The Biscuit of Diversity
Photo by Scott L
NOTE: This Piece first appeared on the Heard Tell SubStack, which you can subscribe to for free here:
I’m wearing my West Virginia University hat in a Carolina restaurant and sipping southern sweet tea while the bustle of a busy business swirls around my booth. This is one of my favorite breakfast spots. Familiar and comfortable, a habit well worn from an untold number of meals over the better part of two decades. Like most places these days, the servers are scrambling and hustling to overcome short staffing. The booths and tables are full. The pass is humming with sliding plates and clanking glasses going from kitchen to serving staff.
This place has a Greek name, fitting the Greek family that has owned it for decades. The kitchen staff is uniformly Hispanic and working non-stop for the Saturday morning rush, efforts coordinated with periodic instructions called out in Spanish. The servers mostly speak Spanish and English, switching between the two without breaking cadence or the rhythmic chaos of a busy service. This city breaks down demographically as 43/41/16 when it comes to black/white/other, which translates to some kind of just about everyone represented at the table, booths, and counter.
A family of five, four adults and a teen, takes the booth across from me. Since it is designed for four, the youngest is quickly informed by the two older ladies in stereo instruction that a chair for the end will be required. Which he dutifully retrieves. I chuckle, having done more than my fair share of “kids table” duty in my very large family at various gatherings where there was food. And there was always food, which you got plenty of regardless, but the adult table conversation was a privilege. The adults talk. He doesn’t. I can relate.
My server is their server. She drops me my biscuit and taters before turning to the folks across the way. They compliment her accent and hustle, and ask where she’s from. From New Jersey, came the reply, then the explainer of being Mexican and Turkish, born in Mexico, but from Jersey before coming here. The black folks in the booth reply they have never been to Turkey, or Mexico, but have some family from New Jersey, which they haven’t and don’t intend to visit for chuckling but unspecified reasons. Our hard working server shares a laugh, drops their silverware, and departs with their drink orders.
Meanwhile, my hillbilly self starts to enjoy a country ham, egg, and cheese biscuit which any of my Appalachian ancestors could recognize and have been eating in the last 200 odd years, perfectly prepared by Hispanics, in a Greek diner in a North Carolina city..
Greatest country ever, America, where E Pluribus Unum is both on The Great Seal of The United States of America and in the booths of a breakfast spot.
Country ham, egg, and cheese biscuit as mentioned. Photo by Andrew Donaldson
This, certain folks on the interwebs will boldly tell you and occasionally will say out loud in real life, is the true creeping destruction of America. “Diversity” is used as a pejorative for the wrong kind of people changing things to them. What they really mean is anyone who is not like they are in some or all ways: doesn’t think like them, look like them, act like them, pray like them, talk like them, vote like them, see the world revolving around them like they do.
Whether through ignorance or maliciousness, such self-centered nonsense is antithetical to a true understanding of American greatness. Bigotry, soft or otherwise, is a ruining ingredient if added to the secret sauce that makes this experiment in a free people self-governing the modern miracle that it is. Anyone from anywhere can affix themselves to the American dream and achieve whatever their ambitions drive them to do. Or at least should be able to, if the small minds of bigotry will stay out of the way and let all boats rise on the tide of an America big enough for everyone to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The internet isn’t real life, but folks bring their real life baggage to it. Plenty of folks are discovering there is a big, bold world out there to discover, learn from, embrace, and find your place in. For too many discovering there is a big, bold world out there has the effect of informing someone that their corner of the world and the amount of folks like them isn’t nearly as big as they thought it was. Those folks, not liking their sudden minority status of no longer being the top fish in a small pond food chain, tend to lash out and react in ungood ways. Doing so online doesn’t really change anything about the situation, but does let them vent, and – to those poor unfortunate maladjusted souls – tells the wider world far more about what they really think and feel that they perhaps intended to.
Pity they can’t set aside buzzwords, pejoratives, hashtags, and prejudices and just enjoy a biscuit, hard work, friendly neighbors, and the amazingly beautiful tableau of multicultural America trying to eat breakfast. Sitting in online silos waiting for the doomsday of whatever carefully curated media catastrophe some folks have convinced themselves is coming is a right, but it is no way to live.
They miss so much good, these folks so scared to death of human interactions that might be the least disagreeable or challenging that they bunker in and sandbag the door with online nonsense. Can’t see the sunset from the silo, nor will you catch the breaking dawn of America’s bright and promising future. Nor will you get an impressive biographical story of a hard working person blessing your morning in addition to serving up a darn fine breakfast. Or the simple joy of watching a family spend time together with noticeable parallels to your own upbringing though obviously different. Or ever learn more about yourself in learning more about others. Far from the lie of destroying someone’s culture and heritage, increased knowledge and broader perspective refine and enhance your own background.
