Do you feel connected to your country?
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Do you feel connected to your country?
I had a weird conversation last night; my friend tried to explain to me something about national coherence & the challenge of too many newcomers - but the premise is simply alien to me, emotionally & intellectually.
I can't see a version of this "challenge" other than defining a nation as "a place without newcomers" & that's just absurd; no nation on Earth was ever like that & trying has turned out horrific.
Am I the idiot?
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Do you feel connected to your country?
I had a weird conversation last night; my friend tried to explain to me something about national coherence & the challenge of too many newcomers - but the premise is simply alien to me, emotionally & intellectually.
I can't see a version of this "challenge" other than defining a nation as "a place without newcomers" & that's just absurd; no nation on Earth was ever like that & trying has turned out horrific.
Am I the idiot?
I should stress that my friend is neither an idiot nor a bigot - he's just very impressionable. Pretty sure he'd have joined a cult or some shit by now if he didn't know me
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Do you feel connected to your country?
I had a weird conversation last night; my friend tried to explain to me something about national coherence & the challenge of too many newcomers - but the premise is simply alien to me, emotionally & intellectually.
I can't see a version of this "challenge" other than defining a nation as "a place without newcomers" & that's just absurd; no nation on Earth was ever like that & trying has turned out horrific.
Am I the idiot?
@jwcph
I'd start with getting a clearer definition of "too many""National coherence"is a strange phrase - As I was growing up (1960s) the phrase"melting pot" was hailed as a virtue - and we had many different cultures within the US, with strong regional character. (We still do - and many are not immigrant cultures) And we celebrated the various cultures. The national "we" at least preached aspirational goals (and yes, we fell far short in many cases).
And that national "We" was made up of people from many backgrounds, often informed by their religion &/or the countries they or their foreparents came from - so these cultures differed from one another, and evolved as they overlapped in various ways.
I've known, and in many cases worked with, immigrants from many places - China, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Mexico, Guatamala, Pakistan, India, Italy, Germany, Syria. Almost all of them want to integrate in the US culture, to be part of the larger community. We need to work on enabling that integration.
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Do you feel connected to your country?
I had a weird conversation last night; my friend tried to explain to me something about national coherence & the challenge of too many newcomers - but the premise is simply alien to me, emotionally & intellectually.
I can't see a version of this "challenge" other than defining a nation as "a place without newcomers" & that's just absurd; no nation on Earth was ever like that & trying has turned out horrific.
Am I the idiot?
@jwcph aka "too many people who don't look like me"?
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@jwcph
I'd start with getting a clearer definition of "too many""National coherence"is a strange phrase - As I was growing up (1960s) the phrase"melting pot" was hailed as a virtue - and we had many different cultures within the US, with strong regional character. (We still do - and many are not immigrant cultures) And we celebrated the various cultures. The national "we" at least preached aspirational goals (and yes, we fell far short in many cases).
And that national "We" was made up of people from many backgrounds, often informed by their religion &/or the countries they or their foreparents came from - so these cultures differed from one another, and evolved as they overlapped in various ways.
I've known, and in many cases worked with, immigrants from many places - China, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Mexico, Guatamala, Pakistan, India, Italy, Germany, Syria. Almost all of them want to integrate in the US culture, to be part of the larger community. We need to work on enabling that integration.
@PaulWermer I don't care what people mean by "too many". After a certain while, every single person in any given neighborhood will have been replaced, in which case the number is 100%, but that doesn't mean it isn't still the same 'hood - at least not by any definition I can relate to in this context.
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@jwcph aka "too many people who don't look like me"?
@billseitz Well, newcomer-ness is usually readily identifiable, so yes, literally or metaphorically that.
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Do you feel connected to your country?
I had a weird conversation last night; my friend tried to explain to me something about national coherence & the challenge of too many newcomers - but the premise is simply alien to me, emotionally & intellectually.
I can't see a version of this "challenge" other than defining a nation as "a place without newcomers" & that's just absurd; no nation on Earth was ever like that & trying has turned out horrific.
Am I the idiot?
@jwcph @billseitz As a child of immigrants, I feel connected to the USA as a country of immigrants. Parents assimilated just fine but retained many traditions. Neighbors did not mind that my parents would have parties with their fellow immigrants where they spoke their barbarous native language at party volumes.
I *do* mind that I had to eat ethnic cuisine my entire childhood. German food is like classic English food – boil those vegetables into submission! – just with less variety.
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@jwcph @billseitz As a child of immigrants, I feel connected to the USA as a country of immigrants. Parents assimilated just fine but retained many traditions. Neighbors did not mind that my parents would have parties with their fellow immigrants where they spoke their barbarous native language at party volumes.
I *do* mind that I had to eat ethnic cuisine my entire childhood. German food is like classic English food – boil those vegetables into submission! – just with less variety.
@marick @billseitz I feel connected to a community of people willing to make it work reasonably well, whoever they are - not to a country. In my mind, when I think "fellow Danes", I mean that, not "other people who happen to be born on a particuar side of a line on a map".
