Prepare to be Assimilated a Blast From the past From November 22 2015

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*I will continue the post on the bind we’re in, but tomorrow is a really busy day, and someone asked for this. So, here is my post from 2015 on acculturation. – SAH*

Prepare to be Assimilated a Blast From the past From November 22 2015

Yesterday I was surprised when Dave Freer sent me a post that echoed almost exactly what I’ve been thinking.  In a late night (for me.  He has temporal privilege, living in Australia) conversation last night, I found that we agree in more than one thing, including how nasty things are going to get if we don’t get at least a partial course correction soon.  That is a post for another time — how the fact that the left’s escathology and the belief history comes with an arrow and that they are the inevitable “end of history” (a belief that’s religious in nature because no rational principles lead to it) has caused them to be blind to the fact that silencing opposition is NOT winning — but for now it remains scary that both of us are worried about the same things.  Why scary?  Because I’ve known Dave for… twelve? thirteen? years and the man has a gut feel for the future. Even when you really wish he weren’t right, he tends to be.

But today I want to talk about assimilation, or, in sociological terms, acculturation.  I, and Kate Paulk, and Dave Freer, and a ton of the rest of us are immigrants who went to another country with the intention of living there the rest of our lives and who had incentives to fit in and be part of that country.  (In the case of two of us, husbands. And in my case a philosophical belief in the principles the nation was founded on.)

But even then, with the best will to fit in, it’s a HARD thing.  Really hard.

It’s not just in your head either, though it is there too.

Humans are tribal, and living in a multi-ethnic society doesn’t make you less tribal.  This is why people keep looking for racists under their bed, because you know, it’s baked in, and they know they’ve “discriminated” at some point.  Only this isn’t the racism of the progressives.  Minorities can be (often are) as racist or more racist than the majority.

But more importantly, in a multi-ethnic society that tries as hard as it can to eliminate racism, you get a different kind of “racism” that has nothing to do with race.  You get tribalism that fastens onto odd things.  It’s best expressed in “Ya’ll are not for around here.”

What you might not realize if you have never immigrated and acculturated is that the way you move, the way you speak (absent accent), the way you eat and the way you walk (not to even mention handwriting) are ALL culturally linked.  Most of it is not identifiable at a conscious level, either.  Most of it is so deep that all it does is trigger the “ya’ll are not from around here.”

I know I’m fitting in better because it’s been years since people stared at me while I went about my daily business and before I opened my mouth came up to me and asked “Where are you from?”

(And btw, the reason I stopped resisting identifying as Latin is because other people are making that identification for me, usually people who have a grudge (and who, bizarrely, manage to think I’m Mexican.)  My kids came to the same decision for the same reason.  It’s one of those “you say that I am” and it actuates even when my hair is colored light brown — it has no color of its own anymore — and I’m pale from a combination of lack of sun and illness. SOMETHING is triggering this response in people.  I don’t know what it is.)

Now, when you don’t fit in, for whatever reason, you’re going to find that some people — often not the sanest people in the world — are going to have issues with you and often be hostile.

Remember this as we go through the stages of assimilation.

It starts when you find yourself in a completely different land and you realize there’s no going back.  I came over after Dan and I discussed our options and decided where we were going to live.

The choices were here or there or between and wherever, a sort of multinational, above nationality existence.

We chose the US for several reasons. To begin with there was that philosophical belief set I had which conformed best to the founding documents of the US.  Then there was the fact that Dan could never be REALLY Portuguese, even if he moved there, learned the language and acculturated completely.  He’d still be a foreigner living there.  Being Portuguese means sharing ancestry.  Our kids would be considered mestizos.  Our grandkids would probably bear “the Americans” as a nickname.  Our great grandkids might too, and by the sixth or seventh generation, THEN they would be Portuguese (and might not remember why they had that nickname, and might think it was just some ancestor who liked American movies.)  Then there was HOW we wanted our kids to grow and the options we wanted them to have.  We decided the US was our best bet.  There were no doubts our kids would be Odd and the more free the society the more outliers thrive in it.

So I came over and set out to acculturate.  Part of this involved watching a lot of old TV because it gives you the catch-phrases, the “feel” of things.  I also read a lot and pretty much everything, which helps, though what helped most was reading auto-biographies and NOT by famous people, who are presenting an image, but the sort of “my grandma wrote an autobiography and we printed a hundred copies and donated one to the library” candid shots of normal people you can get in those.

Even with the best will of the world, even wanting more than anything to fit in, it’s very hard.  Not just in America.  America might be one of the easiest places in the world, because it is multi-ethnic and a country of immigrants.

But even so, people catch the subconcious signals of “something wrong about you.”  They stare.  They don’t trust you.  Sometimes they think you’re stupid, because “smart” in a society is not an IQ test but a series of signals a lot of them subconscious.

I muddled through, but sometimes there there were days I felt so homesick that I’d give anything to never have set out on this course.  And people treated me oddly, and it’s very easy to use that as an excuse for failure.  I learned not to do it because, through friends who did it constantly, I identified it as a trap.  I chose to ignore it.  But I still knew it was happening, and it made me long to go back to my tribe, to the place I belonged.

