Is it racist to feel that my culture has value, and want to preserve it for future generations?
Is it racist to expect newcomers into my community to adapt and assimilate into my culture, rather than expecting me to change my culture to accommodate them?
Yup because your “culture” doesn’t represent what America is all about. Why place your own culture and values above others?
Fear of losing culture goes way back. Somehow the country survives and thrives.
https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/english-only-not-minnesota-history/
Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1751, addressing the issue of German immigrants:
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?”
My husband’s family has their origins in migrant farm work. He and his siblings range from solidly middle class to wealthy. They have paid more in taxes than it ever cost to give them free lunch.
Edited to add: rather than resenting those children their food and education, think of them as future taxpayers, business owners, and military recruits. They will pay this country back in a myriad of ways.
I saw early anti-immigration pamphlets showing certain immigrants as beggarly, suspicious and BLACK. These immigrants were… the Irish. There was such hysteria against the Irish, they were portrayed as black.
And yes, of course those 19th century Americans though their culture was threatened, that the Irish weren’t going to respect the culture of the land in the US.
@notrichenough, next time you’re in NYC I recommend you visit the Tenement Museum. It offers a fascinating look at the lives of German, Jewish and Irish families that lived on the Lower East Side.
All were reviled at the time of their arrival for their language, religion and culture.
And of course there was the culture of the original settlers, the Native Americans.
Most cultures in the US are not under threat of not being preserved for future generations, with the exception of some smaller groups of indigenous peoples. Current or even increased levels of immigration will not change this.
Those who immigrate to the US to settle do tend to subscribe to American ideals, so what is the problem you see with them? Even if they are a different color, have a different national origin, practice a different religion, eat different food, and/or have other cultural practices different from yours, their presence in your community will not force you to change your culture (and you might like the added variety of food that they bring).
Indeed, the greater threat to American ideals is the idea that America must be dominated by some races/ethnicities, and that those in the outgroups must “know their place” as members of subservient groups and must not be allowed to become numerous enough to politically question their status as such.
Or maybe it means I don’t like or feel I should have to change.
Because… I’m already here? And they’re not?
And look what happened to them when they were overrun by “illegal” aliens.
“Or maybe it means I don’t like or feel I should have to change.”
Who’s asking YOU to change? You do you, let other people do them.
Even if all your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, I doubt you’re subscribing to their old ways and customs. No diversity of foods, music, art, etc. in your life? I bet there is.
“Because… I’m already here? And they’re not?”
First come, first served policy? Huge tracts of this country were settled by latino/hispanics long before any Europeans ever arrived.
What exactly are you afraid of losing?
oh man :))
Do you think our culture is better than Saudi Arabia’s?
Personally I prefer ours.
And they lost their land by force. Without territorial integrity, our country is nothing. Those people you mention lost a lot to the Europeans, did they not?
I support legal immigration to the U.S., but it should be up to us who comes in.
A nonexistent threat, since the entire population of Saudi Arabia is 1/10 that of the US, many are not as conservative as the government, and few immigrate to the US anyway.
As with most issues, there needs to be a balance. In every generation, resistance to immigration of all kinds has come in part from fear of various undesirable others, and I don’t think this generation is any different. That being said, there are legitimate reasons to limit the number of immigrants, especially the number of immigrants likely to need financial support.
There’s a difference between “not assimilating” in the sense of preserving traditional foods, dress, etc, which add to the tapestry of an American culture that has never been monolithic, and “not assimilating” in the sense of fundamentally closing oneself off from the capacity for meaningful participation in American civic and communal life, which is what happens if you don’t make an effort to become reasonably fluent in English. That being said; I’m simply not sure if that is any more of an issue today than it was in past waves of immigration. I know several of my great-grandparents never really learned more than elementary level English, probably because they were working so hard to support their families that taking the time and effort to learn a new language as an adult wasn’t an option. All of my grandparents, who spent most of their childhoods in America, still managed to become fully integrated in American life. I suspect this is a common story, then and now.
I do think there’s a more fundamental problem – more evident in Europe than here – with immigrant populations who are unwilling to embrace certain core values of (small “l”) liberalism. Religious zealotry, oppression of women, and extremely retrograde sexual mores are a very different matter from introducing burritos or samosas to the 4th of July BBQ. That doesn’t mean banning immigration for people of a certain race or religion, especially when those people are facing dire and even deadly conditions in their home countries, but it does mean proceeding with some caution. The same goes for the problem of bringing in gang violence or members of the drug trade – certain elements may overemphasize these risks as scare tactics, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a real threat.
As for illegal immigration, I think we do have an obligation to be as compassionate as we can, short of national suicide. Deporting a child who had no say in whether or not he or she was brought to this country is cruel. Deporting a parent with no criminal record is cruel, and counterproductive if we don’t want her citizen children to become a burden on society. We do have the means to absorb a number of these people, and lack the ability to deport all of them in any case, so deporting otherwise law-abiding and long-time members of society with ties to this country as a merely punitive action is not only heartless but almost certainly bad public policy. We can work to shore up border security and decrease incentives for immigration to limit future immigration and focus on targeting dangerous immigrants while absorbing a lot of the most sympathetic cases. I simply can’t get behind the idea that we need to punish people who came to this country illegally out of desperation. There but for the grace of God go I. There but for the grace of a relatively tolerant legal immigration policy would have gone my ancestors, and not so long ago.
I’ve traced my genealogy pretty extensively. A lot of my family lines end in the death camps. I take seriously the value of helping the suffering and desperate, even as I recognize that practical concerns must temper our compassion.