What a joy it is to watch people when you take a second to appreciate the similarities, learn from the differences, and find a way to join them in having a smile and a laugh at it all despite whatever other problems might be waiting after a good biscuit and a spot of fellowship.
And it was a mighty fine biscuit, at that.
However one may feel about biscuits, immigration, or trans surgery, there’s no denying that using one word to describe all three impedes the national debate.Report
What national debate? There’s a side that says we want trans people to live as themselves, fully realizes, psychologically and emotionally whole and we want immigrants to come here put down roots and flourish. The other side wants neither of those things.
And biscuits? There’s no debating biscuits.Report
Denying that there is a national debate is another method of impeding the national debate. What Andrew did was neither deliberate nor embarrassing.Report
You can’t have a debate when one side consistently says no the everything offered by the other on a subject and accuses the first side of being the problem.Report
The debate is mainly occurring online and both sides assume that the not very online people on their side will just follow along perfectly. At least with immigration, I don’t think the entirety of the Democratic side is that necessarily enthusiastic about it. Most pro-immigrant feeling is in a “wouldn’t it be nice” level rather than something more concrete.Report
And for most people, the attitudes about immigration are complex and contradictory, mostly because the vast majority of Americans really don’t know very much about it.
Almost no one has personal experience with the immigration system, very few people personally know an immigrant and therefore can’t speak about it with anything other than vague platitudes or random urban legends.Report
This is one reason why I groan a lot when Puerto Ricans are treated as an immigrant community. I get that is done for pan-Latino/Latina solidarity reasons but Puerto Ricans are American citizens. They don’t have to deal with the immigration bureaucracy at all and never face deportation proceedings. That makes it a lot different. Even the next most favored Latin American group, the Cubans, doesn’t have it that easy.Report
“very few people personally know an immigrant and therefore can’t speak about it with anything other than vague platitudes or random urban legends.” Depends upon how you define “immigrant” I guess.Report
Define immigrant as someone whose forefathers are not from America, and you end, at best, with Native Americans. All others (all of us others) are immigrants.
Define American as anyone born in the USA, and you will end with a lot of Hispanics, Asian Americans, Muslims, and even a new wave of AfroCaribbeans that have little in common with the American blacks. These are people that many on the right side of the aisle would not accept as true Americans (see the 14th Amendment citizenship at birth debate).
So how do you think immigrants should be defined? And why would do have the cutoff there?
Funny thing, if America had the same citizenship rules as Germany, Trump likely could have been German Chancellor, but not US President.Report
“Define immigrant as someone whose forefathers are not from America, and you end, at best, with Native Americans. ” Actually, current scientific understanding is that what we conventionally label “Native Americans” were immigrants too.Report
I thought about point that out too, that the only true Americans apparently are the horses. The rest coming from somewhere else
(and of course the horses left America to become successful immigrants in Eurasia, and came back here only several thousands years later).
But inquisitive minds want to know? How do you think “immigrants” should be defined?Report
Wolverines. The current best theory is that they evolved in North America, then spread to Eurasia. Chances are good there was interbreeding between the two populations any time there was a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia.Report
Well heck, scientifically speaking by that definition anyone not residing in North Africa is an “immigrant”.Report
First of all, Andrew never mentioned trans people, so wow, I guess its on your mind a lot.
Second, lumping them together under the “diversity” rubric is exactly how I feel about it. But your program of “don’t use those words” would stifle my free expression. This is not some calculated, machiavellian tactic. It isn’t a “winning is everything” thing. It’s how I feel about it. How someone else lives in a far away city doesn’t mean boo, and yet they must bang the table about how awful it is, and how wrong the language I use to describe it is, as well.
