Vermonters Angry at Latin for Being Un-American

2/4/2015

This story is a little bit off topic, but it’s the kind of thing that helps to explain why I feel that cable TV shows and book publishers have an obligation to take responsibility for the content they provide to the public, and to recognize that large segments of the audience don’t have the expertise to critically evaluate the difference between fact and “entertainment.”

In Vermont, and eighth grader wrote to her state senator proposing that the state have an official Latin motto in addition to its current English motto. Local TV station WCAX ran a story on the issue, and its Facebook page lit up with rank ignorance from viewers who were not able to tell the difference between Latin, the language of ancient Rome, and Latinos, people of Latin American origin. This resulted in a horrifying display of idiocy, xenophobia, and nationalism.

Here is a sample of what some Facebook users had to say:

I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin paces have American mottos?

No way this is America not Mexico or Latin America. And they nee[d] to learn our language, just like if we go there they want us to speak theirs

How do you say idiotic senator in Spanish? I’d settle for deport illegals in Spanish as a back up motto.

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! Sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries.

No cause VT ain’t no Latino area. Leave the motto alone.

This is America! Not Mexico!

The pre-1956 de facto motto of the United States, e pluribus unum, which still appears on the Great Seal and is required by law on U.S. coins, is in Latin.

This may seem like a silly story, but it goes to the deep strain of xenophobic nationalism that permeates American debates about history. Recently, the conspiracy site Godlike Productions had a thread devoted to America Unearthed, and it quickly degenerated into a stew of nationalism, racism, and religion. Take this comment for example:

This whole American Indians were here first bullshit is wrong. There's this stone there are the giant red heads that the Indians killed in a cave, and also there is all the Egyptian stuff in the Grand Canyon. Don't go all wounded knee on me.

The rejoinder came from an Afrocentrist who explained that Native Americans were “really” a mixture of America’s primeval African colonizers and a later “Mongoloid” invasion.

These different types of ignorance are not wholly unrelated, nor are they new. In 1893, Thomas Sinclair gave a speech in which he explained that pseudohistoical claims about how the Scottish noble Henry Sinclair discovered America and improved the Natives with his white genes were necessary to combat the scourge of Latin peoples who were threatening to overrun America with their non-Anglo-Saxon cultures:

But to some of the brightest minds of America the burning question has of late been whether the Latin or Saxon race is to have the supremacy of their country; the intense activity of Roman Catholicism contrasted with the apathy of Protestantism giving philosophers and statesmen pause as to the near results, notwithstanding the power of science and reason. The glorification of Columbus in the discovery centenary of 1892 was an aid towards the threatened Spanish or Latin domination; and Scandinavian energy has been in movement, especially at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, to counteract the southern tide, by ascribing the discovery of America to Norsemen of the Teuton stock, including, as principal factors, the English and the Dutch. Caithnessmen [i.e. the Sinclair bloodline], especially of Canada and the United States, have the strongest personal interest in such a gigantic Armageddon contest of blood and belief, if it is to be early fact. (Caithness Events, p. 178)

Today, similar trends are manifesting in the battle over the content of textbooks and the push against the Advanced Placement U.S. History test for high school students, which many conservatives denounced for increasing the emphasis given to women and minorities and social history over the traditional emphasis on the Founding Fathers and federal politics. The College Board, which administers Advanced Placement, strongly denied the criticism as a “blatant disregard for the facts.”

In short, though, history is a proxy for politics and serves as a way for groups to define themselves and their place in the world. Truth is, by and large, subservient to utility.

52 Comments

CHV

2/4/2015 03:17:18 am

I've said it a million times - in a perfect world ignorance would cause cancer.

Nora

2/5/2015 03:49:03 am

Fucking amen.

Wa_Hi link

2/4/2015 03:25:49 am

Jason I'm pretty sure in god we trust is the US motto though I really wish it wasn't.

2/4/2015 03:28:47 am

That's correct. "E Pluribus Unum" is on the Seal, but is not the national motto.

