I recently asked on r/AskBalkans “Which Western country treats immigrants from your country the best?” Number one was a toss-up between USA and Canada, with UK at third. A caveat about Canada was that their ‘Mosaic’ approach to assimilation means that (e.g.) a Serb is more likely to encounter a salty Croat who tries to hassle him. It was implied that this was less of an issue in the American ‘Melting Pot.’
Your thoughts?
45 comments
Annoyed. This is the great melting pot, the land of opportunity. Leave your baggage in the old country if you’re gonna come here. also, assimilate to some degree. If you’ve lived here 30 years and can barely speak the language, why did you even come?
Leave your old world crap in the old world.
Depends a lot on culture and location I almost never see it with Europeans. I live near LA and it’s still fairly common to see some of the Latin and Asian immigrants be outright racist towards each other. Japanese will openly talk shit about Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos etc. Same with Chinese or Korean immigrants towards other immigrants groups. Indians still beef with Pakistanis and try their weird caste bullshit in the work place. Mexicans will openly shit talk Guatemalans and Salvadorians. It’s usually just words and doesn’t very often become more than some old man cussing at people in a language/accent I mostly don’t understand but it happens.
To he fair though it’s not always just versus other immigrant groups. The Asian immigrants and Latin immigrants can be extremely racist against black people.
Weirdly enough in the San Fernando Valley there’s a pretty good size population of immigrants from the middle east who seem to mostly get along OK. The Persians and the Saudis mostly get along and the Shia/Sunni divide doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal for them.
If you’re an American (or want to be), your allegiance is to America. You no longer have a dog in Serbia’s fight.
If you’ve immigrated to the United States, you should leave those ideas behind. We don’t have beefs with people from other places, just beefs with their leadership or government. There’s no place for this stuff in the US, we’re all from somewhere else.
It’s fine to keep many of your traditions from home when you come to the US, as long as they aren’t infringing on other people. Don’t start ethnic wars in the US
I honestly have seen very little of that in my lifetime. I’m in medicine, which means I’ve crossed paths with multiple Pakistani and Indian doctors, and I’ve never seen or even heard any animosity between them. Likewise Jewish and Arab physicians.
In fact, when I have seen beefs between ethnic groups, it tends to arise from something US-based. For example, growing up in Philadlaphia, I thought the countries of Ireland and Italy surely must have been constantly at war, they way the two communities in Philly would talk about each other. Turns out, Italy and Ireland have zero history of conflict, and what I observed growing up was just the results of two groups rubbing edges in the same economic niche.
It depends what you mean. I think it’s unrealistic to expect an immigrant to cease to care about his home country. I don’t have a problem with people from a given place advocating for their homeland and showing concern over its well-being.
But I certainly think that any advocacy or opposition to any other country needs to be handled through speech and petitioning, not through igniting violence between groups that mirrors the violence in some other part of the world.
And if you are so proud of your flag, go back to the country that it represents. And not flags in your house but flags tied to your car that you need to drive around beeping and annoying people to let them know you are of X ancestry. Nobody cares.
In the 90s, we were killing each other back in the Balkans. In Chicago, we used the same grocery store. People had their old world beliefs, and a lot of people were new immigrants because of the war, but we lived side by side.
> Your thoughts?
Leave old world problems in the old world.
Maybe someone was a Serb, or a Croat before they came here, but they chose to immigrate here and they’re an American now.
We’re willing to accept people from all over the world as Americans. The corollary of that is that we expect the people who make that decision to also regard themselves as Americans, now.
That crap don’t belong here. That’s one of the things I think is beneficial living in an ex-colonial nation: a lot of the Old World traditional rivalries and biases died somewhere along the way for most people in them.
In some cases, charmed. The Mwah! Mwah! European kiss between women, polite respect from children, conservative moral beliefs for some of us.
In other cased, annoyed. The Serb/Croat fights made it to the Gary metro, as did fistfights erupting from the Serbian Orthodox schism under Tito. Homophobic, patriarchs beliefs.
In a few, alarmed enough to call the cops.
It is literally un-American to do so (perpetuate ‘old world beefs’ on American soil)
The promise of America is you would leave your ‘old world’ endless border wars of attrition and move here for a fresh start, the trade-off is you leave your old-world hatred and endless scores to settle behind when you move here.
You’re welcome to move to my country, it would be unfair of me not to welcome you.
But – you are *not* welcome to impose your shitty laws and shitty tribal bullshit on my country. That’s not how it works. If you move here, you adapt to America – not the other way around.
Folks shouldn’t immigrate to America (or any country, for that matter) and try to replicate the society they left. Keep your positive cultural traditions and share them? GREAT! Bring your negative traditions with you and force them on others? BAD!
A relevant issue that’s been getting a bunch of coverage recently is the perceived (if not implemented) caste system being replicated within industries populated by immigrants from India. That’s an anathema in America.
I say leave that shit behind. You came here to get away from that.
If you want to continue those beefs take your ass back home.
we hate it. Leave that behind. It would not be well received here.
If you are here, you are an American, and need to adopt our ways and beefs. Don’t like it, go somewhere else
Leave it where you came from. I hosted a grad school candidate for my higher education administration program. He was from Georgia (the country). Some things he said throughout our visit:
* “In Georgia, women don’t work in higher education, this will be weird.”
* “In Georgia, we don’t let gay people talk about these things (any/all things LGBTQ+ inclusion). This just seems absurd.”
Dude didn’t get in needless to say.
VERY annoying, we don’t care, everyone should be respected here.