Meanwhile, what we want is to just live.Report
Your first sentence seems to call me crazy for conflating diversity and trans issues. The remainder of your comment seems to conflate diversity and trans issues.Report
Deep down everybody isn’t a Secret Disney Liberal. There is an idea that.I think is basically false that most people including the most vehement reactionaries are deep down Secret Disney Liberals and if we discover the right spells and procedures we can break through the shell of hatred and live in food, festival, and fabric multicultural liberalism that will encompass the entire world. This cosmology is just as erroneous as the reactionary cosmology. There are 320 million or so Americans and many radically different and completely contradictory views on what America should look like. There will never be consensus and democracy is just managing the crisis and preventing it from becoming a physical war.Report
I agree. One of the problems we have is spending so much time debating abstractions like ‘diversity’ that mean 1000 different things to 1000 different people, and that’s when it isn’t being used as a euphemism for some highly specific, controversial proposal. It’s better IMO to focus on the specific policy questions at hand and try to eke out workable solutions where we can. That will never deliver the profound emotional satisfaction hardcore culture warriors seem to want but that’s because hoping to get something like that out of politics is folly in itself.Report
You know what this hard core culture warrior wants with respect to immigration? Policies based on how things are. Like, we have 11 million or so undocumented migrants in the US whose full scale deportation would ruin our economy. They are here in no small measure because our economy needs them – there aren’t 11 million American citizens waiting to take their jobs. They are here, they pay many forms of tax, don’t take social safety net dollars or vote, keep to themselves and have documented lower crime rates then other groups. They put their kid sin American schools, learn English, and are general contributors to the success of America.
So lets start with ensuring they get recognized for what they do and who they are and have become. Let’s make sure those who follow can come and go as we need them to in our industries and markets. And if we REALLY REALLY want to start off with enforcement, lets sack the CEO’s whose corporations create the economic demand for these folks.
Deal?Report
I’m an enforcement first kind of guy, mainly because I don’t think any reform is possible until something credible happens on that front, followed by move to a merit based system similar to what Canada has. But sure, I don’t have any problems with the broad outline, including at some point an amnesty for those here with no felonies and whose taxes can be gotten in order.Report
I mean one reason why Canada has the system it has, is that it has better geography than America or Europe has when it comes to not having people just show up. Crossing the Mediterranean or the US-Mexican border isn’t easy but it is a lot easier than just showing up at a Canadian border.Report
Even the Canadians have had some struggles with the asylum issue.Report
Sure, their circumstances are different and that gives them a lot more room to maneuver on enforcement than we will ever realistically have. But it also means they’re taking high skilled immigrants that should rightly be ours because they’re able to make it super easy for the cream of the crop to come. Meanwhile we sit here with our thumbs up our rears over whether or not there is some moral imperative to put every person who manages to overstay a visa or cross the Rio Grande on the path to naturalization.Report
That’s a bit like saying you want enforcement of the speed limit or drug laws, before anything else.
The laws on immigration literally can’t be enforced. We have to accept the facts on the ground before we can do anything else.Report
“Defund the INS!”
How do you feel about gun laws?
This weird random walk between “we just need to have the political will to do something!” and “these laws literally cannot be enforced!” is always odd when you look at it from the outside.
I mean, a few months back, we had a thread about Florida enforcing employment law and talked about how fruit would be rotting on the branch because all of the immigrants would leave.
Do we even remember that?
Do we remember anything?Report
I do remember complaints from farmers about a labor shortage, if memory serves.Report
Here’s a fun thread that you will enjoy:
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I don’t think that thread is referring to the same group of people we’re talking about here.
Here in Chicago we have Abbott’s migrants sitting around shelters all day who I’d bet would jump at the chance for an honest day’s pay.Report
Here’s where we discussed it back in June.
I admit that the morality of the positions taken escaped me.Report
okay there Doctor ManhattanReport
IT’S COLD!Report
The laws on asylum could stand with some tightening of definition and financing for enforcement I’d say. And if we keep trying to pretend like we can go right to “accepting the facts on the ground” without addressing that necessary work the stronger we’re going to make the worst kinds of right wing immigration restrictionists.Report
One thing that keeps bubbling up inconveniently is the whole “public assistance” thing.
“Nobody comes here to get on public assistance!” is the argument.
But remember the Citibike Karen story from a few months back when a pregnant cis-het white woman tried to steal a rental bike from a BIPOC?
Well, as it turns out, the case was a bit more complicated than that. There were a bunch of youths who rented the bikes then locked them up to charge while they waited for a few moments to let the timer go down before they rented the bikes again. (Doing it this way is cheaper, you see.)
Well, it came out that the kid who challenged Citi Bike Karen’s renting of the bike was an immigrant who happened to be on public assistance.
The number one thing that you don’t want the squishy middle to start thinking is “how much have I been lied to?”
Because that’s a really good way to make them start voting for the wrong people.Report
“But remember the Citibike Karen story from a few months back when a pregnant cis-het white woman tried to steal a rental bike from a BIPOC?”