Jason Colavito link

2/4/2015 04:45:50 am

You're right; the U.S. didn't have an official motto until 1956; "E Pluribus Unum" was the de facto motto from the colonial era to 1956 but never formalized by law. I'll amend the above accordingly.

From many... ONE?

2/5/2015 07:44:16 am

The Federalists in New England were the first group
who wanted to bolt away from our Union. Our Civil War
tested our institutions in the worst way. Seems like the
Obama administration is going to scrutinize VT's entire
educational infrastructure if Latino and Latin are thought
to be identical. Again, if this blog has some of the better
educated people of our nation finding it, and folks are
conceitedly brighter than the typical voter, lets despair.
Standards have been slipping, not improving since the
mid-1960s and drastically year by year. Greek and Latin
were taught across the board in the colonial era, even if
the standards in Thomas Jefferson's day at the university
level were like today's middle schools. The child's mistake
would have been impossible a century ago. Lets despair...
O TEMPORES, O MORES!!! Lets appreciate TULLY totally!

FrankenNewYork

2/4/2015 05:12:11 am

The State name, Vermont, is bastardized from the French Verd Mont (Green Mountain.) Maybe they should change that to something less Latinized while they're at it. But the people blindly complaining would have to know that French is a Romance language, know that means it evolved from Latin and then actually care about that fact. But all they really care about is hating brown people, they may have varying degrees of dislike for the French too, but it sounds like their big problem is brown people, no real reason needed.

Shane Sullivan

2/4/2015 07:03:57 am

You know that's not true, Frank.

I'm sure they dislike albino Latin Americans just as much.

The Other J.

2/4/2015 07:51:06 am

I recently saw a documentary about white nationalists in Britain. One of the more telling moments was when there was an anti-Muslim march comprised of these different white nationalist groups; when they ran out of protestors to attack, they started fighting with each other, pretty violently.

That's been my sense of these sorts of groups for some time now. If some random purity group was somehow able to be rid of all the elements they feel are polluting their culture, they'd eventually turn on others in their own group.

2/4/2015 07:31:52 am

Damnant quod non intellegunt.

Timendi causa est nescire, atque parva leves capiunt animas.

That's the extent of my Latin, and I'm not even sure I used the conjunction correctly.

The Native Americans being part-African thing is interesting. A while back I mentioned that my wife is part-Native American (Ojibwe), and that's not uncommon where we're from. But we live in the south now, and it's a lot less common down here, and there certainly aren't any other Ojibwe people. Ethnically, she's kind of unidentifiable, and that's led to some weird moments of people -- both black and white -- trying to figure out what she is.

She doesn't bring up her ethnicity unless asked, and for the longest time now when her black students learn she's Native American, they take that as code for being part black (she's not). Last summer we went to a cookout, and our friend's aunt, an older black lady, started asking about my wife's ethnicity, and then gave us some interesting history. Apparently in this region, up until relatively recently, Native populations, black populations, and "melungeons" were all pretty much classified as the same, kind of like "coloured" in South Africa. There may have been variations between the groups, but the groups were all pretty much "Other -- Not White." Because the non-white populations were considered outsiders and were excluded from much of mainstream white society, except as laborers, they formed their own outsider communities, and that led to intermarriage and some cultural swapping. The end result is that as the native populations disappeared in the area, "native" became code among the black population for someone of a mixed black background.

But that's a few generations back. I wonder how many people today are growing up with that native-equals-black code, but being removed from the history are then extrapolating a pseudo-historical idea that Native Americans are actually descended from Africans.

(Extrapolate -- more Latin.)

2/4/2015 08:13:23 am

Not sure whether it's related, but it is a prominent theme in Afrocentrism (at least its the Nuwaubian variety) that at least some Native Americans are Moors who migrated from the Nile Valley to North America a long time ago ("before the continental drift").

2/4/2015 09:23:37 am

I guess DNA evidence is only worth ignoring.