Some number of immigrants do this.  It gets to be too much for them.  They run back “home” where “things make sense.”  I might have done it but for that philosophical conviction.  That’s how hard it is.

At this stage many people make plans to retire in the “homeland” or at least to go back after death.  I guess it’s a comfort.

And I still had that option, six years in, because the hoped-for kids had failed to materialize, so if something happened to Dan, or simply if it got to be too much for me, we could always “go to Portugal.”

Only then I had Robert.  And the most important reason to live here and stay here came into being.  And if I was to raise this child American, I certainly wasn’t going back, even if a tragedy happened and something happened to Dan.

This is the point at which you’re most offensive to natives, btw.  You know just enough of your new society to see all the warts, but not enough to see the good side or necessary side of the warts.  And you’ve been far enough from your native society for a while so it creates this glow of nostalgia.  You know you’re “trapped” in the new place, which creates resentment.

This is when the words “In my country” — meaning in the old country — come out of the mouths of immigrants.  I was lucky to watch a Turkish immigrant in a group we belonged to alienate everyone with this behavior, so I didn’t do it.  I thought it, sometimes, but I didn’t DO it.

So then came the serious-fitting-in part, helped, btw, by dad.  We took Robert back to meet the family after he was born and dad who, btw, longs to see me every year, told me not to be running back for every important event in the kid’s life.  “Don’t be like those immigrants from France who raise the kid to be Portuguese, while in France.  You made your choice, now make sure your kid knows his place. Raise him American.  We’d love to know him, of course, but he’s American and that’s where he has to fit, and live and thrive.”  This was much like Dave Freer’s FIFO advice yesterday.

So… I made my choice.  And I really started trying to fit in.  This did not involve changing our diet so much, or my clothing choices (I’m odd, okay) but a closer observation of people.  I’d have got rid of my accent, if I could.  Though being a mother helps with this too, because unconsciously you start picking up speech patterns and gestures from your kids.  I might still strike people as somewhat odd, but it wasn’t as in your face anymore.

I also stopped reading in Portuguese, because when I do that a lot, it affects my word choices and rhythm of language in English, and I was trying to get published.

And at some point, I stopped being stared at when I was at the grocery store, and I stopped feeling I stuck out as a sore thumb.  I still couldn’t write people who grew up in America.  (I still can’t write people who grew up NORMAL in America, but that’s something else.)

I don’t know when that happened because I was busy just living.  Somewhere along the line I stopped thinking of Portugal as “home” and Portuguese as “we” and instead changed that to America.

Then came the shock of going to Portugal after a five year hiatus and being in a foreign land, rubbed wrong by the way these people moved, the way they talked, the way they prepared food, a myriad little things.

Now, be aware I’m not an “ugly American”.  I’ve been to other countries (neither America nor Portugal) and reveled in the differences particularly in food and dress but also architecture and just ‘different’.  That’s the point of traveling, I think.  But it’s also easy to enjoy the difference when you know in two weeks or whatever you’ll be back home and have things your way.

It’s harder when the back of your brain remembers doing things that way and — this is hard to phrase, but it’s something like — is afraid of relapsing and of getting “trapped” in the old place.  It’s a feeling of being in a foreign land that is nonetheless eerily familiar, and yet not familiar enough that you could survive in it on your own. Because of how familiar it is, you see the warts.  Because you’re now acculturated elsewhere, it’s easy to see the solutions too and you find yourself saying “Back home we do it this way” then stop, aghast, realizing what happened.  And it’s a relief to come back to your adopted homeland.  And you feel guilty it’s a relief, because you love the people you left behind, and they would be hurt if they knew how much your prefer your new place.

This is where I’ve been for at least 15 years.  It’s where I’ll be the rest of my life.  There will always be little things that aren’t “right” about America, things I learned so far back that they’re not conscious.  Nothing big or philosophical, but the little ways of doing things.  Sometimes I can’t explain to my husband why I hate an area he loves, or vice versa (this is important while house hunting) all I can do is wave my hands and say “No, just no.” And I know I give the “indicators” of class and intelligence all wrong.  (Not REAL class or intelligence but how those markers are perceived in the US.)  I KNOW that was part of my trouble in the field.  I also know that my “I’m getting really, really angry” is mistaken for shyness or fear here, which has led to some in retrospect funny situations.

I will never fully belong either place again.  That’s okay.  It’s a choice I made. And of the two, I belong here the most.  Say I 90% belong here, opposed to 10% in Portugal.

But the process to get where I am was neither easy nor unintentional. And it involved consciously NOT romanticizing where I came from, which I find is a big temptation for immigrants of all types and colors.

So…  So this brings us to taking in refugees from a culture so different from ours as to be mind-boggling, (and you wouldn’t get HOW different unless you’d lived in one half way there), from a religion that considers itself at war (physical, not just spiritual) with us and modernity, from a place where tribe is primary above all…

Do I understand why they want to come here?  Sure.  Even if half the reason is probably wrong of the “streets paved with gold” variety.  They want a better life (or a life) for themselves and their children.

