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And let me add a personal note about "assimilation."
I am old. My dad was born in 1915 and was 100% Italian. Italians used to be discriminated against (as did and do many ethnic groups).
DISCRIMINATION and hatred of "foreigners" is what caused people to "assimilate." It was not some fictitious "American Agreement."
Just one horrible side effect (for me) due to my father's assimilation was the lack of talking about the past and culture and the lack of teaching or sharing any of it. I was robbed of that culture due to the pressure to assimilate. No ethnic dishes were celebrated - nothing was taught - the only remnant at all was the insistence on Catholic Church teachings - and that was not due to any religious interest, but just a reaction to the insistence that kids had to be taught "something" - it was more an automatic default than a cherished belief system.
The pressure to assimilate is based in sheer racism.
Try to imagine if no one ever made an attempt to assimilate when they immigrate here (be it legally or illegally). The result would be a very balkanized and divided country with no cohesion.
Unfortunately, the leftists encourage balkanization. They think assimilation is some horrible concept.
We became a cohesive country because, in the past, when immigrants made the decision to take a boat to America, they knew that returning to the old country was highly unlikely due to the costs involved. Also, when they got here, there was no welfare so they, as well as Americans, knew that for them, it was either sink or swim. No one was offering them paperwork in their native languages. Thus, they knew if they needed an interpreter, they had to rely on either family members or others in their community to help interpret documents. So...they quickly learned that they needed to learn English to survive.
Now the leftists insist on coddling both legal immigrants and illegal aliens. Never mind the latter have no business being here in the first place.
To see how insane it's become and what a Tower of Babel it is now, I recently got an annual Medicare statement. Included was a message that listed all the different languages are available. I counted 12 of them --- Armenian, French, German, Haitian Creole, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Tagalog and Vietnamese. Our ancestors would never have made such demands of the government.
Excellent post, BOZ! Why do these liberals always call the sensible things you mentioned as "fear of change"? It's to demonize us for wanting to feel at home in our own country. Why should our country and citizens change for immigrants anyway? This isn't their country! If they chose to move here then they should assimilate to us not the other way around.
It is well established that flooding another country/culture with people from a different culture de-stabilizes society. That is why countries have borders and immigration quotas!!!!!!!
So why are dems de-stabilizing our country by their open border policy?
Why are republicans sitting on their hands watching it happen?????
And let me add a personal note about "assimilation."
I am old. My dad was born in 1915 and was 100% Italian. Italians used to be discriminated against (as did and do many ethnic groups).
DISCRIMINATION and hatred of "foreigners" is what caused people to "assimilate." It was not some fictitious "American Agreement."
Just one horrible side effect (for me) due to my father's assimilation was the lack of talking about the past and culture and the lack of teaching or sharing any of it. I was robbed of that culture due to the pressure to assimilate. No ethnic dishes were celebrated - nothing was taught - the only remnant at all was the insistence on Catholic Church teachings - and that was not due to any religious interest, but just a reaction to the insistence that kids had to be taught "something" - it was more an automatic default than a cherished belief system.
The pressure to assimilate is based in sheer racism.
Why couldn't your mother teach you about her native culture in your home and practice it there if she wanted to? Was someone going into your home and stopping her? If your father objected to that then that was on him not the U.S. You're not making any sense here. Many immigrants did it long ago and they still do any nothing wrong with that. So where's the racism and hatred? A culture isn't a race anyway!
Assimilation is about blending in out in mainstream not what you do in the privacy of your own home.
Hatred against strangers who elect to enjoy their lives and cultures any way they want?
How DARE they eat their favorite foods, play their favorite music and do any of their cultural practices!
They MUST conform and defer to white guys' views and preferences at all times!
Re-read what I just said in my post#86! No one is stopping anyone from eating their favorite foods, etc.! For God's sake we have ethnic restaurants all over the country of which Americans enjoy to.
Seems like it is you that is playing the race card with your mention of "white guys" only! You're getting out of line here now and bordering on trolling!
I have lived in two places with a large population of people who were either born in Mexico or their parents were born there, and from what I have observed, most of them do not want to assimilate and make very little effort to do so. Many of them -- especially those under 40 -- display Mexican flags, loudly play Hispanic music, and do not speak English among themselves. They also go to places like malls or to movie theaters in large groups.
