On assimilation by force

[winter]

A few people on my f-list have already linked to Elizabeth Moon's diatribe on why immigrants should shut up and change to be just like everyone else. I didn't comment on it, because I literally couldn't find the words.

Shweta Narayan says it more eloquently than I ever could.

I have the luck of spending most of my childhood in a country where others are like me, and of a multi-cultural education from the cradle. But I was also a Slav travelling in Western Europe just after communism ended. I was nine years old, in a supermarket in Paris, and I talked to my mother in halting, broken French, because I knew that if I spoke Polish, everyone in the shop would stare and follow us to make sure we didn't steal anything.

Comments

[greenie1980.livejournal.com]

I can only testify to that but from the other side of 'the wall'. First venturing behind 'it' happened only 6 years after it came down but it was a similar experience to what you described, only with people looking up to us. Place this happened was St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside. I didn't follow what Mrs Moon exactly said but I guess it's nothing different from what Thilo Sarrazin has let loose in his book recently. I so don't get it. I live in England where, unless I open my mouth, I don't come across as German and I'm probably quick to get confy in other countries I speak the language off but I don't get why immigrants where the difference is more easily visible should negate their own culture. We have Japanese, Polish, Korean, Hongkong Chinese, Taiwanese, Turkish, US Americans, Canadians and 1 and a half Germans (and once upon a time someone from Greece) and a visiting student from Hungary for half a year in our department and I'm glad our place isn't racist.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Mr Sarrazin, I've got a bit of a personal deadpool going on over whether he'll get kicked out of the SPD.

[winter]

Really, it's one thing being different, it's another to know that if you show your different-ness, you'll get ostracised :S For example, I'm comfortable in Japan because while I'm visibly different, everyone is polite and they're genuinely nice as soon as I show my appreciation and knowledge of Japanese language/culture/etc. France, and to a lesser extent Austria two years later was... not a good time.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I do not dispute that... many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.

[winter]

That was one of the things that just made me speechless. It's like 1400 years of history just whooshed over her head.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

I haven't managed to read the whole post yet, just some excerpts. I may make myself sit down and real the whole thing in one go at some point. Admittedly, for the majority of my life I've been in the "surrounded by people at least visibly like myself" situation but even so, I started reacting, "Oh no, no way, SO BAD" upon reading Moon's post.

[winter]

I think the difference is between realising you're surrounded by similar people and assuming that it's a right.

One of these days, I'll write that post about Slavs in English-language sff, and just how thrown I was to transition from my multicultural fairytales to movies and tv series where everyone was Anglosaxon by behaviour.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

re the post: Looking forward to it. Off the top of your head, can you recommend any English-language novels (or ones translated into English) with well-written Slavic characters?

[winter]

Translated, a metric tonne :) Anything by Lem is precious. Russians - Bulychov, Lukanenko, Strugackis are all available in English. Fantasy - Sapkowski is available in decent English translation (very good post-modern not!heroic fantasy), and I've always considered Master and Margarita as urban fantasy as well.

And Miles Vorkosigan. Barrayar is spread between Prussia and Russia, but leaning towards the east. That one was a revelation in the "oh gods, someone gets it" way, because it captures the cultural paradigm rather than going generic.

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

That's right, Elizabeth Moon, feel free to show the rest of the world what assholes we Americans can be!

Okay, a couple of things you need to understand about her: 1)She's from south Texas, where there has been and continues to be a lot of strain between European-Americans and Hispanics. 2)She was a Marine and they are not known for embracing liberal ideals.

Her viewpoint is not uncommon here in the States. My parents share the same feelings, in spite of the fact that my father is only 2nd generation. Growing up, he spoke English at school and Hungarian at home. And at the time, anyone with eastern European roots was scrutinized (Commies, don't you know?) His attitude is that "We adjusted, why can't they?" By "adjusting" he means "gave up our culture, language and unique ethnic identity."

There is no denying that every new wave of immigrants here to the US gets hazed in some fashion. You'd think we'd have learned by now how valuable our immigrants can be, but few seem to heed the lessons of history.

