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The Fourth of July

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Re: The Fourth of July

#91

Post by dang »

bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #45
weiming wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

Indeed. Colin Kaepernick, on Twitter: > "Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. " Point of clarification: by "our ancestors" he's referring exclusively to his African-descended ancest…

Please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Fourth of July

#92

Post by barry-cotter »

brians wrote: post #9
tyingq wrote: post #3

Sounds like the ceremony would have been roughly a year after the first gulf war in 1991. Which also included a fair number of non-citizen US combatants. I met a lot of them during my 8 year service. It's not clear to me what advantage that path offers, but I can say there are a lot of people that try it, specifically because they think it's an accelerated path to citizenship.

It was the only path for my family—illegal immigrants in the inter-war years who served in WW2 for citizenship. The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white—but broke its promise to Filipinos. We have a lot of growing to do.

> The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white

No Europeans were ever not considered white under US law. Blacks, Native Americans and Asians have all been othered racially under US law. All Europeans have always been considered white.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...

Re: The Fourth of July

#93

Post by rayiner »

filleduchaos wrote: post #62
magicsmoke wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that despite what America did to these Filipino soldiers, they still chose to be American and sacrificed the majority of their life to do so. American immigration really is the ultimate test of loyalty. Makes you wonder how many natural-born Americans would still choose to be American if they had to go through the immigration experience first. Now that's an idea. People aren't born American c…

> American immigration really is the ultimate test of loyalty. Frankly, more and more people are starting to wake up to the fact that it's a bullshit test. Partly because immigration really doesn't have to be all that, and partly because of the global...decline of the United States' image since the turn of the century. When I was a kid moving to the US was the goal, now only a handful of people I know have it at the…

Canada is great. It’s virtually indistinguishable from America for the typical person.

I don’t know where you’re from, but as a Bangladeshi immigrant to the US, but I wouldn’t emigrate to the EU. 76% of Americans say that a naturalized citizen is a “real American” and just 13% disagree: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/.... In France it’s 55-28. In Italy it’s 41-36. There is no place in the world more welcoming to immigrants than America. Look at what’s happening in the EU. America has been dealing with huge levels of illegal immigration for decades and for the most part we’re still very positive on legal immigration. Europe accepted some refugees from the Middle East like five minutes ago and already right-wing nationalist parties are winning elections left and right.

Re: The Fourth of July

#94

Post by zipwitch »

vore wrote: post #79
weiming wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

As an immigrant, I don't feel the same sadness you do. There's still many injustices in the US, and framing it as "hating their own country" is extremely unfair: people are frustrated about a lot of things, people are emotional about a lot of things, and I don't think it's fair for you to discard it as simply "disdain". After all, America was founded on rebellion against the status quo (what day is it today again?),…

As an American from birth, and speaking for myself, it's not hating my country. It's frustration and sometimes anger at our failure to do better. I believe that doing better than we are is within our grasp, but we, as a nation, so often seem to turn away from positive change in favor of a comfortable and easy (for many Americans) status quo that is ultimately inadequate and often blindly hypocritical.

Re: The Fourth of July

#95

Post by watersb »

weiming wrote: post #42
myrandomcomment wrote: post #2

As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Lincoln As an American I feel we are bound not by our failures of past moral…

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

We don't hate our country! We want it to live up to its promise for everyone. Truth and justice for all is hard. If we didn't believe in it, we wouldn't try.

Re: The Fourth of July

#96

Post by stormdennis »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #87
hintymad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and so many people of color came to the US with a suite case and less than $1000 dollars, and then became a successful person in a few years. I certainly did. My wife certainly did. My team, my gardener, and my contractor certainly did. Some people who are from the same school as I went to have even become CEOs of big companies, and some have become famous professors or head of prestigious universities. If anyt…

When writing this, did you consider that most African Americans are descended from people who didn't get to bring a suitcase? That they were still fighting to be treated as equal citizens a century and a half after no longer being considered property? And that the fact that they're over-represented in basketball doesn't mean that inequality is solved?

Note that you said descendants. They were not slaves, nor were their parents nor their grandparents. What remove does it take to get over it and stop acting like everyone owes you? Immigrants have come to America with nothing and having suffered unimaginable trauma (such as having had their entire family incinerated) and prospered.

Re: The Fourth of July

#97

Post by defen »

rayiner wrote: post #57
weiming wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

My family is Bangladeshi immigrants and we have been talking about this lately too. My parents just moved into a new house, and yesterday my dad installed a big American flag. My parents are Democrats so they agree ideologically with CNN, etc., but even they’re getting sick of the over-the-top weeping and rending of clothes.

There is basically no penalty (social, legal, financial, professional, etc) for going "too far" in condemning America, especially if you are a middle-to-upper class white person in an urban area. In fact there may be rewards. So just thinking about the dynamics of that, why wouldn't people go too far?

Re: The Fourth of July

#98

Post by vore »

zipwitch wrote: post #94
vore wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an immigrant, I don't feel the same sadness you do. There's still many injustices in the US, and framing it as "hating their own country" is extremely unfair: people are frustrated about a lot of things, people are emotional about a lot of things, and I don't think it's fair for you to discard it as simply "disdain". After all, America was founded on rebellion against the status quo (what day is it today again?),…

As an American from birth, and speaking for myself, it's not hating my country. It's frustration and sometimes anger at our failure to do better. I believe that doing better than we are is within our grasp, but we, as a nation, so often seem to turn away from positive change in favor of a comfortable and easy (for many Americans) status quo that is ultimately inadequate and often blindly hypocritical.

Even from just examining the present, it's hard to find much to like about how the US is handling a pandemic.

Re: The Fourth of July

#99

Post by p1esk »

jonathannat wrote: post #81
c3534l wrote: post #72

Given this introduction: > I've re-posted this many times, because it's fundamental to what it means to me to be an American. I was thinking I was in for something uplifting. Instead I got: > In 1946, Congress reneged on FDR's promise. Filipino solders who fought for us and their families were not given their promised citizenship, let alone benefits. ... They waited 44 years, until after most of them were dead. This…

I think the moral of the story is that America is flawed, however, it eventually does the right thing, as well as other great things. And that's why it engenders so much love/hate. I think it's very relevant to today's events, where people wants to "cancel" a person, just because of one or two things they did wrong (which may have just been the norm in their days). This is a slightly disturbing trends, as we can supp…

defeated Nazi Germany

Correction: helped defeating Nazi Germany. Compare the number of American soldiers who fought in WW2 to the number of Soviet soldiers.

Re: The Fourth of July

#100

Post by [deleted] »

vore wrote: post #79
weiming wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.

As an immigrant, I don't feel the same sadness you do. There's still many injustices in the US, and framing it as "hating their own country" is extremely unfair: people are frustrated about a lot of things, people are emotional about a lot of things, and I don't think it's fair for you to discard it as simply "disdain". After all, America was founded on rebellion against the status quo (what day is it today again?),…

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