Tom BrokawVerified account

I was a volunteer GED/ESL teacher and I assure you everyone wants/wish to learn. But these people are working their hands to the bone to feed their families and they don't have the luxury of going to school. So many try but they quit because they are exhausted from hard labor.

Or they’re belittled because of their accents or their grammar is not 100%.

Lot of folks who speak to me with an accent happen to speak more languages than I do.

It took my mom some time learning English and still has an accent, but hell she was already fluent in two other languages. That’s what makes me mad about the English-only ignorants. They barely know the one language, yet criticize someone for learning a second one.

I know someone like that. She was nervous talking to her son's teacher - they heard her accent & patronized her. Knowing her background (this is true) I suggested she apologize to them this way: "sorry, English is my 5th language..." She says they stopped the condescension.

You misspelled, "I apologize for my ignorant and demeaning glib generalization."

The Greatest Generalization.

I *ALWAYS* had a problem with that title. Like you're the greatest generation because of WWII... where you treated European POWs BETTER THAN THE BLACK SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT BESIDE YOU. Not to mention interred Japanese AMERICANS. Really?

Yep! You nailed it! The "Greatest Generation" came back to a comfortable life thanks to the New Deal and the GI Bill, grew uncomfortable with the Great Society and by Reagan switched parties, dug hard into their racism and rolled up the New Deal carpets for their own children.

You just double nailed it ! Disingenuousness at its finest !!

Not to mention shout out for fighting the Nazis... who got their playbook from Jim Crow laws established in the United States.. but I'm gonna let him finish about this "greatest generation."

Hitler got most of his ideas from Mussolini . Jim Crow started before Brokaw’s time. Still, what he said was wrong.

You don't feel terrible for saying them, you just feel terrible some people were offended? Got it, Tom.

It was a classic non-pology. Cloaked in the grammar of an apology, but containing neither the intent nor the meaning.

You know what would be great if you got MSNBC to hire a ton of Latino talking heads- how about that? We do know lots of subjects and we do speak English

How about hiring Latino journalists & reporters, there are plenty around with actual diplomas. In California you'd have to go out of your way to not hire latinos. They apply but rarely get the job.

I’ve worked in USA media my whole life. Even the the #FCC mandates that #latinos be represented. We’re not represented behind the camera or in front of the camera. #latinos are excluded anywhere that is important we be there