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

[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 :)