Haters

In my role with The 4EVER Group, we recently announced that we would host a couple of workshops in the Los Angeles area that would be Spanish-language only. One person sent me this email:

“Asking strictly on my own behalf, why is this event Spanish-only?
Did you get a special subsidy from MALDEF or LULAC or, perhaps, Mexico?

As a native-born English-speaking American citizen of Armenian immigrant parents,
I find a professional conference presented Spanish-only in Los Angeles to be offensive,
and inconsiderate of other races and heritages.
There is a HUGE Armenian community in Glendale, a few miles from LA, why not Armenian?
Why not offer Vietnamese? Korean? Chinese? Russian??
Each of these have large communities in L.A.

Or, why not just present it in English, which ALL American citizens and immigrants SHOULD speak?
That way NOBODY would be offended, or singled out for special treatment
to the exclusion of others.


best regards –“

This was my response:

“I appreciate your email. Please allow me to address your concerns.

By offering workshops in Spanish, we are first and foremost fulfilling our mission to provide education, training, and resources to all facets of the event video community. The leadership of the Spanish-language video producers association specifically invited us to work with them in planning this event. This is simply one of the dozens of events that we have run in cooperation with local associations all across North America. When we last hosted a Video Summit in Southern California (Orange County, at Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel), we ran workshops in both English and Spanish. And the next time we run a Video Summit in Southern California, the format could again be different.

Our programming here is merely driven by the market. If the demand would exist for similar programming in English, or any other language, we would work to provide it. Please note that we are not the first, nor are we the only organization to offer programming in Spanish. For example, (name redacted), a Certified Adobe Trainer and a friend of The 4EVER Group, taught programs in Spanish at the recent NAB conference in Las Vegas. (Gender reference redacted) programs were not offered in English.

The national NACE conference just wrapped up here in Philadelphia. After I left the conference the other day, I walked three blocks from the headquarters hotel to have dinner in Chinatown. The signs on many businesses were only in Chinese. I could have gone a few blocks in a different direction and seen signs in Vietnamese, or Spanish, or Italian, or Japanese. The point is that ours is an extremely diverse society, and there is a benefit to everyone if education is provided in a language that the student understands.

We do not set the political or legal agenda. In my keynote speech at VIDEO 08, and in many other speaking engagements across the continent, I do urge video producers to get involved in the political process, because the laws and the rules have an impact on how we do business, and we have a right to voice our opinions. But I also urge everyone to belong to what I call The 4EVER Group’s Green Party, and I do not refer to the environmental movement. The people who might attend these workshops want to learn, so that they can improve the way they do business. That strikes me as a very good thing.

Regards,
Steve”

Back to the blog post:
Living in the Philadelphia area, we’re clearly not on the front lines of the immigration issue. Maybe it’s a sensitive topic for people in areas like Los Angeles. In addition to this email, I also received a phone call with a similar message. I was told that my points were “nice rhetoric” and “bull”. So for at least these two people, it’s a hot-button issue. But it would be great to see a debate that didn’t go, as the emailer and caller did, directly to insults and invective.