It isn't. The United States has no official language.

How many times have you been pulled over, pray, infinite9? (unless you were, for example, driving erratically) Or spontaneously been controlled for your ID?

I never got asked any sort of identification in the US soil when I was living there, but I got controlled "once more" before entering the plane between LHR-PHX LHR three times in a row - I think because the "profiling brief" said persons traveling alone were liable to be suspect in terms of terrorism. I thought this was bloody annoying, as this was the third search in any given leg, preceding two others already.

I am sure there are a lot of other "profiling briefs" around - which serve for a purported justification to hassle other people for the sake of being alone; having a certain ethnicity, walking when one should afford a car etc.

I personally find that hassling people either randomly - or on basis of "profiling briefs" that might as well be as random - weaken everyone's civil rights. Should not anyone of us be assumed to have rights, and not to have an evil intent - lest there be some tangible proof?

I wonder what Rosa Parks would think of what you imply... And + bloody 58 years on!

I disagree with this, the reason I have that option is because German isn't only spoken in the US and the laws have been changed so that it's no longer illegal to teach the language. People are also free to speak it without any recrimination these days. When I was a kid there was still a strong presumption that German==Nazi. That has finally changed as the WWII generation has been dieing off, but it's still not the most desirable language to be heard speaking.

As for the languages dieing out, yes that's serious, but it's asinine to start assessing what is more and less serious. That kind of divisive thinking is how things like this are allowed to go on. Attempting to rank and sort things in that manner is counterproductive in the long run.

This is one example http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/6500.aspx

But,most people if they're really honest with themselves tend to perceive people with low skill in their language are less intelligent. I know that even being aware of that tendency, I regularly find myself thinking that way and have to remind myself that it's likely not true.

"Suppose to be" is not the same as "it is."

I will say that I would support a law recognizing English as the official language of the United States thereby relieving accountability for people who do not put up warning signs in Spanish.

The answer to the question at the top: 0. I have always been extra careful on the road and I have always been smart around cops.

Just because someone questions you doesn't mean your rights are getting violated. While it's true profiling can suck, you have to recognize that if your country is at war against a network of international terrorists most of which have deep olive skin complexions and dark hair, that is what happens. Also, illegal immigrants in the US are usually of Latin American appearance and operate heavily in the states that border Mexico. The Border Patrol and state troopers (quite a bit of which are actually of Hispanic heritage) can either waste time and resources questioning everyone they see or pay extra attention to the ones that fit the description of the suspects.

It may not seem fair but fairness is subjective. I wouldn't call giving amnesty to millions of illegals while millions of legal immigrants get pushed out further from becoming US citizens fair. I wouldn't consider depressed wages and higher costs in the name of "tolerance" towards illegals fair. Life isn't fair. Get used to it.

Also, it doesn't matter whether or not Rosa Parks would agree with me. She's dead and the race card doesn't work on me.

Stamping out minority languages goes hand-in-hand with stamping out minority cultures. Just look at Breton, or Welsh, or Cantonese. Give any thought to this and the only way one could consider forcing English is if one is trying to force people into becoming the majority culture.

I will never, ever support an official language law because an official language law goes against what the American Melting Pot is.

You are arguing with someone who thinks George Washington was born in the United States. Save your breath. :P

How can you have a 'melting pot' if the people can't even speak the same language?

The 'melting pot' was about people from different cultures becoming Americans, not Americans splitting into different cultures. Multiculturalism is the antithesis of the 'melting pot'.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Canada bilingual? Aside from the occasional hockey riot in Vancouver, and keeping in mind that everything is relative, you guys seem extremely peaceful and considerate of your fellow countrymen regardless of what they look like or what language they speak. When is the last time you heard a Canadian screaming, "If you don't speak the language get the fuck out of the country!"

Yes, and you've rather proven my point. Some of Canada's biggest problems are the relationships between the English speakers, the French speakers and the First Nations; we've done our best to ignore them by separating the French speakers into Quebec and letting the First Nations run the casinos, not by building a 'melting pot' where they all become part of one culture. To become a Canadian citizen, if not born here, you have to prove you can speak English or French, and at least understand the basics of Canada's history and culture. The government are in the process of tightening that further right now, so becoming Canadian if you don't speak one of those languages is only going to become harder.

Like I said all things are relative. What you may see as cultural problems there are nothing compared to the problems down here. Yes you do have language issues but you don't have half of your country still trying to fight a war that ended 150 years ago. You don't have members of Canadian Parliament insisting they be able to fly symbols of racial segregation over capital buildings. These are things brought about by a level of cultural intolerance and bigotry that lets face it, Canada never had. I know you have racial separatist but shit, they don't run for Congress.....AND GET ELECTED. :D

You can't have the melting pot without multiculturalism. American culture is more fluid than other cultures, it doesn't have the history or the ethnicity, so American culture is created by people from other cultures coming in and adding their culture into the pot. Language is deeply tied into culture.

The city I now live in is mostly white, English-speaking Europeans, with the biggest minority being First Nations, who either work alongside the white Europeans or do their own thing in their own areas. There are a tiny number of French-speakers, and a moderate number of Asians and Indians, who mostly want to get along with the white Europeans and do well in whatever career they choose. I think I saw a black person once.

Compared to Britain and America, it's already racially segregated.

The whole point of the 'melting pot' was for new immigrants to abandon their own culture and become Americans in a cohesive nation. Multiculturalism is the precise opposite, where everyone retains their own culture and see themselves as hyphenated Americans. It exists to destroy social cohesion, not to create it.

Ah, I'm thinking the Emerson style of smelting pot.

And I don't believe that hyphenated-Americans destroy social cohesion. It's the people who strike out against them that does. Should I give up my ancestry just to appease those who hate me? No! They'd hate me anyway! When so many people declare so loudly that people like me should go back to where they came, why should I be proud to be American? I could pass, yes, but should I be ashamed? I am ashamed, not for my culture, but for the people decrying America becoming "multicultural." So I would rather declare myself "hyphenated-American" than just be American. Because there is no shame in having culture that is not Anglo-Saxon. America is enriched by other cultures and assimilation in the traditional sense hurts us, as a nation.

Technically, that's not so. The "melting pot" fantasy is the idea of a perfect homegeneisation of people from different origins, blended into one unique novelty culture. This is not how it works. I think that the metaphor more accurately used nowadays is "salad bowl", that is a collection of subcultures articulated with each others.

That may be misleading too (as the usage of "culture" is in general), because the reality is people sharing some cultural and identitary elements, and opposing themselves on others. In other words, you get many different groups of people, who share some nation-wide references of values and identities (as "american"), and some more local ones (also, at varying degrees depending on the individual, "latino", "chinese ascend", "native american", etc). The point is, these multiple levels are not mutually exclusive. And you've got the same divides on other elements (/the new age subculture, the male/female identity, the ages distinctions, etc).

So, no absolute blend (as implied by "melting pot" metaphors), but no problem either. Except of course for the imbeciles, within each subculture, who can't stand sharing a general identity with the others...