This made me wonder how many mass extinctions have occurred since "the continental drift." Pangea formed 300 millions years ago and broke up about 100 million years ago. As far as I know, there were two mass extinction events before Pangea formed, two events after Pangea it formed, and one more after Pangea broke up into Laurasia and Gondwana (and that last one may have been around the same time Laurasia and Gondwana themselves broke up). Let alone all the other problems with the theory (like evolution), I'm betting very few creatures survived that trip and the mass extinctions before Pangea broke up and put an ocean between Africa and North America, let alone the three mass extinctions after.

Besides, evolution.

Marius

2/5/2015 01:09:09 am

Who did they learn geology from, Robert E Howard?

2/5/2015 02:34:55 am

"Learn"... heh...

2/5/2015 07:45:16 am

also biology... too

Dave Lewis

2/4/2015 09:17:47 am

While reading about the melungeons on wikipedia I learned that there are quite number of multiracial groups in the US.

Texas and Louisiana have the Redbones.

South Carolina has the Turks and Brass Ankles.

On a related subject, have any of you run into the Irish Travelers?
There is a large group of them living in White Settlement, a suburb of Ft Worth Tx.

2/4/2015 09:47:37 am

Redbone -- that's where these guys got their name (they're all indigenous)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj0drevGOgA

I have run into Irish Travellers (aka gypsies), but in Ireland. Many used to have stalls at a market near my flat in Dublin -- they were fascinating. I know there's a sizable number in the Appalachian region, but they've had a few different migrations, include a relatively recent one (also to Australia). But they get all over. One I spoke with spent a lot of time in Spain.

They're an interesting culture with their own dialect of Gaelic (still spoken in some parts of Appalachia), and were only recently recognized as a distinct ethnic group in Ireland. They're not distinct as in they arrived in Ireland from elsewhere; rather, they're distinct in the way they've branched off and developed their own culture outside of the rest of Irish culture. No one's really sure when the split occurred -- some say it was because of Oliver Cromwell displaced millions ("To Hell or Connacht"), but there are attestations of Travellers prior to that, even in Shakespeare. They have some steady traditions, like getting married very early, tight family groups, living in caravans and moving from place to place, knife-fighting and bare-knuckle fighting. If you ever see anything about Irish bare-knuckle fighting today, that's a Traveller thing (one calls himself "King of the Gypsies"). There was a 1999 documentary called "Southpaw" about one Traveller fighter, Francis Barrett, who went into real boxing and became the first ever Traveller to compete in the Olympics. He became a simultaneous hero and pariah in his community, especially after he moved to London to go pro. When I lived there, he was in the news because he and his dad went back to visit family in Galway and were attacked. They were challenged by some men in their clan to a bare-knuckle fight; Francis refused, so they attacked him and his dad with knives. He got cut in the ribs, and still fought a pro match a few weeks later.

But those sorts of things are the outlier cases that give the Travellers a bad name, and make a lot of people mistrust them in Ireland. That's not the norm, and many people may be living among and working with Travellers without even knowing it. (They're becoming more settled in the past two decades.)

Are the ones in Texas working as roofers, pavers and laying blacktop? Unfortunately, a number of the more recent immigrants leave to work in those industries already set up by previous Traveller migrants, and in many cases they're scams -- they take off after getting payment ahead of time and before finishing the work. That's hardly always the case -- many of those businesses are legit. But recently 26 Irish immigrants were detained in Perth, Australia for just such a scam, and five were sent back to Ireland. I don't have any confirmation, but I'm guessing they were Travellers because I've seen similar reports in Ireland about similar scams in the USA.

2/4/2015 10:14:14 am

Dude, that video is awesome. I had heard the song, but I had no idea the band was Native. My grandpa (also Ojibwe, if you recall) was in a band in the '50s and 60s until his health prevented him from playing out any more, but they mostly played country, so I don't think they ever incorporated traditional song and dance into their routine. =P

(My dad, on the other hand, was playing music very similar to Redbone in the '70s, so I'll have to ask him if his band ever did a cover of Come And Get Your Love.)

Clint Knapp

2/4/2015 01:01:10 pm

Haven's seen Southpaw yet, but I'm going to have to find it.

