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

[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."