[extropy-chat] Psychology of investments in infrastructure

[Fred C. Moulton]

On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 14:35 +0100, BillK wrote:
> Hispanics are already the majority in California, so if they organise
> their voting power, Spanish will be the first language in California.
> :)

Everyone needs to take a deep breath and get a grip; this is supposed to
be a list for Extropians; you know those people who try to do some
detailed research and analysis.  Maybe we should practice these skills
before we all go rushing out for our Jupiter sized brains.

First according to the 2000 census figures on the web from the state of
California Hispanics are not the majority
http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/DEMOGRAP/SDC/documents/table4.xls.  Actually
what has happened in the past few years is that California has joined
Hawaii and New Mexico as a state without a majority when you split
Hispanic out as separate from Non-Hispanic White.  At some point in the
future it is possible that one or more states may have a majority of
people who classify themselves as Hispanic.  Of course this is
complicated by the question of exactly what is meant by Hispanic and
other terms and what about persons of multi-racial ancestry?  For
example how do you classify someone who ancestors were Black slaves
brought from Africa to Brazil and now that person speaks Portuguese and
now a US citizen; is this person Hispanic?  What if this persons
ancestors can been taken to Mexico instead of Brazil and this person now
is a US citizen who speaks Spanish?  And do not forget that being able
to speak Portuguese or Spanish does not mean that you can not also speak
English.  I also see not reason to expect intermarriage of persons who
consider themselves Hispanic with persons who consider themselves Non-
Hispanic to vanish so this leads to even more complications for those
who want to classify their biological children.

Second remember that just because someone is classified as Hispanic does
not mean that they speak Spanish to the exclusion of English in fact
they might not speak Spanish at all.  

Third please consider some history. According to the original
Constitution of the State of California:

Article XL Sec. 21. All laws, decrees, regulations, and provisions,
which from their nature require publication, shall be published in
English and Spanish.

There seemed to have been more Spanish speakers than English speakers in
1849 and both languages were given equal status.  In the 1870s when
English speakers were more numerous a revised constitution was adopted
that dropped the dual role of Spanish and English.  In the 1980s there
were further changes; now the California Constitution says "English is
the official language of the State of California."  See Article 3
Section 6 for this and other similar entries.  So far in California the
group that historically has been forced one language over another has
been the English speakers not the Spanish speakers.   Of course that was
over 100 years ago and perhaps things are different now but unless some
one can demonstrate that the ideas of the "reconquistas" representative
of an overwhelming proportion of persons labeled as Hispanic then I find
a lot this rhetoric as deficient.

Of course if I ever became fluent is Spanish it would make my Eighth
grade Spanish teacher happy since I was not a star pupil when I first
tackled Spanish.

Fred