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Language Rights and the Quest to Preserve My Own Cantonese Language and Heritage (Part I)

During this year’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I am reflecting on my Cantonese heritage, the Cantonese language, and ways we can advocate for greater language access for less commonly spoken languages in California.* The Los Angeles Times recently featured Dr. Sik Lee Dennig, once the only Cantonese lecturer at Stanford University, and her quest to teach and preserve Cantonese “in a world dominated by Mandarin.”

Often in policy and data, Cantonese and Mandarin are conflated into one category —Chinese— for both written and spoken forms. But spoken, Mandarin and Cantonese are two distinctly different languages in tone and the pronunciation of words, though they share some (or arguably, many) written characters. (For lessons on speaking and writing Cantonese, visit HamBaangLaang.)

My first language was Cantonese. When I started elementary school, I was designated as Limited English Proficient (LEP). Over the years, I’ve lost most of my Cantonese fluency despite being surrounded by Cantonese culture in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Some of the most popular parts of Chinese American culture are Cantonese in origin, such as dim sum (the Cantonese words literally translating to “so close to the heart”) and kung fu movies which were made in Cantonese in Hong Kong and influenced the development of hip hop in the 1970s.

Today, Cantonese is at risk of disappearing within two generations, largely due to China’s order to make Mandarin the official language of its government, school instruction, and news and publications. Hong Kong, the bastion of Cantonese where about 90 percent of people have Cantonese as a native language, is one of the main targets of this policy as the latest in the Chinese government’s litany of actions against Hong Kongers to suppress political speech and any dissent challenging the mainland government. Cantonese has become a language of rebellion used by many Hong Kongers—including pro-democracy protestors—to maintain their identity and freedom.

Government policy shapes the ways in which languages are preserved or eliminated. China’s recent action is one example. In the United States and California, we have attempted both. While English-only laws were struck down as unlawful, English remains the de facto language of our public and private institutions. We also have non-discrimination protections that require state- and federally-funded programs to provide meaningful access to people who speak limited English.

Still, these laws do not strictly mandate that government-funded programs provide the level of bilingual assistance needed by each person served. They instead require bilingual staff and translations only for non-English languages that meet a numerical threshold or concentration. Under the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act, state agencies must provide bilingual services in languages that are spoken by a “substantial number” of people, defined as 5% or more of the people served by a local office or facility.

Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, federally funded programs are highly encouraged—not mandated—to translate materials into languages that are spoken by 5% of a population likely to be served, or 1,000 people, whichever is smaller. Moreover, to determine the mix of language services required—oral interpretation and written translation—Title VI guidance employs a four-factor totality of circumstances test to be applied on a case-by-case basis.

By relying on numerical thresholds and cost-benefit-need analyses, these laws exclude from our public programs languages that are spoken by hundreds of thousands of people. The consequences of such exclusion are even more pernicious and urgent. These laws create environments where it is difficult for people to meet basic needs by continuing to speak and write in their first, non-English languages. Second generations forgo learning and speaking their native language and that language disappears by the third generation. As advocates, we can be more aware and critical of how we interpret existing language access laws and their impact on driving lesser-spoken languages to endangerment or extinction within communities. These laws are meant to be inclusionary but end up being exclusionary.

For Cantonese in particular, California could be a sanctuary for the preservation and continuation of the language. We can continue to advocate for the distinction of Cantonese and Mandarin bilingual services in our public programs. We can also talk more about how Cantonese is deeply rooted in California history. In the early seminal civil rights cases, the litigants who were Chinese Americans spoke Cantonese and lived in California. (More on this next week.)

Many are now part of the movement to preserve Cantonese. Since leaving Stanford following the university’s decision to reduce the number of Cantonese course offerings, Dr. Dennig is now devoting her time to building the Cantonese Alliance of North America, a non-profit to connect Cantonese instructors, learners, and organizations to preserve and nourish Cantonese as a heritage language.

As for me, I start Cantonese class next month.

*As used here, Cantonese is an umbrella term encompassing the Chinese languages originating in the Pearl River Delta—the Guangdong (Canton) and Guangxi provinces—encompassing the language varieties of Hong Kong Cantonese, Guangzhou Cantonese, and Taishanese.

Read Part 2 of this post here.