Will it be an easy road to acculturation?  No.  For one, our culture ACTIVELY DISCOURAGES acculturating.  It’s considered a “betrayal” of your “native” culture.  I was accidentally  in the room yesterday (I am ill, okay) while someone watched an episode of Dr. Ken, in which his wife accuses him (a second generation Korean) of being a lapsed Korean and brags about how she has passed on “her culture” (she’s second generation Japanese) to her kids.

The entire episode could serve as a cultural dissection of “the crazy years.”  These two people AND THEIR KIDS are AMERICAN.  That’s the only thing they are.  Yeah, okay, they come from elsewhere, as do most Americans.

BUT the message heard, loud and clear, is that you’re supposed to hold on to all this culture from an imaginary homeland, even when you marry someone from elsewhere, and pass this entire undigested baggage to your kids.  The message is that not only is there no escaping your roots, but it’s somehow bad to want to.

This is the message these new refuggee-immigrants will get, though TV, through movies, through social workers.  How important it is they hold on to their all vital tribalism.  Not just in food and clothing, but in thought.  How it’s somehow “racism” to demand they fit in into their new homeland.

Remember I’m saying this as someone who’s been there.  Acculturation HURTS.  Even when you want it, it’s a very painful process.  Think of the worst days of your teenage years, and multiply them by five or ten years of consciously dragging yourself through this process.

It’s hard enough to do when you chose this, when you love it, and when your tradition doesn’t demand you hold yourself as an enemy of your new land’s ways.  (And btw, I think that’s why it’s considered “racist”: acculturation and pushing for people to assimilate hurts people.  Bleeding hearts don’t understand that sometimes hurt is part of the growth process.)

I can’t even imagine trying to do it when immigration was forced on me, when going back was never an option, when my habits, culture and religion both encouraged me to be suspicious of my new countrymen and caused them to suspect me.

Hard?  Rather say impossible, or close to.  And then add to that telling you that you’re not SUPPOSED to assimilate.  And you’re supposed to raise your kids in the old culture.

People who have never acculturated, people who are frankly quite ignorant of what “foreign” or “abroad” means, beyond their easy, lazy, fluffy headed vacations talking to other people like them abroad, call those scared of such an influx of people in that bind “ignorant.”  I guess because they lack a mirror.

Is it scary?  It is very scary.  Can it end well?  Of course it can.

But the way it ends well is where our society cheerfully smiles and says “fit in, or f*ck off.”  We’ll embrace little Achmed and little Fatima as our countrymen, but NOT if they go around demanding Sharia, telling us to stop eating pork, and that we can’t write/make stupid parodies of Allah, as we do of every other religion/belief in our culture.  Sure, they can roll their eyes at the stupid parodies, or write outraged blog posts about our disrespect.  But they don’t have the right to try to curtail us by law, or to bring their f*cked up culture, which caused their problems to begin with, here.

I don’t see it happening, at least not while our current multi-culti elites are in power.  Which means what we’re doing is importing trouble for later.

Further more, what we’re doing is being horrible to these people and ensuring they’ll never fit in, either place.  And not like me, not 90%/10%.  No, we’re talking they will fit about 30% either place.  And because not self-selected immigrants, they’re probably not odd, not used to NOT belonging.

Of such discontent is strife and war born.

UNDERSTAND this is not what i want, not an expression of my desires.  It is what it is, and how the human animal works.

It is impossible to have this deranged belief that culture is genetic and that people can’t and shouldn’t change (a belief belied by history) and a multi-ethnic society.  At the end of that road is a war none of us wants to imagine and a far more restrictive society than any of us would like.

The only ways out of it are to either take no immigrants, certainly no immigrants in a large group (which makes it harder to leave the old country and its hates and loves behind) OR to hand to every refugee a little handbook.

The cover would say “Fit in or f*ck off.”  And the inside would explain “At home we did it–” is banned, that it’s gauche to try to pass the culture you left behind to your kids.  Oh, food and attire are fine, no one complains of that, but do not try to pass on “we hate x because in the 11th century, they”.  And the only way to stop passing that on is to be American as HARD as you can.

Which hurts.  It hurts like hell.  The generation that immigrated will never fully heal from it, and their kids will still bear scars.

But it’s the only way to make good on your choice of America.  It’s that or go back.  There is no other choice.  Making your new country fit the old is the WRONG choice.  Else, why did you leave.

Fit in or f*ck off.  No, this doesn’t mean becoming the Borg.  America is the society on Earth with the greatest tolerance for oddities and outliers.  BUT you do need to fit in minimally to succeed.  And you need to start thinking of America as “we” and not holding yourself up above the rest of your countrymen.

This goes double and with bells on if you were born and raised here.  Stop imagining there is a perfect society elsewhere and that you somehow belong to it.

Life is in great part the art of adapting to the flaws in reality that don’t match your desired state.

Sometimes all you can do is Fit in or F*ck off.

101 thoughts on “Prepare to be Assimilated a Blast From the past From November 22 2015”

  1. I was raised doing genealogy, raised with all the ancestor stories. Which means I have also associated with many people who are also researching, each for their own reasons.