Time was (not so long ago, actually) when Catholics in this country were treated the way Muslims are now.

[winter]

It's changing, but exceedingly slowly :( The thing is, isn't it more interesting with a multitude of cultures? Less predictable, less safe, but so much more fascinating. This is something so obvious to me that I can barely fathom how someone can be this self-righteous.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

If your father ever brings it up again...tell him that my grandmother was born in the U.S., and that I speak fluent English, and dress like a "mainstream American", but I still don't count as "American" to some bigots. Because my face says "didn't come from Europe".

It's not only recent immigrants that get hazed. Some of us really can't assimilate enough.

[sailortelevator.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is extremely interesting. O__o Especially for me now, because I've been trying to read up on politics (for the first time in my life, so there's still so much I don't know!), tomorrow is the big election in Sweden and the "issue" (their word, not mine!) of immigrants is a massive deal-breaker. The currently reigning side (called "Moderaterna") are blaming the former reigning SocialDemocrates for the current state that Sweden is in, because their border policies were too lax. Except in the past 4 years that they've been in power the segregation has like tripled. O_O

At the same time I feel horrible, because in my heart I want there to be no borders. And full integration, where newly arrived (I don't wanna use the word immigrants due to all the bad connotations) aren't persacuated. But at the same time I'm finding myself sitting in class becoming irritated with some of the foreign girls in my class because of their broken English and idiotic questions. It's a horrible feeling.

And on a similar note, my family is from a small coastal town in the south of Sweden with a great deal of mainly illegal arrivers that very often come from Poland. And they have been stamped as thieves and burglars. It does make me wanna scream with frustration that man-kind still hasn't learnt anything since the wars (both of them). So drawing from my experiences with Polish people (not personal as such, since I don't think I've ever actually met a Polish person in person, I mean experience as in "general idea") I find it so interesting that you're Polish.

Did any of that make any sense at all? xD I have no appropriate icon, but have a srs Keichan! xD

[winter]

*pats* It makes sense in the context of good intentions :)

I commented to someone above that a multi-cultural environment isn't easy - and that's just what makes it interesting. For what it's worth, one of the most fascinating people during my Erasmus term in Ireland was a Iraqi Kurdish woman who'd immigrated to Sweden after the first Gulf War. She was the oldest of us, and she'd been through some horrific things - if not for Sweden's policies she would not have been there at all, never would have had this opportunity to go with me and a Finnish girl to an English fort on an Irish coastline and wonder whether the guy we passed was an elf, with his pointy ears.

And she was living with an ethnic Swedish girl. When it was their turn to host our unofficial Erasmus dinners, they made Kurdish stew and pepparkakor. It all fit :)

[enisy.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the whole thing, but did she voice issues with immigrants as a whole, or just with conservative Islam? Because I could see how humanists would take issue with things like jihad, repression of women, and apostasy as a death offense. If, on the other hand, she excoriates even those cultural discrepancies that don't interfere with human rights, she obviously needs a reality check.

[winter]

The point here is that in order to accept large numbers of immigrants, and maintain any social cohesion, acceptance by the receiving population is not the only requirement: immigrants must be willing and able to change, to merge with the receiving population. The new place isn't the old place; the new customs aren't the old customs.

There is a difference between breaking the law (obvious), and actually daring to have one's own culture. From the place she's coming from - with America's imperial history - to say this, is somewhat unbelievable for me.

(It might help for you to know that my country went through a total of 160+ years in the last 220 of various degrees of non-independence and at times attempts at forced assimilation, together with, natch, not letting kids speak Polish in schools at one point. I have context here.)

[sukeban.livejournal.com]

Says Bear: I can easily imagine how Muslims would react to my excusing the Crusades on the basis of Islamic aggression from 600 to 1000 C.E....(for instance, excusing the building of a church on the site of a mosque in Cordoba after the Reconquista by reminding them of the mosque built on the site of an important early Christian church in Antioch.)

I... I just wish they stopped talking about Cordoba unless they had a bit of a clue about the history of Spain. Just that. Anyone here knows that caliphate and taifa kingdom Cordoba was a vast improvement over what came afterwards when it comes to tolerance, understanding and learning.

