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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132223
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | 1
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LINKWhen fear replaces pride.
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Brian O'Neill
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 November 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1964
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | 2
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Both paragraphs are politically-tilted spin, anyway.It's just swapping one odor of horse manure for another.
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Brad Brickley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8286
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | 3
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It's frustrating the attitudes that some share now and are using to divide us all. We are all immigrants or the children of immigrants and should take pride in that and in welcoming new Americans. I work with several people who have come to the United States from all over the world and each one of them is a good American who are contributing to the prosperity of this country. I feel fortunate to work with them and to get to know them and what makes them unique. Just off the top of my head I work with people from the Philippines, Greece, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Hungary, Canada, Germany, and Columbia.
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4492
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | 4
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The U.S. of A. should to be more of a shared ideal (land of opportunity, democratic champion of human liberty) than a place or class you are born to, but then I guess to people who brag of inherited genius and achievement for simply being born into something (unlike those fools who didn't work hard enough in drought plagued Africa and died at age 4), well...
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 22 February 2018 at 8:43pm
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Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
Posts: 1717
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | 5
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Personally I'm all for an updated version of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act.
(Look it up, y'all.)
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Brian O'Neill
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 November 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1964
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| Posted: 22 February 2018 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | 6
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In this climate, wouldn't that just mean a 'Bizarro' version of the act, which lets in nothing but 'northern Europeans'?
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Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
Posts: 1717
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 6:53am | IP Logged | 7
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Well, I was assuming...um..."climate change."
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12428
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 7:27am | IP Logged | 8
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>>America No Longer A 'Nation Of Immigrants,' USCIS Says<<
Huh? Okay, then!
America will then be populated only by Native Americans and the descendants of Black slaves.
Everybody else -- go back the f@ck to where y'all came from!
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7478
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 9:41am | IP Logged | 9
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We will always be a nation of immigrants. The rising tide of hatred, intolerance and fear will recede one day, even if there might be all sorts of trouble made between now and then.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132223
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 9:48am | IP Logged | 10
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As an immigrant, first to Canada, then to the US, I was fascinated as a kid by America's concept of itself as "a Nation of immigrants" and a "melting pot". In Canada we were taught to think of the country as a "cultural mosaic". Don't DARE offend the French by suggesting they were fully part of the country! Frank Miller summed up that attitude best, when he said a mosaic is "made out of broken pieces." The "melting pot." where cultural strengths are fused together, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, seemed to me like a much better idea. Back when immigrants "got off the boat" and started calling themselves Americans -- and without hyphenation, mind you! Sadly, cultural diversity all too often leads to cultural devisiveness -- Us against Them.
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7478
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 9:59am | IP Logged | 11
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In our history, we've gone through cycles of being anti-immigrant. German immigrants were railed against because they weren't English (or Dutch, I guess); Italians and Irish weren't "good enough" in the early 1900s; and my Filipina wife would have a lot to say about the treatment of Chinese and Filipino immigrants as well... to say nothing of the shameful treatment experienced by the Japanese interned during World War II. (And even those who are native to this country, preceding us colonizers, have weathered horrifying atrocities at our hands.)
Our national idea of ourselves has been highly selective in practice, even in the best of times, and challenged by people who take us up on it. We experience cultural stress when we're expected to live up to our high-minded words.
But the good news is that, despite sometimes explosive cultural upheaval, we slowly get better. "Us versus them" only has so much power--and even if those on the losing side will fight it viciously, the most likely ending is pretty clear.
Edited by Andrew Bitner on 23 February 2018 at 10:01am
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12428
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| Posted: 23 February 2018 at 10:14am | IP Logged | 12
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I come from an immigrant family -- I didn't really start to speak English regularly until kindergarten -- and I'm old enough to have been born when hyphenation coming to the fore explicitly so that White people could move beyond the "N" word, and Colored, and Negro, toward an appellation not centered on skin tone but instead reflective and respectful of Black people as equally contributing to the melting pot as any other immigrant group. Thus, Afro-American (rather in vogue, as I recall, before African-American) achieved prominence in the lexicon. When the cultural tide shifted toward a "Black is beautiful" and "Say it loud, I'm Black and proud" sentiment, African-American retreated for a bit, but this hyphenated designation remains standard.
One might argue that, given the history of Black people in America -- not to mention the present-day reality -- that hyphenated name will retain considerable value until the White majority can look at and treat the Black minority not as Black people but simply people.
Still, I rather wish we could eschew "American" in favor of "Citizen."
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