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Edging Out English JonesReport.com | August 6, 2007 A local Florida businessman has been pushed out of his small store lot after his landlord suggested he was unwelcome because he speaks only English in a neighborhood that increasingly caters to Spanish speakers. Worries about a Balkanization of America -- where populations are at odds with one-another-- seem to be cropping up with English certainly developing as a minority language in many regions. There is a certain double-standard apparent: towns like El Cenizo will officially speak Spanish only, and no one on the politically-correct edge will have a problem with it, yet in cases like this one, few will speak up to defend the right to own maintain a predominantly-English based business (the business owner, McKenna, does not discriminate against Spanish-speaking customers, they are a regular part of his business, he simply does not know Spanish himself). Clearly, it would be considered racist or at least unfriendly to edge out Spanish-speaking businesses in favor of an English-only business area, yet here the opposite is pursued and few seem to care. The Spanish ignorant McKenna says his feelings are hurt and he wouldn't want to stay around even if his landlord reversed his decision. Big still, larger questions remain about the new culture-- will we be fragmented niches all speaking different languages, and all of us more easily controlled?
Geoff Oldfather / TCPalm.com | August 5, 2007 On July 5 — the day after Independence Day — McKenna received a letter from landlord Ivan Munroe telling him to consider another location. Munroe said in his letter he wants to have "quality tenants serving the Spanish need in the area." "I guess I don't serve the 'Spanish need,' whatever that means," McKenna said. "I have plenty of Spanish-speaking workers come in here to buy water for their landscaping crews," he said. "And people in the neighborhood use the vending machines out front to fill their water bottles for their homes." The population of the Golden Gate neighborhood east of McKenna's store also has become mostly Spanish-speaking. To McKenna, that's irrelevant, as it should be. A customer is a customer is a customer. But all the signs for the check-cashing store and the Mexican restaurant that share the building with McKenna are in Spanish. Apparently the signs for Seacoast Water Care don't fit in. They're in English. Munroe pretty much admitted that's one of the reasons he wants McKenna to move... But there's a double standard, and I don't think Munroe is a villain as much as he's the symptom of a bigger societal ill: Try telling a minority business owner to leave so you can bring in a quality tenant to serve the need of the English-speaking population. You'd have activists organizing protests so quick it'd make the annual snowbird migration seem slow. CLICK ON THE BANNER TO
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