(Also, in my very personal opinion? The gothic cathedral in the middle of the Mosque of Cordoba is an eyesore that mars one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, so fuck that shit -- the cathedral should be moved someplace else. The site was a Roman temple to Janus before the Christians took over, so forget about prior use, anyway.)

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

Medieval Spain was awesome. I've been to the Mosque of Cordoba and yeah, the cathedral part is an eyesore. I remind myself that if the cathedral hadn't been integrated the mosque probably would have been completely demolished, but it isn't that comforting. The courtyard with the orange trees was relatively unchanged to my knowledge, and is still lovely.

[winter]

*nodnod* I keep meaning to go there.

[winter]

I think we can all agree that Ms Moon is supremely clueless ~_~

And thanks for the 3D link! It's completely gorgeous. I must go to Cordoba one day, Spain's been on my list for years.

[gisho.livejournal.com]

Erm. How does she get from 'Civic virtues knit together a diverse culture' to 'Marginalized groups need to suck it up'? I mean, she even says that temperance and sound judgement are some of the virtues of a good citizen! I kind of want to slap a Wikipediaesque 'This post appears to contradict itself' label on that post. Some of those paragraphs would make a fine opening to an argument about why tolerance is important and we shouldn't regard immigrants with suspicion, and then she jumps off into the xenophobic claptrap.

It's like those people who wave around 'Live in America, Speak English' signs, only a dozen times worse.

[winter]

I think the label needed is, "Tolerance. You do not get."

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

This breaks my brain. Completely. Plus hello middle east, where civilation has been there long before America was stolen from the natives :P The way she's acting makes me think of America as the borg - you must be assimilated.

While Britain does still have many issues, I have to admit I do appreciate the fact we do have so much diversity and mixture of culture. My street alone has Polish shops, general Asian shops, African shops, Thai shops, Middle East shops.

I remember when the Mosque was first built and there was OMG NOOOOO! responses. Now, people regularly go to the mosque kitchen for award-winning lunches and don't even think twice about the fact that it's a mosque.

[oninobara.livejournal.com]

Obviously Mrs. Moon has never experienced the joy of guacamole spread over a handmade burrito stuffed with fresh jalapenos, cheese, and chicken on a bed of seasoned rice.

We've got it in authentic Mexican restaurants in North Carolina, and we're in the Southern part of America just like Texas, her home state-- although Texas has a rather nasty history with Mexico in that it originally started out as Mexican land until slave-owning Americans pushed and pushed into the territory and started carting in guns. Texas still has an embassy building in France from when it declared itself an independent country (before the citizens sought help against the Mexican army from their "fellow Americans" in Congress).

I'd be pretty upset if someone turned my delicious burrito into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I LOVE peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they're wonderful comfort food, the childhood sweetener in my Anglo-Saxon-American upbringing, but sometimes?

A girl just wants a burrito that nearly sets her mouth on fire. I don't care if the cook makes it differently each time I go to the restaurant; it's always delicious.

Yes, I'm irritated at that part of the immigrant population that comes to America and breaks the law either by ignorance or willfulness, but frankly I'm flattered that so many people still want to come to my country despite all its problems. It's a fact of life that the newly arrived will have an easier time in American society if they know English (Most Americans only understand English.), but that doesn't mean they should forget the totality of where they came from.

The fact that people spread out all over the world developed thinking, independent cultures is a wonderful thing. Our unique traits should be celebrated, not wiped away.

Personally, I enjoy a life filled with curry, sushi, baklava, and pasta sauce. Going back to plain old fried chicken would be boring.

[winter]

Boring is just the word! And how the hell does one decide what culture should reign supreme? Because it sure ain't the original culture of the land...

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

There are only two things I think we can rightfully expect from any immigrant community (and are justified in enforcing by legal force of arms if necessary):

1. They will respect the secular laws of this country.

2. They will respect the right of other people to choose a different way of life from their own, even if that lifestyle offends their own religious or cultural sensibilities.

That's all we have a right to expect from anyone. Any expectations beyond that are merely bigotry in disguise.