An Edumacation
For the open and honest discussion of film, television, literature, and music, from someone who is cooler than your favorites.
We're also going to talk about race, culture, politics, and sexuality. Come and join the conversation.
Tags of Note:
Depression and Anxiety
TV Shows
Supernatural- Links
Have you guys ever looked at some of your relatives, fellow immigrant kids? The way they are? The way English stunts their vocalization abilities? How wearing the standard shirt and jeans can look so unbecoming on their forms? An issue completely unrelated to the size or structure of the clothing. How after living in the West for many decades, they can’t physically assimilate? Not the accent or demeanor? The beautiful contradiction is forcefully retaining their culture and identity, because it’s so hard wired in them, but will inevitably subject them to xenophobic and racist hatred? How they try to rid themselves of looking, being or coming off “foreign” “oriental” or “ethnic”, for your sake and not to embarrass you? The genuine effort they put in trying to shed who they innately were.. for you?
Do you look at them, at all?
I do and it genuinely disgusts me how I used to treat their otherness.
I wish the children, nieces and nephews and all younger relatives I have in the near or distant future will never shun me the way I used to do my culture and ethnicity and subsequently, my family. They got that type of demoralizing treatment everywhere else, they shouldn’t have had to deal with it within the confines of their home.
Jesus Christ, all the fucking time.
The amount of second-hand embarrassment I carried for FOBs for so many years… even at times, for my own parents. When I think about it now, I feel hollow.
Native American Confronts Protesters on Illegal Immigration
Ram Superbowl Ad Forgets Who Our Farmers Actually Are
Who are America’s farmers actually? Thanks to Latino Rebels blog for reminding us of one of our favorite memes that more accurately reflects reality.
Seventy-seven percent of farm workers were born in Latin America. But you wouldn’t guess if you watched the Dodge Ram’s Super Bowl ad that glorifies the American farmer as God’s crowning creation.
its not the same thing, but last year, GE showed a commercial during the superbowl that was showing how they make power turbines in Schenectady, NY, and how its all done by AMERICAN engineers and AMERICAN workers
and there wasn’t one black or brown face there, they were ALL white people
white engineers? white workers? they’re the fucking minority in Schenectady
My father used to be one of those engineers — it is an entirely international operation, it is powered by immigrants
but because we’re in a recession, because immigrants are thought to be stealing American jobs, because nostalgia and Americana only works when you show white faces, the commercial only featured the white workers.
felt like a slap in the face, tbh.
According to a report from the National Asian American Survey released earlier this week, Asian-Americans boast the highest proportion of foreign-born United States residents of any group — about 3 in 4 Asian-American adults were born outside the country — and Asia now accounts for the largest share of immigration to the U.S. What’s more: There are an estimated 1.3 million unauthorized Asian immigrants in the U.S.
Of the five countries with the longest backlogs for visas, four are in Asia.
If you’re trying to get a visa to legally enter the United States from an Asian country, you could be waiting for a very long time.
“If you’re looking at a backlog of 4.3 million people [waiting on family visas], it will take a while to get through the backlog,” Ramakrishnan said.
The current annual cap for all family visas is 226,000.
According to the survey, about 54 percent of Asian-Americans said that the backlogs are a “significant issue” for their families, with about 4 in 10 calling it a “fairly serious” or “very serious” problem. Indians, Hmong, Vietnamese and Filipinos expressed the most concern about the backlogs.
"For Asian-Americans, Immigration Backlogs Are A Major Hurdle
But despite the centrality the immigration process is to Asian-American life, changing the immigration system has not been a particularly important political issue. When the survey asked Asian-Americans which issues were most important to them in the 2012 elections, immigration ranked far behind the economy and unemployment.
But there’s been a big shift in attitude, if not priority. In 2008, just 32 percent of Asian-Americans supported a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. That number jumped to 58 percent by October of last year.
Ramakrishnan said that’s attributable to outreach by advocacy groups. “Their voter education efforts have made a difference,” he said.