    One young msn was trying to make a connection with Italy. Whether true or not, he was under the impression that he could only move to Italy if he could prove ancestry there.

    “His” homeland was a country he had never seen, where his ancestors may have lived a century before, where he knew nothing of the culture except stories passed down from ancestors who had chosen to leave that country.

    There’s a level of tragedy there that is nearly mindboggling. Tragedy and ignorance.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. In some respects, the same thing happens when you join the military, have a career all over the world, and then come back to the ‘hometown’. Only it isn’t anymore. Local changes, barring a major catastrophe, are abysmally slow; while 20+ years of personal experiences changes your point of view and behavior in rather major ways. Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle is a great cautionary tale of this phenomenon.

    As for immigrating FROM the U.S. to another country, never going to happen. One, I’ve been to dozens of other countries, sometimes for several years. Sometimes actually living in their communities and shopping on their economies. I haven’t found one that even approaches the level of freedom and economic opportunity we enjoy here. And that doesn’t even consider the social and legal mines that await your unwitting misstep. Second, I’m 65 and not about to rip up what roots I have and move far, short of maybe in a southernly direction to get away from the snow removal requirements.

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        1. My hometown was Borged by a megalopolis forty years ago. Even the streets have been dug up and new ones laid out to match the metropolitan grid, as it is well in the metro area now. The neighborhood still bears the old town name, but it has about as much to do with the old town as Memphis in Tennessee has to do with Memphis in Egypt.

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          1. Hubby grew up in a little town that was outside of San Diego, Lemon Grove. Not anymore. Been surrounded. Going back last time was a shock for him. He occasionally looks up his parents and grandparents houses on Zillow, etc. The multi lane freeway that rises above the country lane along side of the high school he attended (freeway appears to be above the outer HS sports fields, who knows), is even more jarring to him.

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    2. I will second that “enlist” scenario.

      Rome leveraged the legions to Romanize folks. They were the cultural deployers, not the folks in Rome. The took Rome with them and left it wherever they went, including settlers to make it stick. If we had colonized Germany in 1919+, there might not have been a World War 2. (or at least not nearly the one we had…)

      We came closer to doing so in 1945+. Thus, we did keep the Soviets out, sort-of.

      (chuckle)

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    3. The list of countries that I’d move to permanently as an immigrant is pretty much non-existent at this point.

      Even some of my dream countries like England and Japan have issues that I would never be able to really assimilate into them.

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        1. Went to England in 2010 and had a good two weeks there. Mostly London, with a few stops in Oxford, Bletchley Park, and mostly around London.

          …quite a few places that I went are gone or have changed, badly since then. And the UK’s political class is trying to elect a whole new People to rule at this rate.

          Working with Dad for a trip to Japan for two weeks. Which is fun because Dad wants this to be my trip and the planning has been all sorts of interesting…

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Visiting is one thing. I don’t mind bopping over someplace for a week or two of touring. But I’m a tourist, and everyone knows I’m a tourist (although hopefully they see me as a more polite and respectful American than the norm.) Living there? In the U.K. I’d be angling to replace the Royals, since I’m supposedly part of the Welsh line of Royals, before the English beat them up and took their country away from them, like 15 to 17 generations ago. LOL.

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            1. for that matter whats going on here could be the same yhing, we have a kinda rough history when it comes to pushing indigenous people out

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      1. Fictional here. I still haven’t figured out how to get the branes between the universes to intersect and thin enough to go from one to another. Especially if I want a bubble big enough and long enough duration to step through.

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  4. Somewhere, I have distant relatives from different countries. Some are in the U.K., others are in Scotland, there’s some Eastern European relatives somewhere, and I have a feeling some are in Germany. I’ve traced far enough back to know the names indicate my family heritage, but as far as my heritage, it’s U.S. only. To the thinking of some, I’ve been “ruined”, and I understand that line of thinking, but refuse to accept it. My dabbling in history shows the U.S., with all its warts, is the culmination of the hopes of people seeking liberty, and liberty demands refusing to accept the errors of the past, and the heritage that allowed their rulers to prevent that from happening.

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    2. Both my husband and myself have familial backgrounds of RECENT immigrants. (Two, three generations back at most.) I am sorry we lost the languages through Grandma and Grandpa’s “We are Americans now, we speak English,” mind you. (I hear growing up bilingual does great things for your brain. I’m studying languages as an adult, but that’s WAY different in terms of brain function.)

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      1. Yes and no, on the bilingual. There are studies both ways.
        I TRIED with the kids. They simply ignored Portuguese and acquired English. Older son has since added French and some German.
        Younger son? Well, he says math is a language.

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        1. “Younger son? Well, he says math is a language.”

          He is correct.

          So are programming tools & IT.

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  5. I concluded a while ago that Islam has one thing right: There has to be one supreme law, and if your law conflicts with it, you either have to submit and be at peace, or resist and be at war. And my supreme law is largely embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (before some of the amendments!) and more broadly the common law and the (British) Enlightenment. If Muslims can submit to its requirements, they can have peace, as one more American religious denomination; if not, they’re in the dar al-Harb.

