If those kids could read they'd be very upset

Good job anglophone expats never impose their own culture on places they settle in and always make an effort to learn the local language to a high standard and "assimilate" to local customs. 🤔🥳

What point are you trying to make here? I said “regardless of race”, did I not?

Ah yes, you did, to be fair. 🥳

Imposer of the Decade

Have you ever spent time with asylum seekers from Islamic countries, btw? I have. You might be pleasantly surprised if you hang out with them a bit. 🙂 People are very different, of course, and it takes all sorts. There are "good" and "bad" people everywhere. We can't be naive, for sure. And I actually get your concerns about the culture differences and the effects of mixing such vastly different value systems. But I've met enough people to know that people risking their lives to reach the West aren't all monolithic. If you really hated a particular culture, would you leave your family and all you own and risk your life to move there? I've played football with unaccompanied Syrian kids as young as 12 who left their families behind seeking a better life. They're fun. x

Well, that is good to hear. I just find it annoying how a lot of ostensibly progressive people of different backgrounds constantly fetishize people who are nonwhite (or at least who THEY don’t consider “white”) without bothering to help them integrate into their adopted countries’ cultures or hold ones who do bad stuff accountable, leading to a situation where they lack stable positive identities and forever remain easy targets of right-wing populists. And for the record, I’m concerned about this (to put it mildly) because I myself have a partial first-gen immigrant background including a grandfather who came from a rather westernized Levantine Arab family, and it pains me to see so many others with similar backgrounds essentially throwing away whatever chances they had at contributing to their adopted countries’ cultures by acting on misguided culturally-conservative ideas.

I hear you. You seem like a pretty thoughtful person. x
بتحكي عربي، يا زلمه؟

It's a complex situation ngl. I think the more that people are excluded and "othered", the more that they're likely to prove certain people right by not "assimilating" (whatever that even means) to the adoptive culture in the way some would like. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's sort of like a cultural arms race, maybe: the more that the West pushes back against immigrants from Arab/Muslim countries, the more the children/grandchildren of those immigrants lack a strong cultural identity, don't feel they belong or will ever be fully accepted, and end up doubling down on more conservative ideas from their parents' cultures in order to feel a sense of self and identity they can be proud of, thus reinforcing the idea in the minds of some people that immigrants don't "integrate". A vicious circle, if you like. I think it's possible to break that cycle but it will take work. 🙏

Yeah… And really, if there’s anyone I should be angry at about this, it’s the ostensibly “educated progressive/leftist” academics and factions, especially including many of the more educated members of MENA and other diasporas who have forever been railing against far-right populists in western countries all while doing absolutely nothing to meaningfully integrate migrants on a large scale even when they should’ve by all means had the knowledge and resources to do so. Of course xenophobes will always exist in any population, but the fact that they just stood by and gaslighted people into thinking there wasn’t a problem with any of these migrants themselves being culturally incompatible with their adopted countries even when that clearly was the case in far too many instances… Those are the ones who really should be held accountable alongside the right-populists themselves on a systemic level in my opinion.

[image deleted] One authoritarianism-loving African immigrant to another I guess…