Housing Advocates Condemn Trump Administration Racist Attack on Fair Housing, Call on California Policymakers to Implement New State Fair Housing Law


Statement from California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Housing California, Public Advocates, Western Center

Last week, in a transparently racist political move, the Trump Administration announced the intention to bury the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing provisions of the federal Fair Housing Act. The Act is a core victory of the Civil Rights era that requires the federal government, as well as states, cities, and housing agencies receiving HUD funding, to actively dismantle segregation and housing inequality. It is an anti-racist law meant to help undo the role the federal government has played in housing segregation. Recognizing the looming threat to this longstanding federal civil rights law, California added a rigorous Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing mandate to state law in 2018.

Housing inequality is a plague on California and the rest of the country, and it is a result of generations of intentional government and corporate policy and disinvestment. True housing justice in the United States can only be achieved when all levels of government and private sector actors devote as much energy and as many resources toward dismantling racist housing systems as they put into creating them.

Practically, the federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing requirement means that all government entities receiving HUD funding must analyze patterns of racial segregation and unequal access to housing for people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and other protected groups and take proactive steps to dismantle inequality. President Trump’s new policy would remove accountability for officials and policymakers who make decisions that could further segregate our communities.

Civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, and thousands more dedicated their lives to promote the enactment of the Fair Housing Act to dismantle segregation. In 2015, the Obama administration implemented new Fair Housing regulations requiring even stronger action from local governments to promote racial justice through housing policies. Now, as a new generation fights for progress, the Trump Administration attempts to go backwards. This proposal would move the country even further away from the goals of equity that millions of Americans are demanding right now.

The urgent need for fair housing couldn’t be more clear. A person’s zip code can mean a difference of 20 years’ life expectancy – Black and Brown lives are literally cut short because of racist housing policies. Many schools are more segregated now than they were before Brown v. Board of Education, largely because of segregated housing patterns.

Neighborhoods that people of color call home continue to be denied a fair share of public investment, while corporate real estate speculators force long-time residents from their homes; and wealthy suburbs continue to claim a disproportionate amount of public dollars as they exclude people of color.

Fortunately for the people of California, advocates fought for and won a new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing requirement in 2018. Assembly Bill 686, authored by Miguel Santiago, adopts and expands federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulations in state law-requiring all state agencies, cities, counties, and housing authorities in California to analyze housing inequality and undertake steps to undo it in all activities relating to housing and community development.

We are committed to tearing down our own state’s racist housing systems and we call on our leaders in Congress to use their Congressional Review Act responsibilities to reject Trump’s rule and direct HUD to get back to the work of tearing down barriers to equity nationwide. These disheartening federal actions also make it all the more urgent for officials at all levels of government in California to vigorously implement the state’s requirement to affirmatively further fair housing.

Click here for a PDF version of this statement

The Trump administration is threatening the right to Fair Housing. We’re fighting back. You can too.

By Matt Warren, Western Center Housing Attorney 

I’m a bit of a nester. I spend a lot of time thinking about my lived environment — how to make my office more productive, my home cozier. I obsess over the color of light bulbs, indoor plant selections, and furniture placement.

I’m also a housing attorney, so I think a lot about where and how people find and create a safe home for themselves, and how they establish their own sense of cozy.

The sites, conditions, and availability of housing in our country (and throughout the world) have long been limited based on socially-defined characteristics: gender, occupation, physical or mental ability, race, country of origin, family composition, religion. These characteristics and more have shaped the places and communities where people live in the United States. Perhaps more importantly, they also shape the limits of where people cannot live, and the condition of the housing they can access.

The federal Fair Housing Act (FHA), initially adopted on the heels of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of our most important tools to fight against the discrimination and limitations that have defined housing practices in our country’s history. The FHA is a foundational tool for advancing housing opportunities for entire communities. Housing advocates use the FHA to challenge the practices of landlords who unfairly refuse potential tenants, the lending practices of banks that prey on vulnerable groups, and zoning changes by local governments that limit equitable opportunity.

In August, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the federal agency tasked with upholding and advancing the FHA, proposed a rule that would dramatically change the way that the FHA can be used. Courts and HUD have interpreted the FHA as including the “disparate impact” theory of housing discrimination for decades, but the new rule proposes to severely limit how and when victims of discrimination can sue under this theory.

Disparate impact is discrimination that occurs when a facially neutral practice has a discriminatory effect on a protected class. Examples of disparate impact include occupancy standards that exclude families by restricting the number of people allowed to live in a unit together, the practice of targeting historically segregated minority neighborhoods for predatory loans using zip codes or other proxies, landlord screening policies that exclude persons with criminal histories (this is particularly discriminatory since Blacks and Latinos are incarcerated at disproportionate rates), and cities limiting construction of multi-family housing that is affordable for working-class people — a majority of whom are people of color.