No, never heard of it.Report
We discussed it here.Report
The problem with tightening the definitions on asylum is basically that individual officials have a lot of leeway. Whether you get asylum a lot depends more on who hears your case rather than the law or the facts of your case. The grant rate literally can range from 0% to 100%. Asylum is a pure gamble in the American political system. There are some tools that can help you like having a good lawyer but even the best lawyer can’t help with an Immigration Judge with a 0% grant rate.Report
I believe you, no doubt it’s squirrely but I’m confident there could be more defining and, most assuredly, there could be financing to make it so people can get an answer on their asylum claims in something approaching a prompt order which would, in of itself, resolve a lot of the way asylum is being used (allegedly abused) by a lot of migrants.Report
No, you’re wrong about this, and the fact that some people will still break the law doesn’t convince me that there should therefore be no laws or standards of any kind, which is what I suspect your position de facto actually is. I think if the employers were cracked down on hard we could reach an equilibrium that would make other things possible. I also have no real problem if there has to be some kind of show of force at customs and the southern border to create the political coalition to do what needs to he done. For the record this is basically the Obama admin’s position and it’s a shame the GOP as usual was so uninterested in problem solving back then.
And ultimately I’m quite pro immigration, I’m just also pro good government and exercising basic controls so that the immigration we have is both a net good for citizens, whose interests must be put first, and has the democratic legitimacy it needs.Report
” I think if the employers were cracked down on hard…”
If only we could arrest all the drug users, and all the speeders…
We can’t “crack down” on employers because almost no one, anywhere, wants to, or has the stomach for it if we could.
We lack the will to do that because almost everyone who has any sort of contact with immigration realizes that the economy would collapse without them.Report
Don’t mistake what elected officials and their donor class wants for what average people will and will not stomach.Report
Last time we cracked down on non-citizens doing agricultural work, people complained about rising food prices.Report
Lets clarify-
In order to “crack down” we would need to treat say, the local mom & pop diner like a crime scene, and confiscate their assets, perp walk mom & pop and make them do serious time, the whole 9 yards.
Lets see a show of hands- How many people here at OT would support that, and vote for the people who made it happen?Report
To clarify: yes, your analysis is right, Chip. Both Mom&Pop business owners as well as corporate executives would end up getting perp walks. Managers at meatpacking plants and liberals with “in this house” signs in their front yards would be screaming about the sharp fines they’d be facing. All those peoples assets would get fined and no small amount of them would end up in federal hands because, unlike undocumented immigrants, the employers of undocumented workers have money that they can lose.
Let us, further, recognize that this policy would cause agricultural produce to rot in fields across the nation. The cost of food in general would, initially, go up as the food industry scrambled to automate, raise wages to get legal employees or to source their goods in Latin America (or lobby for some kind of guest worker program). The cost of construction would skyrocket as would the cost of child care, nursing home care and all kinds of landscaping services. If we didn’t have full fledged inflation we would, at a minimum, have a lot of urban liberal types going “I can’t afford all these services any more because there’s no one to do them at a level I’m willing to pay for and that makes me feel poor.” And a LOT of bien peasant right wing suburban and rural business owners would be shrieking about how no one wants to work anymore.
BUT, this policy would, emphatically, drive down undocumented migration. Hiring undocumented workers would become entirely uneconomical and businesses would have little to no way to evade this kind of labor scrutiny. Economic migrants would stop coming because they wouldn’t be able to get jobs and they’re marching across continents and deserts to send money home, not letters to their relatives bemoaning how they can’t work here.
The core point is that if one is talking about using regulation to cut down on undocumented migrants and one is talking about building “walls” on the border or “deporting” or otherwise chasing the undocumented workers themselves around with weapons, dogs or rules; that’s just a vacuous pose. That won’t accomplish any of the goals that immigration restrictionists claim to hold dear. Any immigration restriction regime that ignores employers is simply a mask for the status quos and a sop for business concerns that think of right wingers who care about immigration as patsies. Nothing more.
I would hazard to guess that virtually no one at OT would like this policy because the OT commentariate consists of A) liberals who have no problem with immigrants and B) libertarian types who are pro-business. But that shouldn’t prevent us from recognizing that any policy about restricting immigration that doesn’t involve going after the employers is poisonous posturing and calling it out.Report
If it came with solving the problem I’d stomach it.
But I also think North’s list of who benefits from the status quo is both accurate and illuminating. It consists of politically influential people but not particularly numerous ones. Most Americans don’t own or operate big agribusiness or construction companies. They don’t even run mom and pop tight margin hospitality businesses, and they certainly don’t have a nanny or cleaning lady, nor do I think are they particularly empathetic to the plight of those in any of those categories.
