Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I come from an immigrant family that runs the gamut on this.
My parents don't care. Or rather: they're totally pragmatic. They came to America because it's the best place to be. When Trump does something annoying on an immigration level they take it with fatalism because what are you gonna do? They know they don't deserve to be in America in the AOC/Billie Eilish "no one is illegal on stolen land" sense, but it's good so they want to stay.
They don't hate the culture. Except maybe for its licentiousness but their response to this is to just stay the hell away from that shit, not try to change it. They don't get into the drama and they don't really care that you think the culture is being destroyed. That's your culture war, if you don't want immigrants don't take any?
My brother and sister on the other hand, are basically American leftists since they came so late that Africa is an abstraction to them. Constant talk about how racist America is. Why do they talk this way? Besides the fact that everything in pop culture was telling them this sort of thing was cool? Besides the fact that the natural retort that cuts down on this - "go back to your country" - was considered a macroaggression? Besides the fact that it's the common take from high status industries and people? Besides the fact that those people tell them the other side wants them dead or deported or oppressed?
They absorbed the same attitude as the people around them (except without any irony or balance from knowing a broad cross-section of Americans or having a deep link to the country), and the same embarrassment about inequity (we were once subject to a speech about how good street vendors in Freetown were compared to supermarkets because I guess supermarkets are Western and inauthentic?) except even worse for lacking a strong American history and actually coming from those countries. So they double down on the rhetoric they've been told is an answer.
Thing is: it doesn't have to be this way. Poor Africans are by this logic even bigger victims of the West than immigrants yet this wasn't common growing up. If anything, people were pretty embarrassingly obsequious towards the British (some of the stereotypes of wypipo had the younger generation rolling our eyes).
Right, so you understand the problem exactly. What's to discuss? The problem is other Americans.
It doesn't matter what immigrants think. Immigrants can be assimilated or made to say various prosocial things if they are forced to by the populace. Instead you've failed to form a unified front, so kids will misbehave. That's it.
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