Proving discrimination using disparate impact has become essential in civil rights enforcement. As described by Justice Kennedy in Texas DHCA v. Inclusive Communities Project (2015), “It permits plaintiffs to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment. In this way disparate-impact liability may prevent [discrimination] that might otherwise result from covert and illicit stereotyping.”

HUD’s proposed rule includes a lot of changes to existing law. First, instead of providing a clarifying interpretation of the law, the rule adds a five-element test for plaintiffs at the pleading stage. Right now, victims of discrimination can move forward with a claim if they’re able to show that a practice caused a discriminatory effect. The new five-part test would require them to essentially know the inner workings of the often complex entities in charge of their housing before they head to court, which will result in fewer cases. Second, the proposed rule attempts to erase part of the disparate impact theory entirely so practices that “perpetuate segregation” are no longer actionable.

Third, the proposed rule would make it easier for entities facing allegations of disparate impact discrimination to evade responsibility for their actions. Part of the proposed rule allows a business entity to evade responsibility for discriminatory impacts if they use an algorithm to deny someone a housing opportunity. Algorithms are routinely used for housing decisions, many of which reflect and maintain existing disparities in the housing market. Think of it this way: because of redlining and other historical disadvantages, people of color have been explicitly and systematically excluded from credit-building opportunities compared to white counterparts. Algorithms that base loan decisions on existing creditworthiness perpetuate disparities in access to loans, meaning historical disadvantages continue and deepen. HUD’s proposal would shield actors who rely on these algorithms from liability.

All of these changes are aimed at making it more difficult to allege discrimination, while limiting liability for landlords, banks, and insurance companies. It will make it more difficult for people to find and create homes by allowing housing-related businesses to unfairly limit where and how they can live.

The proposed rule impacts other areas of law as well. Victims of discrimination in employment and education have also utilized disparate impact theory to level the playing field. These areas of law borrow significantly from each other, with many advocates and courts pointing across subjects for the persuasive authority of similar discrimination cases. Even though HUD’s proposed rule specifically targets housing discrimination enforcement, it will have serious impacts on the interpretation of disparate impact in other civil rights fields.

The proposed rule is also hugely significant because it weakens our ability to combat racism. Racism and white supremacy are baked into our country’s identity, impacting our sub-conscious, our interpersonal interactions, our institutions, and our broader social systems. Racism has traditionally been understood as blatant and intentional discrimination against minorities—but now, sophisticated housing providers know not to overtly treat people differently, and discrimination often takes the form of “neutral” policies that end up harming people of color. It’s still profitable to discriminate against people of color and other protected minorities because those groups have less access to social benefits and wealth. By maintaining these kinds of race-neutral policies, businesses reinforce historical advantages of whites while perpetuating disadvantages of people of color.

The proposed rule change reflects this administration’s favoritism toward real-estate businesses, but it also reveals white fragility in action. The proposed rule attempts to impose the intent standard on all allegations of discrimination, shielding “color-blind” policies that preserve an inequitable status quo. It ignores that differential treatment of people of color continues to happen at subconscious levels, focusing the standard instead on differential treatment.

The disparate impact standard remains relevant because acts that perpetuate discrimination have continuing, real, and negative impacts even where there is no malicious intent. HUD’s proposed changes to the disparate impact rule facilitates systemic oppression via banal intentions.

The only positive thing to say about the proposed rule is that it is not yet in effect. HUD is in the process of soliciting comments, until October 18, 2019, to comply with the requirements for adopting administrative rules. You can have an impact on the proposed rule by submitting a comment to HUD explaining why it would have a harmful impact on you, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your tenants, your clients, or your community.

Our team at Western Center on Law & Poverty is partnering with the National Housing Law Project and the Shriver Center on Poverty Law on the Fight for Housing Justice Campaign. We’ve created a website that includes resources, as well as a comment portal that allows you to submit your comment to HUD. It is vital that HUD hear from as many people as possible.

Please help us fight against this attempt by the Trump administration to limit housing choice; expanding housing choice is essential for creating a more equitable country, and safe, secure housing is fundamental to our humanity. Let’s make sure everyone has a place to cozy up, fuss over lighting, and obsess over where the couch should go.