Isn't that what Noah is doing here? He celebrating those players of African decent.
He referred to it as "Africa w[inning] the World Cup." If that's not elevating their race over their nationality, I'm not sure what would be.
You may have read more into the statements than I did. I didn't get that Noah was saying celebrated Africa over France but rather Africa and France.
That was in his walk-back. The original comment clearly prioritized their race. And it's easy to promote this blended identity concept when things are relative peaceful. What happens when they're not?
You mentioned that you're an ethnic German and learned some German. Did your grandparents hope for a Nazi victory in WWII? I'll bet they didn't. Why not? Because they defined their identity as Americans, not as Germans. If we applied Trevor Noah's mentality, at a minimum they would have been conflicted.
What about the internment of Japanese during WWII? That sounds terrible to us now, but under Trevor Noah's mentality, it's very defensible. We assumed (like Trevor Noah did) that their identity was defined to a large extent by their ethnicity (being Japanese) rather than by their nationality (Americanism).
How do you define "homogenous with the American culture and values"?
Well, you look at what American and cultural values are, and people who come to the United States (especially if granted citizenship) should be taught to embrace those values. If it's clear that they aren't going to, they shouldn't be granted residency. For example, if a North Korean tries to get a visa and says he wants to come to the US to promote North Korean-style Marxism, we should keep him out. I'm not one of these paranoid people who thinks that sharia law is creeping around every corner, but if a Muslim immigrant actually says he believes sharia law should become the law of the United States, he should be kept out.
Not sure many want to retain their home country's culture at the expense of learning English. In the end, nearly everyone that comes to the US looking to improve their life appears to understand the importance of English, including most Latin Americans.
Really? Have you hung around places like North Lamar or East Riverside in Austin? Spanish is far more commonly spoken than English is, and most of those people aren't learning English anytime soon. And I'm not pointing that out to judge anybody like many do. It's not their fault. That's just how we are. We learn new languages as needed and according to the immediacy of that need. If we don't need to learn a new language, we generally don't because it's a pain in the ***. I can speak a little German, because I see and hear it every day and occasionally need to know it, but am I fluent? Hell no. Why not? Because I don't have to be in order to function. 90 percent of the people I encounter (even Germans) speak English. If I try to speak German to them, they can immediately tell that my German sucks and will start speaking English to me. What if that wasn't true? What if I couldn't pay my bills, couldn't set up utilities, couldn't buy food, couldn't make money, etc. without being able to speak German? I would have become fluent long ago, because I wouldn't have had a choice.
Same goes with Hispanic immigrants (at least the adults). They can mostly get by in Spanish, so they are going to be much slower to learn English. Frankly, that's our fault, not their. We diminish their need.
We've endured hundreds of years of various waves of immigrants from all over the world and our culture is still more pervasive today around the world than nearly any other.
A few points on this. First, we've never had as big of a wave of immigrants as we currently have. We're in uncharted territory just in terms of the size. We've never had more foreign born.
Second, we followed up previous waves with cutting immigration dramatically. They were temporary states of relatively open immigration. Anybody who suggests following that pattern today is called a racist.
Third, we've never had as many immigrants whose cultures were less Westernized. Past waves of immigrants came from places like Germany, Ireland, and Italy. There were certainly cultural differences, but they were basically Western. That's certainly a lot less true of immigrants today.
Fourth, we've never encouraged assimilation less than we do now. In some circles, it's a dirty word and xenophobic, and many sorta fetishize non-Western culture. Nobody treated it as a dirty word in the early 20th century (the last time we had anywhere near as many immigrants). It was expected that immigrants basically "become Americans" in their conduct, worldview, etc. That's what blending into the melting pot meant. That doesn't mean they all did with respect to everything they did, but that was the general expectation. And most did. Most of my ethnic background is 17th century Welsh. My ancestors undoubtedly spoke Cymric. The other portion is early 20th century Italian (or more accurately, thuggish Sicilian). How much Cymric and Italian do you think I know? None, and assimilation is the reason for it. Hell, I'm not even sure I know how to say the word "Cymric."
The point is that this is different. We're going in a direction which we've never gone. Will it all sorta "work out?" I hope so, but there is a line at which there's risk of it not working out.
One side note -
@Garmel - can you let the record show that I'm disagreeing with Seattle Husker? I'm not dick-slapping, but I'm not kissing his ***. I'm respectfully taking issue with him. This is what it looks like. If I trash-talked or called him names, I don't think it would make my point any stronger.