"Knuckle" is a more recent (2011) documentary about the bare-knuckle fighting side of Traveler culture that I found quite interesting. It explores the convoluted history of a feud between two clans and the clandestine manner in which they get together to settle their rivalry in yearly brawls and the reasons they'll come up with just to keep the feud going.

Fascinating stuff, and of course not representative of the Travelers as a whole, but between the lines of the fighting stuff you can find a broader view of the culture; usually offered up in kitchen-table interviews with fighters and their wives.

Crash55

2/4/2015 01:19:56 pm

I knew a family of Irish Travelers growing up. They moved around the country doing roofs and driveways - would spray the same stuff on both. Some people they cheated some they didn't. The kids were trained or shoplift from an early age. The girls were pulled out of school at 6th grade. The ones in the older generation were somewhat legit. Most of the ones in mine went really into scamming and turned into nothing but lowlife trash I wouldn't alone anywhere around my stuff and I have known them since childhood.

2/4/2015 01:49:56 pm

What did your grandpa/dad play? There's been a lot of great garage rock in the Upper Midwest over the past 60 years, lots of little local scenes with some spectacular bands. I was going through The Replacements again earlier today -- Minneapolis band.

I've had Redbone in a director of 70's music for a long time now, but didn't know about their background until a few years back when I came across that Midnight Special appearance. If you have dogs, it's fantastic music to dance with your dog to. Or to wake your wife/significant other/neighbors with. I can't tell you how wide the grin was on my face when Starlord popped in that song at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYs5NGw2EYc

Two of the most Wisconsin music moments I've ever seen: The first was a ska band based in Madison/Milwaukee, Citizen King, that would close out their shows with a SEARING version of Elvis' "Burning Love." They'd play it on and on and on, for almost 15 minutes. The second was this time at Summerfest in Milwaukee. The Indigo Girls were playing at a pavilion near Lake Michigan, and at the same time there was a Harley Davidson thing going on, with about 2,000 bikers rolling around the park. There were hurricane fences diving the Indigo Girls crowd from the rest, but all these burly Harley guys were crowding up to the fence, beers in hand, and just enjoying the show like it was Motorhead or AC/DC.

2/4/2015 02:16:07 pm

The Other J., Redbones are not "indigenous". As far as I know, they are descendents of isolated mixed-race groups (white, African, Native), but they are certainly *not* indigenous.

2/4/2015 05:40:49 pm

"What did your grandpa/dad play?"

Both played--and my dad continues to play--guitar, and my dad sings. My dad played with some pretty prominent (at the time) local bands, such as Yukon Tulip, Stone Bridge, and Silver Tail. Perhaps the highest profile band he was in was called Full House; they toured as the opening act for Iron Butterfly, also opening for Captain Beyond and, once, on the same ticket as Gentle Giant and Van Halen. The band dissolved in the late '70s, but the synth player, Dave Rodgers, notably went on to play with The Grass Roots.

I asked my dad this evening if he ever covered Come And Get Your Love, and he didn't- but his brother and sister did with their band. (They both played drums, guitar and bass; I don't know who played what at the time.)

2/4/2015 07:15:32 pm

EP: "The Other J., Redbones are not "indigenous". As far as I know, they are descendents of isolated mixed-race groups (white, African, Native), but they are certainly *not* indigenous."

I think you're really splitting hairs here. You're saying if someone is descended from indigenous people but are of mixed race, they're not indigenous?

The band is comprised of musicians from various native North American backgrounds, both from the U.S. and Mexico. Is that okay? "Indigenous" literally means native to a region, and I used that term because it's a lot less clunky that "comprised of various native North American backgrounds from the U.S. and Mexico." But if indigenous doesn't work for you, refer to my previous sentence.

2/4/2015 07:22:18 pm

Shane: Gentle Giant AND Van Halen? The mind reels!

2/4/2015 07:28:14 pm

EP -- Besides, the members of the band are from different native tribes, and they called themselves Redbone. If you have a problem with that, your problem is with them, not me.

2/5/2015 02:02:20 am

The Other J., I didn't read you as referring to the band, as opposed to the Redbone ethnicity as a whole.

