Ah, assimilation!

[urocyon]

Via maevele, an excellent post on assimilation prompted by Elizabeth Moon's recent obnoxiousness:
shweta_narayan's's Dissimilation

Darkly amusingly, for all Moon's care to mention that "(the native peoples had the most troubles with immigrants!)", I found shweta_narayan's post very triggering. She could have been describing my experiences in a very hostile school system in a very hostile town. My culture of origin (best description: Appalachian American Indian) was just not OK. My uppity family who didn't take much seriously--definitely not the snots--was really not OK. More than one set of parents made it clear how open-minded they were being, letting their kid hang out with one of Those People--much less bring one of Them home. (And I think a lot of the discomfort with my totally unrecognized autistic behavior got projected onto my ethnic background. For real. What would you expect from Those People?) I could go on, but shweta_narayan describes the experience entirely too well.

Yeah, talk about continuing troubles with immigrants...

This is what Elizabeth Moon's grand idea of assimilation looks like for the other side.

Because I did try to belong. It was painful, sometimes physically dangerous, not to...And when I dared to act like a full member of any group I was let into, they'd put me in my place. . .

And that abject, miserable, ashamed person, with that deeply ingrained insecurity and this rejection of family, is what Elizabeth Moon wants Muslim Americans to be. That person, hurt so badly that even talking about it half a lifetime later brings back shame to the point of nausea, is what she wants others to be so that she isn't inconvenienced.

And that is why I cannot -- no, fuckem, will not quietly and reasonably and submissively explain to privileged jerks ignorant of their privilege exactly how there is privilege they are missing here.

From another post maevele pointed out, sarasvati's Out of the mouths of xenophobic asshats.:

We have always had trouble with immigrants (the native peoples had the most troubles with immigrants!) Every new group that landed on the shore was greeted with distrust (and often responded badly) until it showed that it was willing and able to contribute something those already here wanted.

Yup, 'cause all European immigrants totally ended up giving in to the demands of the people whose land they were taking. She makes another appeal to sympathy here ("See, I acknowledge the plight of those who have non-white skin.") But then she pretty much blows that out of the water by making the second statement. It's pretty much true, I'll grant you, but it seems to me a bit off that a person wants to appeal to those who came before her and then demands her rights as white overlord and ruling class of America. Can't have it both ways. Either the Muslims are doing it as wrong as all the white folk who came and settled on already settled land, or the previous inhabitants of a land don't mean a damn thing in the grand scheme of things.

Well said.

Vine Deloria, Jr. made some comments that reflected a poor understanding of history east of the Mississippi (not unusual but very politically convenient in a divide and conquer way), but I can't help but think of one of his very reasonable observations. From God is Red, p.8 in the 2003 tradeback: "The general attitude of the whites, however, was that they were the true spiritual descendents of the original Indians and that the contemporary Indians were foreigners who had no right to complain about their activities." Part and parcel of colonialism, with a huge side dish of Manifest Destiny.

And it sounds like Moon is jumping right on associating herself with the "original" Natives for some strange sense of legitimacy. Even though what she is saying makes no freaking sense whatsoever.

Comments

[rootedinsong]

sanguinity wrote an excellent post on this same topic here. :)

Darkly amusingly, for all Moon's care to mention that "(the native peoples had the most troubles with immigrants!)", I found shweta_narayan's post very triggering. She could have been describing my experiences in a very hostile school system in a very hostile town.

Yeah. This is the story of my childhood:

Because I did try to belong. It was painful, sometimes physically dangerous, not to. I made damn sure I did not have opinions that my friends didn't share, clothes they didn't approve, vocabulary they didn't use, tastes they hadn't let me know I was allowed to have. And when I dared to act like a full member of any group I was let into, they'd put me in my place.

[ETA: I have only (relatively) recently started to trust my own choices in clothing, music, and art without needing peer approval to be sure I wasn't transgressing.]

Story of my life, really. I still constantly compulsively look to other people to make sure that what I'm doing is legitimized by them.

'Course growing up with abusive parents didn't help at all, either.

[urocyon]

I'm sorry you identified with that, too. *hugs offered*

Story of my life, really. I still constantly compulsively look to other people to make sure that what I'm doing is legitimized by them.

'Course growing up with abusive parents didn't help at all, either.

Yeah. Emotional abuse is emotional abuse (and there isn't much other abuse that doesn't come with the emotional part). If anything it's more harmful when you're getting it from multiple places, even if the details are a little different depending on who it's coming from. Which reminded me of a quote I snagged for a post title, “But everyone feels this way, and they can’t be wrong because look who they are and how many of them are saying it.” Ouch.

Good that you figured out that they weren't necessarily right, even if it can be hard to get totally through your head sometimes! :/

[green_knight]

“But everyone feels this way, and they can’t be wrong because look who they are and how many of them are saying it.”

I was bullied in school. The thing that helped me to get over it was that I escaped by moving up a grade. Not only did I end up among different people, but about a year later, my old form came to the attention of the rest of the school - and it was immensely gratifying to find my opinion of them validated - it wasn't just me. (Not saying that I didn't have lessons to learn as well, but to find them universally condemned was very good for my soul.)

[urocyon]

Not saying that I didn't have lessons to learn as well, but to find them universally condemned was very good for my soul.

I can well imagine! :/

[ivy]

I thought that post of Shweta's was really gut-wrenchingly cluebat of perspective too. (Which is to say in one parsing, a really good post, but how terrible that such things happened at all to her, or to you!) I didn't have that experience growing up at all, and I've been examining my childhood memories and hoping fervently that I never made anyone else feel that way. I can't recall having done so, but of course that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Augh. I hope that other folks who didn't have the displeasure of the firsthand experience read it and try to be more compassionate and accepting thereby too.

[urocyon]

I'm thinking that this is one of those things that if you're a conscientious enough person to be thinking about it now, it probably wasn't much of a problem--and really shouldn't be a problem in future. :)