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.