Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Recently, someone went into an emergency room here [Texas] and was unable to communicate their symptoms in English. The answer, of course, is not for her to learn English but for the State to provide a translator. Next will probably be an employment requirement for emergency room doctors to know Spanish. I try to reverse this in debate with people, imagine I am on vacation in Mexico and have to go into an emergency room there, am unable to communicate in Spanish. Would I start whining that my civil rights were violated, or would I accept that I took that risk by going to Mexico without being able to speak the language? If I asserted my English language rights, they would quite properly catalog me as an "ugly American"...but there can be no "ugly Mexican" here, heavens no.