“It’s part of the general leftward shift among Asian-Americans,” he said. Just two decades ago, he says, Asian-Americans voted solidly for Republicans in national elections. But by the end of the Clinton administration, that electoral advantage had all but evaporated. And by last fall’s elections, 73 percent of Asian-American voters cast their votes for President Obama. (That’s even though only about 49 percent of Asian-Americansidentified as Democratsin a poll taken just before the election.)
Shoutout to all the immigrant kids who grew up ashamed of their culture and place of origin.
That had to yell over substitute teachers who would inevitably mispronunce their name and embarrass them in front of their peers. That are constantly told to go back to their country. That lied about where they came from. That had to coin nicknames for themselves, because their name was too foreign for the common American tongue. That had to laugh along to xenophobic jokes because of their desperation to make friends and fit in. Whose parents’ accent humiliated them beyond belief and they became the butt of everyone’s offensive jokes.
I used to be there and it took me a really long time to work out my internalized ethnocentricity. One day, if you haven’t yet, you will come to realize how beautiful your heritage is and bear its name proudly.
Outrage in Delaware (ed: understatement of the young year)
This picture is from a Milford, Delaware playground. Milford is in Southern Delaware in the very conservative Sussex County. I originally saw this picture on Facebook, from a liberal friend downstate, who was sharing it via an original posting of the very nonliberal Dan Gaffney, a conservative talk show radio host. It is nice to know that the outrage concerning this photo is bipartisan. And what is so outrageous about it, you ask?
Well, you can read what it says in English. In Spanish it says (paraphrasing) “You have to have a permit to play here or you will be arrested.” The english version contains no information about needing a permit or else you will be subject to police action. It is an obvious intimidation tactic and a not so subtle “Whites Only” sign.
And, no, it’s not Photoshopped. The sign is indeed real.
“You have to have a permit to play in this park. Violators are subject to police action.”
Thoughts on Indian England.
The fact that I have to leave this damn country makes my heart hurt. I feel so unbelievably comfortable here, in a way that I’ve never felt before. when I leave the house, all I have to do is raise my head, and I’ll automatically see people who look like me. Every third shop sells chaat and paneer pizza and parathas and lassis. The conversations you hear on the street are in English and Hindi and Punjabi and Urdu, and you can understand every word. I go somewhere with my aunt or my uncle, and they know everyone, and everyone knows them. You can’t get through a shopping trip without someone stopping them and inquiring after their health.
We don’t have an Indian community, where I live. I know about five Indian people in this town. My father has some Indian friends from work. A lifetime of accumulating these kinds of casual acquaintances…. that’s no substitute for community. We’re just people who know each other who happen to come from the same place. Its like when I actively tried to befriend the only other Indian girl in my grade when I moved to this town — Puja and myself had nothing in common, but we hung out for three years, simply because we spoke the same language and were sick of being the only desi kids.
And its not like I felt comfortable on those family trips back to India. If anything, I felt more uneasy there than I do in the US. I’m the strange girl who struggles with her Hindi, who seems to never get the jokes, who can never quite capture the flow of conversation, who is always referred to as “angrez” and “amreeki”. I’m simply not pure enough for India — my westernization isn’t a layer of affectation, as it is for the upper crust in the country, it has penetrated me to the core, and has turned me into a farangi with brown skin.
The Indians here — they’re just as tainted as I am, and they don’t care. They have farangi accents as well; not just the young ones, as you see — there are old men here, with gray hair and bent walks, who speak Punjabi with their elders, but speak pukka English amongst themselves, and to the whites. No one looks at young British Asians and worries about their future role in society, or their integration into an English world, because we’re on the third generation of immigration in this country. In America, I’m a pioneer. Here, I’m simply stepping in someone else’s footsteps. The hard work of forging a place for us here isn’t quite over — but there’s a good momentum going, at least.
I have no doubt that brown kids growing up here struggle the same way I did — the difference is that they had peer support, and they had older role models to look to. They had company in their struggle.
There’s a community here, and I’m so, so jealous.
Dear Republicans,
Your “Latino” problem is that you don’t see Latinos as people. You call them “illegals.” You ask to see their papers. You want them to “self-deport.”
Fuck you. You don’t have a Latino problem. You have a racist fuckwit problem.
