Sole Morality

Discriminating Language

It is not at all uncommon for laws to prohibit places of public accommodation, such as restaurants, to prohibit against discrimination. The city of Philadelphia has just such a law entitled the Fair Practice Ordinance and it disallows discrimination based on the following protected classes: ancestry, color, disability, gender identity, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. Now, regardless of whether I personally agree that all of those should be protected classes, the law seems pretty straightforward. You can't refuse service based on any of those factors.

Back in early 2006, Joey Vento decided to put up a sign in his Philadelphia cheese steak shop, Geno's Steaks. The sign reads "This is America. When ordering, please speak English." His reason for the sign? "If you can't tell me what you want, I can't serve you," he said. "It's up to you. If you can't read, if you can't say the word cheese, how can I communicate with you -- and why should I have to bend?" (Quoted in a Boston.com article, which was quoting a Philadelphia Inquirer story that is no longer available online.)

Ask yourself, does the sign violate the law and discriminate based on one of those classes?

I'd say it does discriminate, but not on any of those classes. We can throw out the sex/gender classes as they don't really apply here. Religion, disability, and marital status can go too as they don't seem to even come close to having to do with language. Race, ancestry, color, and national origin are left. For me to determine whether the sign discriminates on any of those, I would ask myself, is English inextricably linked to any of those classes?

Color and Race: nope, lots of people of all colors and races both speak and don't speak English.

Ancestry: same thing, lots of different ancestries speak and don't speak ancestry. I can turn away a non-English speaker of Slavic ancestry and not turn away an English speaker of Slavic ancestry.

What about national origin? Not really. If you come here from Oman, I won't turn you away as long as you are ordering in English.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't break the law. Does it discriminate? Certainly, but it does so on the basis of language, something that isn't protected. It is akin to refusing service to those who aren't wearing a shirt or shoes or refusing service to people who make too much or too little money (which Philadelphia does protect in certain circumstances, but not for restaurants).

So do you agree? Did I reach the right conclusion?

Apparently, Philadelphia's Human Relations Commission (HRC) doesn't agree with me. They believe it discriminates against people of certain backgrounds. From an article on the Philadelphia Daily News:

Paul Hummer, the attorney prosecuting the complaint against Vento on behalf of the HRC, said the sign "discriminates on the basis of national origin because national origin and language are linked."

When it comes to national origin though, Joey Vento is no stranger. His grandparents immigrated from Sicily speaking no English and he indicates that it took his parents learning English in school before they, according to this ABC News article puts it, "realized the American Dream."

Vento is fond of promoting English as being essential to being American and often paraphrases this quote from a 1919 letter written by President Theodore Roosevelt ( (pdf copy of it can be obtained here, courtesy of snopes.com)), often mistaken for being from 1907, while he would have been in office:

"There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room but for one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality; we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."

The above ABC article goes on to note that:

While some in the Philadelphia community worry Vento's sign might give the City of Brotherly love a bad reputation, Vento says his customers -- even the non-English speakers -- think it's funny. He is quick to point out he has never refused service to anyone who didn't speak the language.

"Here at Geno's no one, and I mean no one, in 40 years has ever been refused service for a language barrier."

So, if he doesn't discriminate based on it, who's being hurt? Who is being discriminated? Well, what if someone doesn't order because they read the sign and didn't bother to come to the counter because they don't speak English?

If someone can't speak enough english to ask for "one cheese steak," then chances are, they can't read the sign anyway and how are they going to be offended and discriminated against in the first place? And again, this goes back to the idea that discriminating on the basis of national origin and language is the same thing.

I'll tell you what I and a lot of others see the sign as discriminating: those who value the importance of free and political speech, even speech they may not agree with, and those who don't. That sign is Joey Vento's avenue of advocating for English to be the common language.

Free speech needs to be protected, not prosecuted.