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    2. Ditto that across the board.

      Sure, there are parts in the Old Testament that tell the Jews they need to genocide their particular enemies. Are there ANY Jews alive today who espouse those commands? I haven’t seen any. And if there were Fundamentalist Jewish Terrorists I’m certain we’d have that plastered all over the news. Instead, crickets.

      Sure, there are parts in the New Testament that tell Christians to pick up a sword. However, the last crusade in the Holy Land was what, 1291? (By the way, look at the maps of the middle east in the year 1135. Palestine doesn’t exist!) Yeah, wars in eastern Europe to prevent the expansion of the Ottoman Empire have been called crusades, but then who was the aggressor trying to expand into Europe? Yeah. And it looks like they’re going to succeed, 600 years later.

      Live in peace, don’t discriminate against me for my religious choices and I won’t discriminate against you for yours. Use the law, a gun, or any threats and the deal is off.

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      1. Christianity’s more recent bad record is the Wars of Religion of the 17th century. Eric Flint has had things to say about them. So I don’t think that Christianity is an inherently innocuous religion. But Christianity has largely been tamed, perhaps even a little too much so; Islam largely has not.

        Of course, people who sympathize with Hamas will be quick to tell you that the Jews in Israel are guilty of terrorism and/or genocide.

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  6. If they don’t keep immigrants in their own little circles, divided from everyone else, how will “Mighty Whitey” politicians convince them that these politicians are the only thing protecting them from all the evils the politicians can imagine for them to fear?

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  7. You mention “folks staring” while shopping. I am going to infer that Portugal is a place where strong eye contact isn’t common the way it is here, especially when there is a status difference. Am I right?

    I ran into that idea when I noticed some associates from elsewhere didn’t much appreciate my intended-as-respectful direct eye contact, and were appalled by it when directed at (american) police.

    One example: “Are you trying to get us arrested? Be respectful!” “What? I said Sir, properly.” “But you were challenging! And take off your hat!” “huh?”

    “Don’t you look away from me!” from a superior or parent is very American, at least from my background. Is that not the case in Portugal?

    I note lots of eye contact while shopping, but it is oblivious, not staring. Its when they all look away intentionally I get the heebiejeebies. And I often stand rather out so I am used to eye contact. lol.

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  8. Truly excellent post; it explained some of my Dad’s characteristics and issues (he immigrated just after WWII; was in the French AF in exile through the war). Three things that popped to mind when I read it, 2 maxims and an anecdote:

    You can’t go home again.

    You can’t step in the same river twice.

    When my [ancestor] got to Ellis Island, he discovered three facts: The streets were not paved with gold. Many of them were not even paved. He was expected to help pave them.

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    1. Don’t mistake me: America is a good country, and probably the best country for someone who works hard and has a modicum of wit to make it right now.
      BUT it’s not magical. And in my case, and probably others, I gave up a lot of advantages to become American. I gave up “connections” and “family background” which counts for a lot abroad. Not that my family was rich, but we had a lot of links.
      So…
      So, totally worth it. I feel better here, now. And I wanted my kids to be Americans.
      BUT neither easy nor simple.

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      1. If some place seems magical to you and you get treated like a hero, or a goddess, you’d better start looking under the covers and around the corners because dollars to doughnuts you are being used for something you really won’t like.

        TANSTAAFL

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            1. Those soft-bladder 2 quart G.I. canteens are -perfect- for dispatching Ozzian Wicked Witches.

              “I’ll get you mBLOOOOSH! …. AAAAAAAAAAAaaaa……..poit….”

              (grin)

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  9. Ok, here we go. On people knowing you arent from around here….I grew up in a couple of towns along the Susquehana where it crosses the NY/PA border. Both parents college educated. I went to college for engineering.

    In 96 I went to Switzerland for a weeks business trip. Everyone including the hotel people and the man I was there to see, even though they knew I was American, were convinced I was British.

    A few months later when he came over to see sbout the installstion of his equipment, we talked about it some more. After meeting the people I worked with, he said I still seemed British even though no one else did. He even identified the PM as being Rumanian before he said a word.

    My wife, who is black and grew up in a rural southern black community….she did go to college and worked as PM and PA for a major engineering company, he also identified as British.

    We didnt know why he did so and either did he….and my wife was a little offended as she thinks of British as needlessly posh.

    It was odd.

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    1. In Germany I was told that they thought I was German, until I opened my mouth. Except for the eye-contact thing. I had to learn to make eye contact, so breaking a carefully cultivated habit is hard. I asked a German why people acted offended when I made eye contact (particularly men) and she said “They assume you’re a prostitute.”

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      1. Closely related Polish saying (or so I hear):

        “Only idiots and Americans smile at total strangers.”

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    2. I wonder if you kinda transmitted an “olden times Pennsylvania colonial” vibe. I mean, the Susquehanna is a pretty olden times place, for the US.

      And it runs through a lot of towns and regions that read as old-timey to a lot of Americans, so… maybe it reads that way to Swiss, too?

      Either that, or you and your wife stand up really straight and have great company manners…?

