The stupidest part is that from middle school on, every student MUST take one form of foreign language.

The typical options being Spanish, French, German, or Italian.

... Every American child is SUPPOSED to be multilingual according to the public school system, dating back to the dawn of the education system.

It's terribly forced. The reality in America is so far from this 'we're all one happy family' crap it's not even funny. Do the CEO's of Coke live in a crystal tower?

....Wait. I guess they do.

The thing though is that it's racism driving the complaints. You can bullshit around the point all you like, but the fact of the matter is that it was racism driving those complaints and as a responsible American, it's my responsibility to stand up to that racist bullshit.

Reminding people that the US is a society composed of individuals from basically every other nation on Earth, is a worthwhile endeavor, especially considering how expensive that airtime. It sent a great message that we're all in this together, which is a sentiment that has been lacking in recent years.

As for your ancestors, that's all well and good, mine learned it as well. However, it wasn't until the '40s that my family stopped with the German. They mainly stopped because of the bigotry and oppression of the US Federal government. Had they been located on the coast, they would have been thrown in prison the same way that other Germans, Italians and Japanese were.

The US has a long history of using English as a tool of oppression. If you don't know that, I suggest you read up on the efforts to destroy the various indigenous languages of America by taking children from their families and sending them to school to be beaten if they spoke anything other than English.
You must live in a very small town in the fly over states if that's your attitude. Around here I see signs in various languages. I walk down the street in certain neighborhoods and I hear all sorts of languages being spoken.

And this city is less diverse than average after decades of gentrification. This is the real America, the folks claiming otherwise mostly come from rural areas and likely haven't seen any colored people ever.

Way to start off with a generalization. Coke CEO's would not be pleased.

I lived in Philly for 4 years and that place was more blatantly racist than any western town I've lived in. It was a deep rooted racism, not born out of ignorance or lack of diversity, but through hardened historical conflict. In fact, when I think on it, Philly wasn't so much diverse as it was a segregated melting pot. I didn't see any Hasidic Jews holding hands with the brothas, holding hands with the Muslims, and Italians, and Latinos, all singing Kumbaya around a camp fire. Every 'tribe' pretty well kept to themselves.

France really shouldn't be what people look up to with a unifying language. They're kinda trying a whole cultural genocide on the Bretons and the Occitans.

America needs no official language. We don't need to force people to speak English. That's not how a melting pot works. Every person who comes with their own culture with their own language, enriches our nation as a whole. It is not "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, unless they use that breath to speak some foreign language, in that case they can fuck right off," that's not what our country stands for. We're a nation of immigrants, of people who came seeking better life, that's what unifies us. Not language, not the colour of our skin, not Anglo-Saxon culture. We've fallen into oppression before, and we should look back on that with horror, not reverence. We should never say "this is what you must do to be American," because that is not how our culture works. We should defend those who cannot defend themselves, not kick them as well.

I frankly wish there was a transliteration, as I think it would be interesting and fair to know what languages were actually there.

I think Spanish.

I suspect Hebrew and Arabic.

I deduct from black kids kicking the ball there was some language from Africa as well...

But I think that it was as such a close call between English and German in the voting, at the time - and maybe even French could have been a close contender had France not had Huguenot oppression effective up to colonies.

The above said, as ESC fan, I rather miss the diversity of languages over English rather than disapprove of them. :-p

Near the end of this article they have some of the languages spoken.

Thx doccarnby. French Senegalese, how nice! :-) Need to listen to it again, as I do like Youssou N'Dour - but how comes i got the Spanish better than ... French?

As to this gal who sang in Keres (= "Native American") - I wonder if she feels now that she has sold out, with all this backlash?

When verily she just sung what was there way before the imported English.

In my view, it is a greater problem than this controversy, though, if the original languages of USA are only for some Coke commercial, and not languages that are preserved through education system.

How is it, actually? Can one study up to high school end diploma with the original languages?

