Thanks for the replies and all. I guess it's just, from a US perspective, saying "English only" carries SUPER racist, segregationist meaning; it's been used against immigrants and indigenous people since the dawn of this damn nation, with residential schools (such as the ones where they are finding mass graves of children right now in Canada), every wave of immigrant after the English showed up, and currently it's very much anti-Spanish when you hear someone say it (think Trump rallies where they are also yelling "build the wall"). I'm sure in other places it reads very differently (there's a glorious video online of two women in Wales wearing hijab who are speaking WELSH and this English woman yelled at them to speak English and they were like, "We're in Wales and speaking Welsh, idiot". There's another story about a couple from China I believe who were trying to move to Ireland and they filled out all their documents in Irish and got rejected and told to do it in English. To move to Ireland). Soooooo yeah I'm sure if it's read as bigotry and against whom varies a lot, but in the US you're almost guaranteed that it's bigotry against anybody speaking Spanish.
I'll be sad to see dual language posts go, as I like them. It helps me learn. But I acquiesce to your reasons as it is your group.
To assume...
It makes an ass out of that woman more than anything in this case. A good lesson in that.
Apologies that these are the connotations you get in America from that statement. When the world comes together it becomes harder and harder to not offend someone. It's not easy to find a balance, but maybe we need to come to a point of meeting halfway, where we try not to attack, but also try not to always assume attack. We had this conversation in the discord a while ago when things were lost in translation and two people got upset. Translators aren't perfect, so sometimes we just need to double check. It turned out neither side was trying to say what the other thought they were, but the translators weren't very tactful, because they don't understand nuances.
I can understand this feeling as a fellow 'Merican, but also having lived abroad, I also understand how it's good make language barriers visible. The reverse of this happened recently in my former town in Cambodia, where there is a lot of tourism, but yet much of the local population still don't speak English, Spanish, or Chinese, the big three tourist languages there.
Some shops put up signs that read "Khmer/Chinese only", or "Khmer/Chinese/English spoken here", etc. There was recently a violent attack by a white westerner on a Cambodian shop owner who spoke no English, and it all arose from a language barrier.
The whole thing was recorded on video with audio, so as a Khmer-English speaker I was curious to see where things went wrong. It was clear from the outside that this shop was on the edge of town and had no English language signs. The guy asked for a case of water in a very lazy American accent, and the shop-owner responded by saying "I don't understand" and "I don't have it" in Cambodian.
They guy then began cussing her out telling her he can see she sells water, and she's a racist for not serving him, etc. If she had a sign up that said "Khmer Only Spoken Here," perhaps this situation could've been averted. I guess what I'm saying is that it's all about the intentions behind any action, and that's what we need to be looking into.
On a lighter note, I'm immigration to Kentucky/Indiana with my Khmer family, and we've been roleplaying situations where someone will approach us in Wal-Mart and tell us to "stop speaking ching-chong bing-bong because this 'Merica and we speak English!" Well, let's just say even though my family doesn't speak great English, they can easily roast any American that gives them a hard time, so I think we're safe, and I can't way to see a Kentuckian get roasted by a Cambodian in a Wal-Mart.