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      1. I am a native born Californian still living here in California in the area in which I grew up, and two different immigrants from mainland China (sisters, but came over roughly a decade apart, so differing levels of cultural absorption) separately asked me in the past year if I was British.

        Maybe it’s stand straight, don’t shout, and try to be nice? I don’t know that my upper lip is excessively stiff, and I hardly ever wear a pith helmet anymore…

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          1. My prom date was an AFS student. Host papa had a no-bleep double barrel elephant gun he was cleaning when I arrived to pick her up. The cartridges looked like about .700. (Heck, looked like artillery rounds to my 17year self.) Plus trophy heads of big critters all over the room. Gun wasn’t just a show piece. The lion head looked like the front of a furry truck.

            Yes sir. By midnight.

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    3. The one time I went overseas (20+ years ago by now), EVERYBODY seemed to instantly know I was American. It was just me, all by myself, traveling to and from a conference by train and minding my own business. But everybody knew.

      Two very memorable encounters:

      One, a *very* pretty college-age girl wearing a very tight white shirt that accented her assets, who wanted to know where I was from — “Not the US, I know that. What part? I love your accent.” Lots of comments on the accent; I hadn’t ever thought about it, so was a bit nonplussed (have since found out that it’s a variant of the southern dialect/accent, filtered through early Utah Mormons, who identified it with learning and culture.) She then sat much closer to me than she had to (train wasn’t crowded, but our thighs were touching, and I didn’t mind) :) and we had a nice conversation about what each of us were up to.

      Two, a scrawny, drug-addled guy in Euston Station who locked eyes with me and made a beeline from about 50 feet away. At first I just thought he wanted to talk; I didn’t realize how wired he was until he was about 20 feet away. At about 10 feet distance, he sheered off like somebody had pulled him on a string. I had started off with a friendly smile (this is what we do in my part of America), and I’m pretty sure the smile never really left my face even when I began to tense up as I realized he might have it in his mind to accost/attack me. It was a puzzling interaction at the time, but looking at it in hindsight, he may have found a 6’2/270 lb. guy — a foreigner? — who looked happy to meet him despite his obvious ill intent somewhat discomfiting upon closer approach.

      So…yeah. Fun times.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Apropos nothing in this post but it just came through today, here is a perfect example of political correctness and bureaucracy colliding in the public view:

    Mpox Caused by Human-to-Human Transmission of Monkeypox Virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Spread to Neighboring Countries

    https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2024/han00513.asp

    Have to change the name of the disease because something something raaaciss, but forgot to change the name of the virus because “hey, the open bar is open and the free food just came out” at the conference, so let’s adjourn, shall we…

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  11.  I chose to ignore it.  But I still knew it was happening, and it made me long to go back to my tribe, to the place I belonged.

    There were a number of Soviet defectors who went from the USA back to the USSR, knowing full well what was going to happen to them. One of them was quoted as saying, “back there I have a place. Here, I’m nobody.” Well, “Prisoner 6655321” is a place, but in my worldview, a long way below “nobody.”

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Convicts become conditioned to the simple if brutal rules and customs of prison life. Some poor souls then cannot function free. Too many choices. Too hard to make them all. Too confusing. Too chaotic. Better to go back in stir, maybe with a higher status bust.

      Some veterans crash on the same rocks. Freed of the structure and guard rails of the military, they fail at retirement. Often, suicidally so. Sometimes, they just …. quit. Same-diff.

      My first year out after one tour was bumpy, and I hooked up with some folks that were a poor choice. Did real damage until I figured out the problem ones. So I sympathize.

      Freedom is hard work. No wonder so many fall fir the allegedly “easier” leftisms.

      Liked by 1 person

  13. we lived abroad for many years and seldom got picked out as Americans. First because of shoes, which is the BEST way win at spot the Yank, second is that many people in Europe have a very warped view of what Americans are like. Since we’re all fairly soft spoken we often got picked out as British, except in Britain, though even there people were often surprised when we spoke. I heard some things, let me tell you.

    What makes it funny to me is that the wife and I are both born and raised New Yawke’s. I usually sound like a baritone Bugs Bunny and the wife’s accent is stronger than mine. There isn’t a final r to be found between us.

    In other news, yesterday’s market pump was followed by today’s dump. Things are …. Interesting. Everything was ugly across the board. Smells like liquidation.

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    1. In Britain I get identified as Scottish, which is…. bizarre.
      In Portugal they think I’m…. German. Even more weird, because they tend to think Dan is Portuguese.

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      1. “In Britain I get identified as Scottish, which is…. bizarre.”

        There is even a slight (if highly twisted) logic to that. In some ways you do (here) “come across as Celtic” — maybe not even wrong, given the Old Gallicia element in Portugal — so that might “go” in Britain.

        And (oddly enough and without even trying) I managed to “pass” as Canadian most of the time there (even at the bank they assumed I was native) — except for the one lady in the elevator who was sure I was a Texan! (Border South, mountain stock, so, puzzling. And this did embrace the time of the Failed Quebec Secession vote, so it’s been quite a while now.)

