Lowe's Goes Bi-Lingual - Lowe's Habla Espanol
By Doug Edelman (05/07/07)
I recently visited my local Lowe's Home Improvement Store to pick up some lawn and garden supplies. It should have been a routine errand to a familiar place. I certainly didn't expect this trip to be something to write home about (or write a column about). But it was.
Like Alice through the looking glass, I stepped into Lowe’s and into another world. Recklessly mixing metaphors, I “didn’t think we’re in Kansas anymore”.
What I saw as I walked through this formerly red-blooded American purveyor of goods to improve the American Dream… was the complete transition of all their signage to English/Spanish! Every single sign in the store was Bi-Lingual. As I walked the aisles I felt as though I were in some European airport and not my hometown home improvement store.
Oh, and by the way, this store is 850 miles from the Mexican Border.
Yes. Lowe’s has fully embraced Bi-Lingualism and will have all its signage in all its stores reflect an English/Spanish culture.
Knowing it would be a futile gesture, only serving to vent my frustration for a moment, I did make a complaint at the customer service desk. I was told they’ve had many complaints, but they are changing over the signage in all their stores.
And so I had my column fodder.
Nationwide, Lowe’s is converting its signage to elevate espanol to equal billing with English. Hmm. Don’t we have a lot of legal immigrants from the Balkans? Where are the Bosnian signs?
Asians make up a large portion of our legal immigrant population. Where is the Korean, Chinese or Japanese signage?
And let’s not forget the middle eastern component. Will there be signs in Arabic? Hebrew?
Will Lowe’s soon be printing MULTI-Lingual signs? Aren’t they discriminating by selecting only Spanish to be co-equal with English?
There are some who will say that by writing this column, I am some xenophobic racist who hates Hispanics. That is the standard attack against any who stand up for the AMERICAN culture. However let me state for the record, I want MORE Hispanic immigration – LEGALLY. I support raising the number of legal visas issued, and streamlining the process to get them to those who want them. They should come, learn our language and culture, and become AMERICANS. The illegal immigration issue, at least in MY mind, has always been about legal versus illegal and never about ethnicity!
This column, however, is written about the willing suicide of the American Culture as it embraces political correctness and multiculturalism – and it is not a treatise on immigration, but on assimilation.
Teddy Roosevelt said it eloquently in 1909. He said it so well that I’ll end my column with it and let it speak for itself:
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...
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 for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
Copyright © 2007 by Doug Edelman
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