Bumped into an old college acquaintence online. A bigot then, and a bigot now.

[Binkie The Clown]

He literally used to put swastika bumper stickers on his car.

He surprised me by saying he supported bilingual education in public schools. His reason: "If the Mexicans learn English, then in addition to taking all the crap jobs we don't want anyway, they'll be able to take the good jobs away from us too. We need to discourage them from learning English in any way we can. We need to encourage them to keep their own culture so they won't be able to assimilate into our culture."

How should I respond to that? I'm at a loss for words.

[Butterbean]

1. You simply can't respond to that.

Quite frankly nothing you say will matter. People like that don't hear anything but their own opinions, and rarely if ever listen to reason and logic. Just my experience.

[hifiguy]

2. Back quietly away.

Engaging RWNJs is never productive. Like the punch like to the old joke goes -don't bother, the pig likes it and you'll just get all muddy.

[MrScorpio]

3. Just tell him that what he said sounded way better in the original German and leave it at that. nt

[closeupready]

4. People change. Some don't.

I had friends from high school who fundie'd out, and posted all this God and Jesus stuff to their FB feeds, and I had to simply wish them well, unfriend them, and move on with my own life.

If I were you, I'd let him go, and yep, move on with your own life.

[Hoyt]

5. Run into lot of bigots from High School on Facebook. By college, learned how to avoid them.

In any event, I've been defriended a bunch for calling them out on their racist/bigoted posts. They'll deny it every time, saying it's not racist, even though the post they are sharing is from some ignorant yahoo with confederate flags all over their FB page.

I've learned, you can't reason with these people. The response from them that cracks me up is when they resort to calling me a bigot because I profess distrust/disrespect for right wingers.

[Binkie The Clown]

6. I agree with all your replies, but what really bothers me is...

There's a certain logic to what he says. Not being fluent in English is definitely a handicap in the job market, and if bilingual services for speakers of any non-English language discourage people from learning English then it follows that bilingual services enable people to remain handicapped. That's what I don't know how to refute.

Immigrants who do master English do very well in the American job market. Second generation Japanese, Chinese, East Indian, Filipino, etc. children who grow up with English as their first language not only excel, but take a look at who's been winning national spelling bees, and science fairs. The students that are really standing out these days are second and third generation immigrants who seem to have stronger work ethic, and a great will to succeed than many 10th generation Americans who seem not to care about education. For this country to really prosper we need well-educated, strongly motivated population, whether second generation immigrants or 17th generation immigrants whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. And encouraging immigrants to remain handicapped by an inability to speak, read, and write English seems like it would not be good for anyone, and not good for the country either.

I know that's not a P.C. idea, but what happens if, just if political correctness prevents us from speaking the truth? Who is harmed? The very people that political correctness was meant to protect.

[yardwork]

7. Is there any evidence that bilingual education slows learning?

I'm not even sure what you mean by bilingual education, but it seems it would be better to learn two languages rather than just one.

The people I know who are bilingual or multilingual are very successful.

I think that your white supremacist friend doesn't know what he's talking about. No surprise.

[Binkie The Clown]

8. I think "bilingual" was the wrong term for me to use.

I was thinking more along the lines of classes conducted entirely in the student's native, non-English language, or drivers license tests in languages other than English, or whole communities where stores conduct business in non-English languages. In other words, things that make it more convenient to avoid learning English. By enabling a person to get by without English it seems one is encouraging what is, essentially, a handicap for them in the job market. In the long run they might be better served being encouraged to develop some degree of literacy in English.