No, it doesn't. Matt Binder is a New Yorker. US population includes some asshats. This is not news by any stretch of the imagination. Meanwhile, asshats in power have to engage in gerrymandering to keep the pretense of popular support; only corporations get to increase their power unchecked, and corporations aren't moral agents.

In every Western-style democracy, people are getting better. You keep hearing about enraged asshats because people are getting better and the asshats feel they are losing. Because they are.

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So i'm here since it's a political thread and I don't feel like starting one for Russian dumbfucks. Specifically, they want to make all videogames 18+ or no sale. Because, obviously, children are too stupid to get the games through other means where no one asks their age or confirms their identity and where Rapelay is as accessible as Mario.
#keepitupguise

Sounds like a brilliant idea if their goal is to give people reasons and/or excuses to pirate rampantly.

What if they added a few more languages?

Like Klingon?

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2014/02/controversial_multilingual_coke_commercial_adds_mo.php

They actually don't care about piracy other than an excuse for (awful, government-sponsored) movies spectacularly failing. This is a Moral Guardianship/Old People Butthurt* issue, prompted by the recent school shooting (committed by kid whose gun nut dad taught him to shoot and had weapons just lying around in his apartment).

*I suppose a thematically relevant anecdote is in order. Recently, I had to attend a social function where all the cool kids went partying and I got stuck with "old" people watching a Z-grade crime show on (analog) TV (okay, I just stole some wifi and messed around with my tablet, but I was in the room). The episode in question featured a hunt for an incriminating video recording. While the other viewers ranted at the show's writer for writing completely idiotic characters (who would forget to take cover, come alone to meet a mafia boss who already tried to kill them, open doors to strangers etc), they literally foamed at the mouth with rage when I suggested the plot should have never happened, because the video could have been just copied, or better yet, uploaded to the internets; the protagonist (1) could have cleared his name in like 5 minutes, and (2) the mafia boss's bad-faith attempt to buy and subsequently destroy the video was completely bugfuck insane and for that reason shouldn't have been made.

You can't even imagine how they raged. And I think I know why. They felt the time of technologically illiterate manly men who solve their manly problems with guns, more guns, and the Vory code was over. That every kid with a crappy phone can resolve a plot which they wanted to pretend called for Spetsnaz.

(Note that these sort of crime dramas (featuring murder, torture, and whatnot) are basically the only type of original programming on mainstream TV. Even women's interest crime dramas exist (they have the male cop or criminal protagonist saddled with a useless sperm receptacle whose whining about the protagonist's busy schedule is only interrupted by regular kidnappings). And yet, videogames are somehow to blame for sax and violins.)

Here's Coca-Cola telling xenophobes they are no longer relevant, and pretty much every news outlet has either a laugh or a symmetrical moral outrage at their expense. I don't think it gets more mainstream than failblog. So, nothing to be ashamed of.

Gonna take this OT a little bit...

As someone living in said 'fly-over country', I'll tell you that there is more immigrant influx than it might seem to outsiders - and that includes out in the country. Granted, in the US the big cities, especially on the coasts and borders, see more of this, but there is a growing population of folks from south of the border.

Another thing we have here are specific ethnic pockets, that arose from efforts at various times last century from this or that group to help the people of troubled nation xyz. For example, Minneapolis has a lot of people specifically from Somalia. In the local city here, and generally all around the state (WI), we have a Hmong (Laotian) immigrant population that is reaching its 3rd generation. And of course, the Hispanic population is growing where manufacturing exists.

So, yes and no. I mean, we do have an ethnic mix though it isn't as great - for the obvious immigration reasons - as on the coastal and border states. I'll agree, to a point, that there is some xenophobia to be found. But I also feel that this isn't significantly different from the same problems that were found in the more-mixed parts of the country when THEY were having their own influxes years before. While it might seem that we're just stick-to-ourselves backward-asses, I think it's more that this part of the nation is dealing with it later than other parts have had to do the same. The same process will occur, where eventually Miguel is just your neighbor and not the guy speaking that funny language and taking your job.