Now, to your point, the demand would be about cost increases for food and maybe ripple effects of construction bottlenecks but that’s exactly why I think the downsides would be short lived.Report
These people do vote though. A lot of Americans might not be directly impacted by big crackdown on employers but they will be indirectly impacted and often negatively. As North mentioned, food prices would raise rapidly because of the decrease in cheap labor. Restaurants would close, etc.Report
Which would create a constituency for change. increased legal immigration, for instance, or a robust guest worker program.
But, really, while the right would continue to inveigle on it, I suspect that if the asylum de facto loophole was closed a lot of the oomph would drain out of the issue. In the US I suspect that a lot of immigrant skeptical folks are very cheap dates.Report
Given the previous rounds of the nonstop Fox News/ Wall Street Journal hysteria over small businesses being persecuted by jackbooted agents of the state, whether it is ADA regulations (Remember “Poolmageddon? We talked about it right here) or environmental regulations or gas stoves or anything else, the idea that most Americans will calmly watch as restaurateurs and farmers are frog marched off to jail seems…improbable..Report
Those examples are all being done on behalf of “left wing coded” causes like safety and climate change. When it’s on behalf of right wing causes the wingers are absolutely delighted to stomp those jackbooted agents till the cows come home.Report
Have you ever wondered what happened with “Poolmageddon”?
The usual.
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I don’t see the connection.Report
Yeah.Report
The masses have demonstrated, clearly in Europe and implicitly here, that if you don’t do some form of enforcement first you’ll end up outside of government watching in fury while the masses applaud people in power proposing shooting or drowning undocumented immigrants.
I’m more of a Yglesian billion Americans kind of guy personally but if we ignore where the electorate is on this policy they’ll elect an absolute monster so long as they’re on the opposite side of the debate from us. Being realistic about what the voters want and will tolerate isn’t optional.
That said if you want enforcement first then the only effective enforcement would be to target the employers. The farmers, the businessfolks AND the effete landscaper and nanny employing liberals.Report
For the record I am fine with the last paragraph if it is the road to a solution.Report
So am I, but the right is assuredly NOT interested in that. They’d much prefer the status quos.Report
Absolutely. They’re the ones who scuttled it under W and Obama and then didn’t even attempt it when they had the trifecta under Trump. They’d rather cynically foment nativists sentiment then run cover for their plutocratic donor base behind the scenes than solve things.Report
That’s kind of my point about there being no debate, because the Right doesn’t want a debate or a negotiation or anything else.Report
I hear you. But if I based my own positions merely on opposition to the incoherence and unseriousness about policy expressed by the right I would find myself in an incoherent, unserious place as well.Report
It’s like the abortion issue, up to when the dog caught the car.
And if the did catches this car at some point, the effect on the right side of the aisle will likely be similarReport
I suspect it’d be somewhat different in that, with regards to the abortion issue, pro-lifers have a pretty unified set of wants that the masses mostly despise. Immigration is a much more amorphous policy question and the interests of the monied right are absolutely inverse to the desires of the immigration restrictionists whereas in abortion the monied right most don’t care about abortion whereas the pro-lifers do.Report
As usual I think you’re exactly right. The pro-life position punches way above its weight due to the two party system, and specifically its small but highly motivated set of activists spending decades capturing commitments from the GOP.
To your comment below I’m not sure either party quite as the pulse of the electorate for immigration and it isn’t even totally clear to me what the pulse is. My gut says on balance it leans restrictionist at least up to a point. However America’s history of immigration makes me think the kind of ‘blood and soil’ nativism floating around is unlikely to have the currency here it can in Europe, not in 2023 anyway. We’re just operationally way more liberal as people and our form of government and national identity isn’t quite as tied up in a specific ethno-linguistic group. Anyone who doesn’t believe me on this latter point should try going into a ‘tex mex’ restaurant in Germany.Report
I agree, I think genuine xenophobic blood and soil anti-immigration position is not popular but that a lot of people who otherwise don’t like it would vote for it if the alternative was the “anyone who gets here can come in and we should let them have safety net benefits too” position that is en vogue on the internet left (but not-mind- in the Democratic Party).
And I say that as a person who looked back at Merkle’s position vis a vis Syrian refugees and said “What a moral and admirable stance, good for her”. There’ve been a lot of hard lessons handed down since then that we left of center types would be remiss to ignore- we don’t have the luxury of the fringes to say “well the masses are racist and immoral so we need new masses” the way libertarians or internet leftists do.Report
Yes, I think they absolutely would.