There’s not enough hours in the day to pay attention or to care really, about who’s mad at who within the US. Everyone hates everyone at some point, and 5 seconds later, they’re best friends. It’s exhausting frankly and to the average person who’s just trying to get by, it’s just not our problem. Figure out your own issues and leave us out of it.
Definitely not a fan, it’s seen as very outdated and backwards-thinking here. That said, it still exists to an extent. I have Korean-American friends whose families would throw an absolute fit if they brought home a Japanese-American boyfriend/girlfriend.
Bring the food, the dances, the music.
Leave the hate behind.
Most of us have squashed those beefs.
Leave your shoes at the door, you can put them back on if you leave the house.
Immigrant groups are more likely to have issues with each other in the US over economic/job reasons rather than cultural/homeland reasons
I would argue that part of the “American Dream” is not having to put up with that bullshit anymore. Here you aren’t beholden to the class or caste or status or professions of your ancestors. And you aren’t beholden to their old grudges or prejudices either.
Major League Cricket has lot to answer about it. They named NYC franchise after Bombay T20 team. I said on their sub that it should be just New York Cricket Club with little connection to Bombay who discriminate against Muslim even high profile Muslims. They building their home stadium in my neighbourhood too.
As a Canadian, Canada is known for importing problems and conflicts from around the world because there is no effort to assimilate. We had a stabbing at an Eritrean protest, Khalistan Sikh /Hindu tensions, and many more. US immigrants assimilate so much you could barely tell they are from that country. For example here in Canada lots of Pakistanis wear shalwar kameez (our traditional clothes) but my Pakistani cousin in USA doesn’t even own one and he says he gets stared at when he wears one there
As the first poster stated, leave the old work stuff in the old world, but come to America, be American. Once you are a citizen, you are American regardless of your past place of birth or ethnicity. You will be one of us and seen by other Americans as American because being American is more about a shared idea and not a ethnic background.
It’s stupid. You both came here because you didn’t want to stay in the country that somehow offended the other. You’d look like someone who just wants to make trouble – you know, an a**hole.
I feel like yes we do still have racism but as a country we are used to the idea of encountering different cultures and including them. I grew up in a region of Michigan that has a large Dutch-ancestry population and I can go up to Minnesota and experience a region more impacted by Scandinavian culture. We are not as much as a mono-culture in a way some other European countries are.
Those cultures have been present for as long as anyone living can remember and are a point of pride.
Immigrants who have communities in the “new world” always bring their culture with them. Their children, 2nd generation and beyond will lose these ideas but they are a fact of civilization.
I would have a different assessment for religious fanatics from any sect or coven. Some of their practices are unacceptable.
Those who act out on old world hatred’s and rivalries in violence should be sent home.
But sure, bring your culture. It adds to America.
It’s fucking stupid. Don’t bring your blood feuds and prejudice to a new country. I always thought it was obscene that the school had to keep the Ethiopian and Sudanese kids separate because they would immediately start swinging at each other.
Additionally, don’t force your cultural norms onto a new culture. By all means keep aspects of it and try to mesh it into the greater American culture but things like trying to hold onto the Indian caste system in the American working environment is absurd.
We do *not* tolerate that shit and have “national origin” written into our anti-discrimination laws. If a Turk and an Armenian get into a fight over here we’re going to come down hard on whoever started it because to us it isn’t a Turk and an Armenian, it’s and American and an American.
If it’s an interpersonal thing, then that’s between you and them.
Yet if it goes beyond that, well, I don’t put up with other people from inside the intersectionality categories/patterns being bigots and supremest, I’m not going to put up with yours.
I ain’t going to be the thought police, and this isn’t about being a melting pot cause the general idea to that is bullshit. This is about the American promise, a promise we are still trying to work out ourselves, but all are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When you come to America, you become an American. If you don’t want to become American, just come for vacation and go back home.
Bringing old world issues over here give bigots ammunition. Leave the old world in the old world.
Fuck’s sake. Leave that behind. Oh, you got beef with someone from a neighboring country back home? Well, that’s back home, and not here. Learn to fucking get along.
I’m 100% in favor of it! Bring me your Scottish highland cattle, your Zebu, your Jersey cows, your herds of Watusi!
Cheeseburgers don’t materialize out of thin air, you know
Generally unimpressed.
We do not tolerate that here. You want to come and be American, you need to be American. You can do your own thing as long as you are not being a stereotypical foreigner who has really negative opinions about other ethnic groups. Leave that behind.
They came to America to be Americans leave you generational beef in your own country
In my hometown, the region’s largest mosque is in the middle of a neighborhood with a large (but largely assimilated Reform and Conservative) Jewish population. Residents received the mosque proposal with a collective yawn.
People might have a strong opinion about what side is right in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but fighting that battle on American turf — anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — is mostly frowned upon here. You’re an American now. Few care about those decades- or centuries-old conflicts. There’s a few exceptions, like solidly Irish-American communities in Boston, NYC, and Buffalo, where some residents offered financial support to IRA-connected groups, and you might face some harassment if you’re seen wearing any orange clothing on St. Patrick’s Day. Some people are triggered by IDF tzedakah boxes at Jewish delis. Catholic Polish-Americans don’t see Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Polish shetls as “real” Polish Americans.
Friendly shit-talking about old interethnic beefs is often tolerated among friends. Again, there’s some exceptions. You’d have to know a German-American friend *really* well to tell them they got their sore shoulder from seig-heiling a bit too much. If you’re white, and an American Indian/Native American friend or coworker calls you “paleface”, it’s usually meant with affection. Same thing with Mexican-Americans calling an Anglo friend “pinche guero/guera”.
We aren’t a fan.
We want none of that here. If you want to beef old beefs go back home. If you want to be an American you have to hate everyone equally. Lol.