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

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

There are only two things I think we can rightfully expect from any immigrant community (and are justified in enforcing by legal force of arms if necessary):

1. They will respect the secular laws of this country.

2. They will respect the right of other people to choose a different way of life from their own, even if that lifestyle offends their own religious or cultural sensibilities.

That's all we have a right to expect from anyone. Any expectations beyond that are merely bigotry in disguise.