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

[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.