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

[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...