me, whether I arrived with a notebook and a photographer, or just me, after work and looking to play with the kids and share tea with the parents. The kids knew my phone number at work and home and called often: “My mom says to come eat,” the littlest girl would say.
They are from Kurdistan of Iraq and they arrived in 1991 with eight children, ranging in age from teens to toddlers. Two other children didn’t make it to the United States: The oldest daughter stayed behind with her husband and children. A daughter of 8-years-old was killed when Saddam Hussein bombed their village. The youngest child, a boy, was born in Nashville.
Two of the children who were no more than 7 and 9, learned to speak English fluently in less than a year and most often acted as my translators.
To say that I adored this family is an understatement. They reminded me of Cubans — always insisting I sit for hot tea and food. Oh, how I loved the noise, the smells, and the flat bread, especially when it was cheesy.
As the years progressed, I had many dinners in their home. I attended their school functions and graduations. I packed as many of the children as I could in my Hyundai and drove them off to the YMCA pool or to my house for movies, pizzas and sleepovers. When the oldest got married, my husband and I were there to celebrate.
One of the children, the youngest girl, was my delight. With blond hair and green eyes like her mother’s, she was a funny, bright and spunky kid. We hung out a lot and she told me when she was no more than 9-years-old: “I have a smart brain.” She did and she does.
That child is 24 now and in her second year of medical school. She is thinking of becoming an internist.
Let me tell you about the rest of her siblings:
Her oldest sister, a mother a five, is a nurse; her oldest brother (the one who learned English really fast) just graduated from medical school and is on his way to being an anesthesiologist. Another older brother graduates from medical school next spring and plans to be a urologist. A younger brother is a nurse. Yet another brother is studying to be a nurse. The two babies are in high school now and an older sister, married with three children, works at a local restaurant.
These were the children I met in 1992, just a few short months after they arrived in Nashville from a refugee camp in Turkey.
I saw them last month after a too-long absence from their lives. It did my heart good to see them and hug them, to marvel at their growth and smarts and success. The delightful little blond is not so blond anymore, but she’s wonderful. Still funny and still the owner of “a smart brain.” (She’s the blond next to me in the picture above. One of her brothers is in the yellow shirt)
Their mother, a tender woman with a beautiful smile, could not be prouder of them. Their father is a kind gentleman who has worked hard to provide his children with hope in a new home.
The parents of these children are heroes. People who have lived through persecution, war, death of a child, untimely death of relatives, a loss of all they have known. They landed in a Southern city with little knowledge of them or their culture and they, like fellow countrymen who live here, are thriving. Nashville has the largest Kurdish population outside of Iraq.
This family is America. Strangers in a new land who have become successful and independent. Just like my family, and the families of each and every one of us living here. We all got here sometime before. We all fold in. And even if we have kept tight to family traditions brought from other countries, we are what America is about.
And you guessed it: they eventually learn to speak English.
Think about that, think about them, when you go vote January 22.
Shame on you: Eric Crafton. Phil Valentine. Jon Crisp.
Shame, shame on you.
Forgive me for asking but what will the English Only Metro Government do/result in?
This is a beautiful article. Its a shame that can’t publish this in the front page of the tennessean!!.
Carrie, this is beautiful! You should post this story on NashvilleForAllOfUs so that more people can read it.
The family with whom you fell in love learned English — eventually. But there are millions and millions of immigrants in this nation, legal and illegal, who have been here many years, even decades, and still have not undertaken to assimilate by learning English. They seem to be undertaking to recreate their home cultures in our land. We cannot be a diverse nation that lacks a common language. If we go this route, the United States of America will end through balkanization accelerated by division of language.
@jujita The claim is that it will save money and force people to learn English. The truth is that it won’t save money, and possibly cost the city millions in federal dollars: http://tinyurl.com/8k5wy6 (and let’s not even talk about the cost of managing it and defending it) It means that if you come visit from France, Germany or China and you need help, we don’t yet know what kind of help Metro will give you. You may be on your own.
Now, so they don’t lose federal money, Metro will have to continue to offer at least 97% of the translations they already offer. So, all this mierda and bad PR to get rid of a pittance.
Handel and Tanja, thank you.
@Anonymous, welcome to my own little Pooh Corner. I could offer you dozens and dozens and dozens of families I have met, just like my Kurdish friends, who have learned English and thrived. Their children are raised in our culture and in our country and are Americans — Americans who happen to have roots less deep, but Americans nonetheless. You obviously speak English and your family immigrated here at some point.
People will learn English — not because they may have to communicate with a Metro Office or the Metro Council — but because to succeed, to move forward, they have to. It’s the American way.
A divisive movement such as this helps no one. What does? Well, in my opinion, it means being neighborly and Christian and extending a hand and keeping an open heart. Mr. Crafton could have spent his time better by encouraging the citizenry to get their butts out there and help their new neighbors, share a meal and friendship, teach them to habla el ingles a little.
Maybe my Miami roots are showing, but I am not afraid. Don’t be afraid, Anon, all will be well.
Thanks for the answer Carrie!
So does this mean the signs will only be in English as well?
@jujita, I would guess signs would only be in English because nothing can be translated unless an exception is made.
The only time I ever saw anything public translated by Metro was when they were going to build the stadium and they put notices up under the bridge to warn the homeless guys that they had to move or risk getting hurt in construction. It was in such poor Spanish that it was beyond understandable, even by me, who speaks jibber jabber. The translator was a Metro staffer who said she knew enough Spanish to translate the document because her father was from Morocco. I wrote a story about it for the paper.
Ay!
Morroco?
AY!