One serious omission in that is it implies the immigrants has the primary duty to expend all efforts to assimilate without any discussion of how it’s actually a two way street and this very omission in practice by many European countries combined with xenophobic undercurrents from the far-right nativists going back decades(i.e. Back to the Pied-Noirs and the attempted coup by them and their sympathizers in the French military/establishment against Charles DeGaulle because they didn’t want to give up colonization of North Africa, their elite status there, and their feeling entitled to continue treating the North African natives as second-class citizens).
Incidentally, this omission tends to also dominate narratives about the Romans and the Goths from the Roman defeat at the Battle of Adrianople to the sackings of Rome in the 5th century to the fall of Rome.
One historical lesson neglected from the Roman experience* was that if the given society is hostile to immigrants or worse…treats them in the high handed manner as the Romans did, those immigrants will not only no longer embrace the new society, but regard it with hostility and be driven to isolate themselves in extremism. Ironic considering the Goths were initially fine with volunteering themselves as Roman Auxiliaries and adopting Roman cultural norms to assimilate.
One tragedy with the immigration debate is that it seems the US is forgetting this very lesson after learning and benefiting from making some semblance of an effort to meet the immigrant communities halfway in the past.
Also for those who criticize immigrants for not learning the English language proficiently, couple of things to keep in mind:
A critically high mass of Americans historically have felt it wasn’t worth the bother to learn basic greetings in a foreign language or worse, absurdly expect everyone to understand American English that it has become a long-running joke among internationals around the world.
Worse, I’ve lost count of how many American tourists I’ve seen felt they could make themselves understood speaking English by raising their volume while in a foreign country in areas where there aren’t as many English speakers(i.e. rural areas of Mainland China in the late '90s).
Cobrat, I’m well aware that it is difficult to learn a new language; in fact, I’m learning one right now as I prepare for an international move. It is slow going. Hence my observation that it takes time that not all immigrants have to master English, and my questioning of whether or not this generation is any different than earlier waves of immigrants in that respect. However, IF (and its a big if) it were true that the current group of immigrants were more resistant to learning English than previous generations, it would be a legitimate concern. The fact that Americans are far less likely to be bilingual than citizens of other nations is unfortunate, but it is also immaterial to this discussion, unless they are planning on moving to another country. If you come to a country, learning the native language should at least be a goal.
As for your other point - of course toleration is a two-way street, and of course prejudice can only lessen the desire of immigrants to embrace American culture. I still maintain, however, that there are certain behaviors that we are under absolutely no obligation to meet halfway. And again, if you are voluntarily coming here, there is more of an onus on you to adapt to the culture you are entering than for the people of that culture to adapt to you.
Immigrants today learn English much, much faster than in the past thanks to television, movies, computers, mass media, etc.
Children absorb the language within months, and their immigrant parents enjoy greater access to it than at any time in history. Yet not too long ago - as late as the 1940s - you could come across 2-nd generation immigrants who spoke English badly or none at all. That’s extremely rare today.
@apprenticeprof “there are certain behaviors that we are under absolutely no obligation to meet halfway. And again, if you are voluntarily coming here, there is more of an onus on you to adapt to the culture you are entering than for the people of that culture to adapt to you.” – I certainly don’t disagree. But I also don’t perceive the lack of adaption to American norms by immigrants as a major problem. And neither to most people in the field.
And a large part of that is that when Americans are at their best, we do attempt to meet immigrants half-way by welcoming them into the American society and how over 2 centuries, American norms have changed and adapted so some of what was once considered foreign and highly suspicious…whether it’s Irish Catholicism, German beer*, Greek Gyros, Mexican empenadas, etc has now become an embedded part of the American norms in many parts of the US.
@cobrat – you have completely jumped the shark on this issue. Comparing a government that says “don’t come here illegally” with an empire that forced “families to sell their children into slavery for trifling amounts of dog meat to stave off starvation” is beyond ridiculous. Let’s call this “Alaric’s Law” for immigration debates…
It is hard to know from the outside how much a person or family has assimilated. There is an internal process that is impossible to quantify.
Many of you have lived abroad as have I. You know that you woke up every day knowing you were not in the States. The education system was organized differently with different priorities and how business is conducted is different. You adjust and carry on. Here on CC we encourage students to study abroad and mark how it changes them.
The immigrants to the US change too. I have relatives who moved here from England. Their accent is gone in the children and weakened in the parents. The father started a business which he never would have done there. The kids had liberal arts educations. But if you opened their fridge you would exclaim over all the weird sauces and condiments. They really liked the National Health system and will talk about it to people. They go back to the UK for vacation. He joined an immigrant old guy soccer league.
So assimilated or not? I believe they would say they have. Who they are now is vastly different than who they had been.
I think one of the issues involved with assimilation is whether a person immigrated by choice or if they feel that they had no choice and resent having had to do so. I work with people who are very poor and struggle. It is impossible not to be touched and moved by their plights if you are a decent person, but I think it’s important to actually listen to them and not make assumptions based on one’s own history or agenda. There is a significant population of illegal immigrants (and this is, in my experience, relatively new in its degree) who simply did not want to leave their homes, do not want to put down roots, and are angry that they feel they had no realistic alternative. Because they didn’t have a realistic alternative. This is certainly not the case for everyone who immigrates, or even most, but it’s a not insignificant number and they matter, too. As has been said repeatedly, this is a complicated issue and there is not one story or solution that fits every human being involved.