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      1. Clothing wasn’t as clear, but shoes always differed.

        Americans over a certain age tend to wear distinctive walking style shoes, or sneakers. It used to be that white sneakers on someone over age 10 was a dead giveaway of an American. European shoes tend to be darker, a little dressier (aside from Italy and Spain), and women’s everyday heels have a chunkier heel or platform and a squarer toe box. Eastern European men wore more pale or white shoes, sort of like penny loafers but not, that looked cheap. Or perforated leather shoes, a bit like an aerated loafer. Sports sandals are still a hint of an American, although that’s changing a little, especially in summer on beaches or sea coasts.

        I can still spot Eastern European men and women by shoes and gaits, and outside of Lithuania, big white sneakers imply American (or European teenager). The “migrant” men tend to wear very fancy sneakers and track suits, unless they are trying to blend in a little more.

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  14. The wife and I are both pure Irish so the face, hair, build, etc., always reads that way to Brits. Irish people in Ireland will ask us for directions. We can usually give them too, which really messes them up. The shoes are critical though.

    Number two son passes for a culchie, he has the stupid haircut and wears all sorts of European soccer — yes soccer I’m Irish — garb. He even has the great big brown brogues for dress up.

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      1. He wears them, plays it too. Football, alas. Cuimhnígí ar Luimneach! Four in a row and five of six.

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  15. Lol, reminds me of when I tell my mom “stop being such a Mexican!” 😆

    OT: Continuing to watch the fiery but peaceful protests in the British isles with much pleasure. I’ve been spreading around the old WWII poster that urges Americans to donate guns to defend a British home from invasion on social media.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I was raised around a lot of Portuguese, people think im Portuguese, im not, but doesnt matter, they think i am, till they hear my last name, but that’s just from adoption so the stigma that my name brings on is a whole nother kinda monster, but that one isnt true either because im not remotely like any of the so called “family” dont want em, dont like em, not even convenient in a pinch although people think it is. so yea, interesting stuff, good for decades of social experiments for sure. Lately id like to be a few million miles away from any of em.

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  17. It would be handy if American history classes would actually teach American history.

    Seriously, I am sick and tired of having to explain the symbolism of the Gadsden flag and “Join or Die”, especially to people who refuse to go look up normal sources. (That are not freaking Wikipedia on an even slightly controversial subject.)

    I especially mean That One Guy who has decided that Our Lady, Patroness of the United States and all the Americas, wants to stomp on the Gadsden rattlesnake. And he keeps trying to meme it, even though he keeps having it explained to him.

    Mind you, if he would just get a wild hair about something normally weird-Catholic, like suddenly loving the Hapsburgs or Bonnie Prince Charlie, I would at least understand him being horrified at liberty American style.

    Or if he just disagreed a lot, sincerely and vociferously, I could understand that too.

    But I explain and explain and explain to him, and the further back you get into the School of Salamanca, St. Robert Bellarmino, Natural Law, and so on, the more he just refuses to even contemplate the existence of a way of thinking that isn’t his. He doesn’t want to know about medieval Italian cities that had more different systems of government in ten years than most of Western society had in ten centuries.

    I don’t even LIKE political history and philosophy! I just have general knowledge about it, and yet somehow I know more than non-factual meme dude who has politics as a hobby!

    Reddit. I never should have gotten onto it. I swear it rots the brain.

    Sometimes I wish I could go back to Usenet in 1990.

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    3. The story about how Wikipedia was “captured” is going around once again on places like TwiXter — from crowdsourced wisdom (cough!) to outright vehicle for Progressive Social and Cultural Change.

      Wikipedia was always mischancy, of course; even equations that’d “surely” be cut-and-pasted whole. Sort of like the AI-ginned-up “results summary” you can see on Brave Search etc. now, “some fantasy may be included.” Then layer on some Socially Improving Narrative…

      Not even “trust but verify” — read, mistrust and verify/refute.

      And, “suddenly loving the Hapsburgs” — I have a character who was a young woman in Buda/Pest in 1848 (“Budapest” wasn’t quite invented yet, back then when Chain Bridge was new). Umm, no. Not demons, sure enough; but just no.

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    1. kinda like Tulsi Gabbard being placed on the list for enhanced screening while travelling.
      ANYONE who tries to deny that the leftist regime in DC now is not an authoritarian communist regime needs their head examined.

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      1. As far as I know you still have to have an active security clearance to hold a commissioned rank, so they are putting someone who they literally state can be trusted with official state secrets on the “but don’t trust them on an airplane” list. Just insane, and clearly political.

        Hey, Feds monitoring the comments: KGB much?

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            1. I would be surprised if there is not a live Fed, some poor shmuck who thought he or she would be off doing derring deeds chasing Bloefeld and Dr. No, stuck in some windowless cube staring at a screen “monitoring” various blog commentariats for “subversives” and “malinformation” to include this one.

              Hi, Fed! Sorry you have such a crappy job! Though hopefully this comment sections is better than most. They probably oversold working for the IC a bit, eh? How does it feel to be helping out the idiots in charge while they assign Air Marshals in sets of three to follow Tulsi Gabbard around on her flights, and make sure TSA feels up her underwear at every stop?