John

2/6/2015 04:13:11 am

there are numerous Irish traveller groups in the US. The largest is in SC outside of Augusta, GA. They aren't gypsies, they are like Irish hillbillies who live a gypsy lifestyle in family groups. Among themselves they speak a slangy combination of Englisg and Irish called cant. Their daughters are given real elaborate weddings. A few years back an IT lady was arrested in a Walmart parking lot (I think it was in Indiana) for smacking her kid. When they frisked her they found she had just shoplifted a ton of clothes. It was a big story at the time. The husband was in Texas scamming old people with a roofing grift. There was a TV show a few years back about a family of ITs called the Riches starring Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard.

mhe

2/4/2015 12:43:35 pm

The state of Vermont should deport all of their lawyers for speaking Latin ex post facto.

2/4/2015 01:51:22 pm

quid pro quo

2/4/2015 01:23:09 pm

Something to remember about Vermont is that there is really two Vermonts - Burlington and everyplace else. Burlington is the liberal, tree hugging, educated, Ben & Jerry's Vermont. The rest is conservative, gun loving, borderline redneck. Then there is the Northeast Kingdom area that makes redneck look cultured and family trees don't branch

2/4/2015 01:40:06 pm

"Hi, I'm Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." So that is true?

2/4/2015 01:52:47 pm

More like "This is my brother Darryl, you may know him as my father Darryl"

2/4/2015 01:29:13 pm

I'm afraid the media who sell products like 'Ancient Aliens' will only shoot themselves in the foot, if they demand of the makers to abstain from mixing fact with fiction.

They rely on the ignorance of their audience, otherwise their business prospect would be pretty dire.

Just look at someone like David Wilcock (a best-selling author), who is a virtuoso when it comes to the art of obfuscation. As an example: he claims quantum mechanics is complete nonsense, yet inexplicably uses research by mainstream quantum physicists to prop up his own theories. Mind you, this is someone who is being published by Penguin Books, who solely publish his books because they sell.

Real science. on the other hand, doesn't sell, because, unlike pseudoscience, it doesn't make the fantastical, edge-of-your-seat claims or pie-in-the-sky promises, that the general population craves.

2/4/2015 01:53:46 pm

"uses research by mainstream quantum physicists"

More like, "uses research by fringe quantum physicists".

Titus pullo

2/4/2015 02:04:18 pm

Vermont? The land of socialist ny city types racist? Good point on how most Americans know nothing of history. And I'm not sure it's because those evil conservatives and libertarians want to teach natural rights and John Locke instead of Rachael Carson.

2/4/2015 02:17:08 pm

I'm not sure how many of those Facebook idiots are actually from Vermont, tbh.

spookyparadigm

2/5/2015 05:20:59 am

I actually went and checked on a few in the original fb post. I too thought they were going to be from elsewhere. Nope, quite a few of the critics were from Vermont. Not all of them were ignorant racists, some just thought the whole concept was a waste of government time.

Pretty much every critic, however, was stereotypically conservative (I remember 2nd amendment/"tactical" interest groups on several).

2/5/2015 05:35:15 am

Vermont is really gun-friendly. Even the liberals. As I recall, Howard Dean was remarked to be quite conservative on gun control by mainstream Dem Presidential candidate standards...

2/4/2015 02:20:01 pm

Potential AU Vermont episodes:

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream company gives their ice cream waste to the local Vermont farmers who use it to feed their hogs. The hogs seem to like all of the flavors except Mint Oreo. Could it be a Masonic conspiracy?

The Vermont statehouse has a statue of Ceres on top of it's dome. Secret goddess worship?

2/4/2015 02:28:32 pm

"The Vermont statehouse has a statue of Ceres on top of it's dome."

Fuckin' Latin immigrants! Durr turk yer jurbs!

666

2/5/2015 12:22:12 am

That's not very nice language from a defender of the faith and someone who is offended by the thought of drugs being the source of religions,

2/5/2015 02:05:19 am

Nurse! 666's sedative has worn off! Nurse?!

2/5/2015 10:42:10 am

poor Triple Six has a libel case...