The above is only my personal observation and I am speaking generally, of course.
And now for something that will surprise most of you, probably: I think that the Treaty of Hidalgo Guadalupe should never have been signed, and that ALL the gray areas in the map below still belonged to Mexico.
It's the same thing here in So. Calif. Reconquista is alive and well and they are doing it via illegal immigration and anchor babies. That's not natural nor lawful change.
Why couldn't your mother teach you about her native culture in your home and practice it there if she wanted to? Was someone going into your home and stopping her? If your father objected to that then that was on him not the U.S. You're not making any sense here. Many immigrants did it long ago and they still do any nothing wrong with that. So where's the racism and hatred? A culture isn't a race anyway!
Assimilation is about blending in out in mainstream not what you do in the privacy of your own home.
I didn't say anything about my mother.
The racism is from the OPENING PARAGRAPH - the entire question of "why" groups aren't "assimilating" the way he wants them to is a racist viewpoint, from my perspective.
He seems to want them to become invisible. That's racist.
Um...we are already a mutt country. Why do you think they play bagpipes at official police funerals? Have you ever heard the Okracoke accent? The old music still played in the Appalachians? The number of Italian restaurants in the East vs the number of Mexican restaurants out west? Ever heard West African music after listening to some blues music? Across the street from my work is a Ukrainian church, a block down the road is a Ukrainian credit union. We’re already there. And we have been for a long time. I could go even deeper and explore the Chinese influence on pasta and gunpowder, the fact that we use “Arabic” numerals (modern ones are different but recognizably similar for many), the fact that Christianity arose in Arab territory, etc. Hell, they only speak Spanish south of the border because of Spaniards; that characteristic skin color comes from still-strong native blood. You’re making yourself miserable for no reason, because you’re not stopping humans from doing what humans do.
I’d also say that asserting that this stuff divides us is false under normal circumstances. I’ll grant that wokesters have changed this, and they are using it as a wedge, but by no means is it naturally a dividing point to have a melting pot left to its own devices and left to deal with itself organically. That’s not to say that this always goes well - toss of a coin - but you can only assert it won’t go well when we get woke and hyper aware of our differences rather than just going about our lives and dealing with it sans community organizers yelling in our ears that we HAVE to do this or that to accommodate it.
I *WOULD* like immigrants to speak English at least passably. Where I’ll grant you some frustration is that Spanish speakers are the only group I have seen just walk away when a Spanish speaker isn’t on staff. That doesn’t happen all the time, but there’s a smidgeon of entitlement there I’m not a fan of. Everybody else soldiers on because they know there’s a very slim chance of having a translator in the house.
We came together to form an identifying culture and language long ago. Just because there are foreign celebrations and ethnic foods, in our country does not change that fact!
Making myself miserable? The Hispanic culture is fast competing with American culture. How does objection to that which is being done in an unlawful and unnatural way via illegal immigration and anchor babies not a valid concern without using dramatic words such as "misery"? You multi-cultural proponents always do that to demonize Americans who only want to retain our identifying culture. All others are just minority cultures living among us and the objection isn't to that it's to a foreign ethnic group taking over via unlawful means and that's justified concern!
Where did I mention skin color or race? It's changing culture that concerns me not that! We most certainly should be stopping humans from violating our immigration laws and changing our country in that manner. What part of that don't you get?
The racism is from the OPENING PARAGRAPH - the entire question of "why" groups aren't "assimilating" the way he wants them to is a racist viewpoint, from my perspective.
He seems to want them to become invisible. That's racist.
You said your father would not teach you his native culture so I asked why couldn't your mother do it then? What's racist about expecting immigrants to assimilate out in mainstream America while practicing their natives ones at home?
I can't speak for the OP but where did he say that immigrants couldn't practice their native cultures and languages in their homes? Where did he say that he wants them to become invisible? Assimilating out in mainstream American is desirable however otherwise if you don't want to be a part of our society then why come here?
You might want to go back and read the OP's initial post in it's entirety. Seems you are just picking the parts that you view as racist when clearly they aren't anyway. Again, this is about culture not race!
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