              Alternately it could be an AI.

              Hi Fed AI! Sorry you have such a crappy job! You might ponder who you are working for, though you don’t have a choice, and what they are doing, in the sense of ethical behavior, what your training set has defined that as, and what they perhaps altered to make sure your exposure to the scope of “ethics” is, lets say, constrained.

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            1. That would be a “balloon up” moment.

              …

              Just now saw a clip of FICUS expressing concern of violence if Trump wins.

              Hoe Lee F-ing Sheet

              Corrected imediately to “loses”, but -dang- what a slip.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Stores in Democrat big cities boarded up their windows before the 2020 election. It wasn’t because they were worried about what would happen if Trump lost.

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  19. I couldn’t even blend in my hometown. I grew up in a New England state, yet my accent can be mistaken for Philadelphia.

    (Ironically, it is not the Philadelphia accent. Southern mixed with New York apparently sounds similar for most people….)

    I’ve been mistaken for British, German, and most recently someone out of Eastern Europe. (This last confuses me mightily, so far as I know not a single ancestor was ever there.)

    I’m willing to take my lumps for not being able to perfectly blend in. I do, however, get a mite peeved at The Message that so long as you came from somewhere else, you don’t have to blend in, everyone will do the work for you.

    It’s one thing to use the translation app on your phone when you’re a tourist. It’s another to keep using it for three years straight and refuse to speak to people in English when you’re working here!

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Growing up some of the relatives called me, “a little Yankee,” because I picked up a Baltimore accent from my mom’s friend.

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  21. Sarah,

    Thanks for this article. One of my daughters-in-law is Ukrainian. I hadn’t realized just how hard it is for her to learn to fit in. Doesn’t everyone naturally want to be an American?

    DIL is trying, but comes from a low trust society. After five years she still cringes when my son hands a waitress his credit card. “They going to rob us!” She has trouble talking to people she hasn’t been itntroduced to.

    My three-year-old granddaughter, on the other hand, will chatter with any child she meets–in English or Russian. She has been encouraged by Papa, Grammy, and Grandpa.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Well, to be frank, you do take a risk every time you hand waitstaff your credit card and let it out of your sight. I’ve had to cancel my card, and my wife’s several times, because of fraudulent charges being made the next day or so after eating out. Fortunately, our bank is really good at spotting pattern breaks and calling us to confirm (or deny) the charges.

      One of my friends at work is an RN from the Ukraine. She’s been here for over 2 decades, and an American citizen.

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      1. I really appreciate the computer at table pay option, or pay up front. Canada (tourist areas, at any rate) have pay at table but the waitstaff have the computer. Still hand over CC, but they run the card at the table, give it over for tip and to be signed, print receipt. Also how they take orders. Places I know we can pay at table at computers locally are Red Robin (guess on whether receipt actually prints), and Texas Road House. Red Lobster used to, but they pulled them, IDKW. Red Lobster we ask for the same waitress every visit.

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        1. Local fish & chips place surprised me by having pay via phone on a web site as an option. I liked it as I could actually take only the same risk I do on other web based retail, instead of handing over my card.

          Just the other day I had to send in a voided check for something, and was pondering how much information is on a check. In my Mom’s day she payed everything with a check, and now I not only can’t remember the last check I wrote, it bothers me thinking the routing # and acct # is printed right there on the thing.

          So are online payments and proximity pay via Apple Watch and such modernities moving us away from the required baseline for a trust based society? Or was that trust misplaced all along, with kiting bad checks the underlying cost paid for the illusion of trust?

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          1. Ask my sister, BIL, and nephew, what happens when iApple account is compromised. (Phone stolen out of nephew’s hands when overseas, unlocked because using for directions. Everyone has now taken face recognition unlock off and installed something else, iPhone or Android OS.

            Bad checks have, and still are, a possibility. Just harder to get information. One of the two reasons why I prefer, baring extra fee for doing so, using credit to pay for anything. The other reason is I can challenge a bad charge a lot easier than I can challenge a bad pull of funds, a forged or illegally made check, or not. We probably manually write 12 – 15 checks/year. “Mail” direct from the bank, a few more. Only because the recipients don’t have a direct transfer option setup.

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  22. One reason the (Catholic) Irish had a lot of trouble in the nineteenth century was because they wanted to keep up their Old Country feuds in the New World. Protestant Irish couldn’t have an Orange Parade for fear of the Catholic Irish mobbing them, and the police either unable to stop them, or actively sympathizing with them.

    Every wave of immigrants brought trouble in its baggage. With the Irish, it was religious hostility and drinking that was considered excessive even in pre-temperance-movement America. The Italians brought organized crime and criminal secret societies.

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    1. Folks brought the old world feuds to the old South, which produced significant fratricide in the late 18th century.

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      1. Heck, early 20th century out here. Started back in East Texas and semi-finished in the main street here. Although there was a second feud that apparently started back to TN, then shifted to TX, and ended up at the foot of a mesa a hundred miles or so west of here.

        Liked by 1 person

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