WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2006, 10:30 a.m. - A black activist is organizing a wave of class-action workplace lawsuits for people who have lost their jobs because they did not speak Spanish. "We are going to have a major class-action suit in this country in the workplace," Claud Anderson told a radio host. "You cannot in an English speaking country demand that people speak Spanish."
Anderson said many Latinos who resolve to continue speaking their native language "signifies power" and is meant to make blacks in particular "deal with them on their turf."
"Any black person that cannot speak Spanish [are] losing jobs in California, Texas and Arizona," he told Joe Madison, the morning show host on XM 169 The Power on Friday.
Anderson - who is also a radio host and author of "Powernomics," a book about how to strengthen black spending power - said he is also concerned about black students, who he said are performing poorly in high schools.
"This is an English speaking country," Anderson said. "It is insulting for people to mandate that black kids learn Spanish when they can't even speak basic English ... You got to learn your own language first."
He is asking anyone who has lost their job due to being forced to learn Spanish to call his Harvest Institute at 202-518-2465.
[Note: Redding News Review is heard on XM 169 The Power]
Poster Comment:
A few years ago a 7 year-old black boy in the Oakland schools was placed in a class of 19 Mandarin Chinese speaking children who were being taught in their native language to prepare them for English classes. He was number 20 so he was asked to learn Chinese before being taught English because the quota on bilingual classes was 20. When this story hit the papers, the school put him in a class with English speakers for 6 weeks. Then after the press went away, they put him back in the Mandarin Chinese class as he was the only non-Chinese second grader in the school who knew at least some Chinese. I wonder what happened to that boy!!