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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31572 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Historically, the US was in fact capable of assimilating diverse immigrant populations. Maybe we’ve lost that ability due to philosophical trends. Maybe it always was an accident of history, and nations without the economic snowball of the late 1800s can’t replicate such a feat. But clearly, we managed to assimilate Irish and Italian and other cultures to the point they usually get labeled as white.

I live in Texas. We have an enormous South and East Asian population, which has not generated unrest. It’s not that they’re just the best and brightest. Opening up a nail salon or restaurant is not a high-skill occupation. What it does require is buy-in to the American paradigm of advancement. The same is true for Sweden, which is perfectly capable of assimilating anyone who wants to buy in.

It’s easy enough to believe that gangbangers aren’t interested in advancement by legitimate means. Those men aren’t Swedes because they don’t care about being Swedes. They probably wouldn’t become Americans, either (though I guess our cultural products are a lot stronger than the Nordics). Cool, don’t let them in.

I don’t think this applies to the general category of Syrians. Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor. It’s their implantation of the filters which has fallen short. Improve their ability to reject bad actors—or to convert them into cooperative ones—and Sweden can get this under control.

Those men aren’t Swedes because they don’t care about being Swedes. They probably wouldn’t become Americans, either (though I guess our cultural products are a lot stronger than the Nordics).

Arguably many immigrant-background gang criminals etc. in Sweden and other European countries have assimilated - they just haven't assimilated to the European mainstream cultures but to the omnipresent, America-originated (though these days somewhat detached from that root, ie. UK roadman subculture becoming more common as a point of reference) global underclass subculture, or subcultures.

Many of the biggest issues in Sweden re: immigrants are due to outlaw biker gangs (Saturadah is known to be immigrant-oriented), but biker gangs have been an issue in the Nordic countries even before immigrant crime really became a thing. There arguably is not a single form of organized crime more American, both regarding its origins and cultural signifiers, than outlaw biker gangs.

Furthermore, of course, there are a plenty of immigrants in Sweden and immigrants who have assimilated completely to Swedish mores, even if these might be liberal Swedish mores. During my career in left-wing youth politics here I visited Sweden to meet the local left youth organization a few times, and saw little difference between members coming from native Swedish or immigrant backgrounds; often both types were able to trigger an automatic Finnish "goddamn Swedes..." reaction somewhere in my subconsciousness.

I think most of the issue is a problem that’s really based on the idea that there’s no gradation to ideas, and that no ideas are inherently better or worse than any other ideas. It’s lead us to become the culture of the indulgent parent who cannot help but give the children in their home exactly what they want exactly when and how they want it. That’s probably the biggest difference between the Great Assimilations of the past and now.

If you moved to America or Sweden or anywhere in Western Europe, you were expected to assimilate. You had to speak English in America, you had to learn to dress like Americans, to like American culture (or at least be okay with it). You had to send your kids to American schools where they would absolutely learn American culture. The same sort of process happened in other countries. I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to demand that schools and workplaces install ritual baths or schedule their work/school day around prayer times. That forced them to assimilate.

We’re honestly doing the opposite, and not only not forcing new immigrants to join the mainstream, but actually unassimilating our native populations by allowing various “lobby ethnics” to simply carve out accommodations for whatever weird fetish, weird dress or hairstyles they want to wear, or practices they want to do. And the rest of us are taugh very early on that raising any objections to weird thing people do is wrong. It’s even wrong to express the idea that there is or should be a norm. Teaching the old books, talking about the old religious heritage, all of this is simply thought crime.

And thus we’re creating a cultural chaos where you can never exactly trust that anyone around you shares anything with you. Maybe he has a pooping on the floor fetish. Maybe he believes in jihad. Maybe he just meditates all day. Maybe they’ll wear pajamas, maybe he’ll dress in a Muslim robe or wear Tizit, or a suit. They might speak English or not. It’s impossible to share a culture.

You had to speak English in America, you had to learn to dress like Americans, to like American culture

Really? Could not all sorts of languages be heard on the streets of the large cities (and in some cases elsewhere) for decades and decades after the immigration took off, whether it be Yiddish, German, Polish or something else? Indeed one occasionally reads those stories about the remnants of an immigrant community in some place or other where the old-timers still speak another European language.

True, but if you for some reason want to go out into the wider world — for work, for recreation, for education, whatever it might be, you had to at least get onboard with the dress, customs, and language of America. You couldn’t get a job and expect them to accommodate your cultural or religious garb. You wouldn’t be allowed to continue to speak your native language outside the enclave especially at work or school. This forced people to eventually assimilate.

Some of the difference is technology. I have Google translate and I can thus understand at a basic level, most languages well enough to do a very basic interaction. The rest is a sort of malaise that assumes that a country can actually survive as a cohesive unit without at least some baseline of a shared culture. The idea that one should be permitted to “let their freak flag fly” is corrosive because it’s precisely those shared expectations, morals, and folkways that produce social trust. I can’t really know that a person who behaves wildly out of the mainstream shares any of my values. I don’t know what would and wouldn’t offend them. This leads to less social interaction and often much shallower interactions because I can’t know what’s safe for polite conversation.

Yeah, non-English, native language institutions and schools were the norm for most of American history, and were even legally codified in many states. That only reversed during our WW1 xenophobic fervor, and even then the Supreme Court ruled its illegal to forbid native language schools.

I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap.

To be precise, they would have been legally permitted, but people would have been permitted to deny them employment or services on those grounds. In at least some respects, it was a freer time all around.

  • I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to demand that schools and workplaces install ritual baths or schedule their work/school day around prayer times.

I mean, unless they were in a Muslim-heavy immigrant community. You certainly had thatt sort of... not quite enclave, but significant presence, in some areas, I believe down to things like German-language newspapers, for instance.

Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor.

Completely inaccurate. It's not like there weren't previous examples to draw from. Mass immigration to Europe didn't start with the Syrian War.

One look at the French banlieues should have given an observant Swede all he needed to know. Ellis Island comparisons from a hundred years ago strain credulity when there are recent examples much closer to home.

I don’t think this applies to the general category of Syrians. Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor.

What why? These are literally men who refused to take a side in a civil war.

I don’t follow.

A male Syrian refugee had the option of, instead, joining the Syrian Armed Forces, the Syrian National Army, or the Free Syrian Army and/or providing material support for one of those.

This is a very easy comment to make from, one imagines, the comfort of the West.

The comforts of the West having been provided to me because some of my ancestors took the hard road. Look at the Constitution wise men wisely put in the word "Posterity".

I think you should read what the founders thought about titles of nobility. They explicitly say it's bad to consider yourself any more special or claim any special privileges due to what your ancestors did.

Ignoring "all men are created equal" because of this one single word "posterity" that may not even mean literal descent is bizarre. I'm always confused by people who identify so much with being Western or American and still hold such anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic values.

I expressed a very meritocratic opinion about Syrian refugees.

Holding them to a different standard than yourself due to things completely different people did is neither individualistic nor meritocratic.

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And if you were John Paul Jones I would not have quibbled with the comment. You don't get to take some sort of vicarious credit for the actions of your ancestors, and that their actions helped deliver the prosperity you live in that hardly gives you the right to pontificate on the bravery or otherwise of Syrian refugees.

You don't get to take some sort of vicarious credit for the actions of your ancestors

They would probably disagree.

Of course.

If you're suggesting his unwillingness to join one of those armies means he will be reluctant to do normal labor, I have to disagree. Staying in a warzone is unappealing for any number of reasons. A wife and kids, for example.

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