EP is being rude... again. indeed.

2/5/2015 10:45:45 am

Aw, how cute! "." is acting as though anyone cares what he thinks.

Only Me

2/4/2015 05:17:54 pm

So, I guess it didn't occur to these geniuses that Latin is used in biological taxonomy and the Catholic Church remains the largest organization that retains Latin in official contexts?

I'd love to hear their reactions to these Latin mottos:

United States Marine Corps- Semper fidelis
United States Coast Guard- Semper paratus
West Virginia- Montani semper liberi
Virginia- Sic semper tyrannis
Connecticut- Qui transtulit sustinet
North Carolina- Esse quam videri
Michigan- Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice
Harvard University- Veritas

According to those Vermonters, Latinos have been pretty busy...but no one noticed!

2/5/2015 03:51:40 am

I know I'm just a naive and ignorant Canadian, but jesus fuck, why is EVERYTHING about race to some people? "Them mexicans and blacks and mongolians", and "the scandinavians and the saxons and the caithnessmen"... I literally just do not understand why people care so much. I just don't.

2/5/2015 04:39:45 am

Broaden the scope just slightly; it's tribalism. Plain and simple. Some people recognize their tribe by the color of their skin or their country of origin, some by the jersey they wear or the totem animal that represents their political preference.

They're essentially told it's not only OK to hate the other guy, but they'll be rewarded for doing so in many cases. In the States we just had the most blatant yearly celebration of tribalism; two teams of brightly colored, grossly-overpaid, deplorably-undereducated grown men fighting over 100 yards of territory and a little ball; and somehow the reward for that was the privilege of watching special advertising.

2/5/2015 04:48:57 am

I don't think it's fair to describe them as "deplorably-undereducated". My sense is that professional athletes are on average somewhat better educated than the average blue-collar working man of comparable social background. That's their proper comparison class when it comes to education, not college graduates.

2/5/2015 05:12:13 am

Well, I might've been on a bit of a tirade-roll there, I'll grant that. At the college level, most athletic programs do require one maintain a specific GPA.

2/5/2015 12:05:12 pm

EP's right here about athletes being "deplorably undereducated." I've worked specifically with athletes in higher education, and like the entire student body there's a range, but it skews a little higher on average than the student body (and of course it depends on the institution). That's mainly because there are extra demands placed on the athletes in order to remain eligible, so they have to be more organized and better prepared than much of the rest of the student body, who can still get hammered and rock up to class late each day.

Take football players: Ever had a look at the playbook they need to memorize? It's a massive 3-ring binder, and they need to know the plays inside and out, including what the other players' jobs are. They need to study and know that on top of studying for and attending class, making morning lifts and afternoon training, and then evening tutorial sessions (which at many universities aren't just for athletes). The athletes that didn't meet all of those requirements and maintain a certain GPA were dropped, lost their scholarships, and often put their families at risk (many were helping and hoping to support their parents/siblings with an NFL contract). A larger percentage of athletes than other students then go on to get masters degrees because they have an extra year of NCAA eligibility, and they complete those degrees in a year's time. Many other students take two years to complete a master's degree.

And they major in as wide a variety of subjects as other students, and can be quite successful. Take the Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman -- he graduated with a 3.9 in communications from Stanford, which isn't exactly like being an athlete at an SEC school. I can't name names for legal reasons, but just recently I saw one student I worked with who's now in the NFL; he maintained a 3.3 in religious studies. Football players I've worked with studied political science, philosophy, Spanish, even Russian and Chinese, as well as the standard sociology and anthropology.

I'm no fan of the NCAA (I wish the athletes could get paid), and I'm not even really a football fan (I watched 2 games all year). But I've been an athlete, and I've spent a good part of my time in higher education working with student athletes who grew up being only prized for their bodies and mocked by the bright kids for their intellectual pursuits. And to be honest, I've also seen teachers -- professors -- mock athletes behind their backs. My job was to show them their athletic and intellectual sides could converge and how to do it, and once they felt safe being smart, they could be just as intelligent as anyone else.