I was less surprised about the fall out in Europe over refugees. I think I’ve made it known at OT that my mom immigrated here from France and I like to think that via her side of the family we have a bit better sense of the ‘man on the street’ attitudes about these things. I also studied in Germany for a while, where their inability to integrate the descendants of (relatively) secular Turks that came in the 50s and 60s is profound, and really, really apparent to any American that spends any length of time there. My experience is that your average German can’t articulate what exactly their status is and you immediately get the sense that but for a few Green party type idealists they’d rather change the subject.
Still I would’ve predicted that they were merely adding volume to a long festering issue, not that it would result in major political retrenchment across the continent.
I’m always way more optimistic on our ability to integrate. Birthright citizenship goes a long way but there’s also just way more ways to be an American than a German or a Frenchman (or a Hungarian). It works really well, as long as Americans don’t have a sense of chaos and losing control… which gets us back to where out priorities on the center left should be.Report
Oh yes, the irony is that the problem, such as it is, is not very hard to solve here in the US as a practical matter except that both of our duopoly parties don’t want to tackle it (the GOP because they like things they way they are, the Dems because they have other things they’d rather spend political capital on).Report
On the other blog, this came up recently. One of the things that liberals have a hard time talking about because protecting the vulnerable seems more pressing of a concern and it also seems more than a little racist to talk about this is the need to enforce liberal concepts of order in different places like making sure the new immigrants don’t assume Western women are sexually available and for free talking based on how they dress.Report
Absolutely, it’s an enormously unappealing policy for the Dems to tackle by themselves during the limited times they have a trifecta. If the only people in the room are centrists, business liberals and ideological liberals the question of “why are we even wrangling over this” is almost unanswerable.Report
I think it is hard to get a clear view of the politics of immigration in the United States based on how our political system is set up. Other countries do not have local governors with the ability to turn asylum seekers into stunts. New York might complain about being on the brink but it is not exactly turning anyone away either.
Plus the Dutch government collapsed over immigrationReport
For all we know, local government politicians could be turning asylum seekers into a stunt but we just don’t get those stories in English.Report
I agree, with a place as big as the US it’s hard to get a coherent read. That said it is very safe to say that the preponderance of the voters who think about immigration at all sit very significantly to the restrictionist side of the party elites of both parties in the US.Report
The Republican Party elite is full on xenophobic right now.Report
It is, and it got there, at least partially, because the voting masses on the right said “We want a -4 policy on immigration and if our elites refuse to give us anything less than a +1 on immigration policy then we’ll fire them and hire new elites who are offering a -10 policy on immigration. “Report
Well wait, both parts of that are fictional: that there’s a secret formula, and that the only differences are food, festivals, and fabric. The expression even comes from your side mocking the shallowness of that understanding. No one’s up in arms about changes in food and fabric, although maybe “festivals” hints at the broad differences between cultures’ beliefs and traditions.
So I guess I’m just not sure what the position is that you’re taking.Report
I love this post. I describes nearly every day for me, which is a thing I treasure about living here in California. I go to a place every week where Univision is on the TV. Also, they know me, and know my usual order, and give me big smiles. They speak English to me. I watch the TV while I’m waiting, hoping to improve my Spanish just a bit.
That’s not the only place. America isn’t a people. It isn’t an ethnic group. It’s an idea.Report
I’m 100% in agreement with you. I live in an area that in the time I’ve owned my house has gone from heavily Polish to heavily Hispanic. The only real change I’ve noticed is it’s easier to get a burrito now than a pierogi. People just want to live their lives.
I read this on Reddit 6 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since:
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Part of the problem with talking about some of the difficult issues, like immigration, is we dont’ have any actual plans or deals to look at. It’s all just grandstanding and what ever one party can do w’o compromising with the other side. What would a good compromise on immigration look like? Welp wish we could try to find out. But it’s a fudging election season even though the vote is well over a year away so we’re gonna get nothing but hot air and mega grandstanding.Report
My favorite part of the comment sections of this website is how everyone misses the point of the piece written and how the comments inevitably devolve into sophomoric philosophical rants from people willfully missing the point of the piece written.Report
What point do you believe we all whistled past?Report
Not you, my dude, I’m talking about the right wing idealogues and nihilistic libertarian types that frequent this website. None of which are interested in any real discourse or understanding which is pretty much par for the course.Report