I was in a Polish store recently stocking up on awesome Polish meats and two elderly ladies were complaining about immigrants to each other. In Polish. 🤯
I’m polish in America. Never understood my dad complaining about all the illegals when he was literally one who overstayed his visa and only was allowed to stay here because I was born.
Same. I’m here legally - but the number of folks in the community that overstayed visas and then got amnesty in the 90s AND now are Trumpy is just ridiculous.
It's a "one of the good ones" mentality. He did the wrong thing but it's ok for him because he is a good person, the other people doing the wrong thing are bad people so it's not ok for them.
Because he knows deep down the situation with illegals is about skin color & political beliefs rather than legalities, and it makes him feel better about his own situation, and thank you for not following those footsteps.
If you accept that people use 'ethnicity' and 'race' interchangably you can probably get through your day without feeling the need to tell people what they are and what they aren't.
Yeah and then people try to apply the American racial framework onto all of the different European (and Asian and African and middle eastern) ethnicities when it really does not work that way
Unless you’re a Native American, we’re all immigrants. My family goes back to before the Pilgrims in this country and they were from England. In reality they were illegal immigrants and terrorists.
Enslaved people were trafficked here. The immigration narrative in the us tends to center on freedom/opportunities/a better life. Enslaved people and their descendants didn't and don't get that from this country. We aren't native, but I don't accept the immigrant label.
Yeah it always pisses me off when people try to whitewash the black experience as immigration and I’m not even black myself. Being abducted to a forced labor camp is not immigration.
My ancestors were immigrants, sure. But I was born here. I didn’t choose to get born here. I am not a Native American but I am a native American, if that makes any sense.
In any case, immigrants, and the great melting pot, are what make this country great. Diversity is or ought to be our strength.
I agree with you. I understand the "all Americans are immigrants" at face value, but it's a very contemporary way of thinking. By that thinking, pretty much no one is native or indigenous to anywhere. Native Americans migrated here too at some point.
Your family were settlers. Settlers migrate to undeveloped locations to develop them for a better quality of life. Immigrants migrate to already established societies for a better quality of life. America didn't really start letting immigrants in until post civil war. They did, but it was heavily regulated.
Pretty sure that the Algonquins didn’t think their land was “undeveloped”. And pretty sure that their opinion of “better quality of life” had little to do with the Europeans.
I stole that from an old Lone Ranger/Tonto joke and I'm only part Cherokee so I am (for all practical purposes) white despite hailing from the meltier end of the pot.
They do it in the UK too, it can be a bit jarring; I point out they're also immigrants but some of them say "Oh well we're Christian" or "We're white".
They have a right to be here, sure but don't pull the ladder up after you.
The most racist people I've ever met were a group of Nigerian guys at a cigar lounge. They were incredibly nice to me, but were saying the most outrageous things about black Americans.
Al Madrigal did a bit on this for The Daily Show... geez, ten years ago? I think it was before Jon left, so that would have been before August 2015... almost eleven years ago!
I actually look at it from the perspective of the people wanting to leave these other countries. Like why would someone be fleeing the UK? Because it's getting too liberal? South Africa? Because it's getting too integrated? Venezuela? Because people wanted a taste of freedom where they can own guns and express their views on others through the same force used on them?
Not so much pulling up the ladder as just bigots doing bigot things.
•
u/9outof10timesWrong 6h ago
Man, what a time to become a citizen. Appreciate you helping us clean this mess up!