<p>
[quote]
They didn’t overrun the system anywhere near as rapidly as is happening now?
[/quote]
There was no system back then. There was no control. Governments didn't even issue passports in some cases! If you want uncontrolled immigration that was the definition of it.</p>
<p>Wait, Pavs...you mean they even let Jews in?</p>
<p>Funny thing,</p>
<p>Every current woman CEO is also a mother (parent)</p>
<p>Brenda Barnes- Sara Lee - 3 children
Anne Mulcahey- Xerox - 2 children
Cathleen Balck- Hearst- 2 children
Andrea Jung- Avon 2 Children
Meg Whitman- Ebay 2 children
Shelly Lazarus - Oligivy & Mather - 2 children
Patricia Russo- Lucent (2 step children)</p>
<p>"I guess I am talking about multiculturalism. I am coming to think it is not exactly a good thing as it is practiced today."</p>
<p>Yes let us stop it.....then you really will see more startling statistics on the campuses of elite universities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There was no system back then. There was no control. Governments didn't even issue passports in some cases! If you want uncontrolled immigration that was the definition of it.
[/quote]
There was always a system and there was always control. By some estimates there are over 20 million illegal immigrants here. We are talking upwards of seven percent of the general population. The largest colony in early colonial America was, what, maybe 6000 people at the zenith of its growth, just prior to moving to Williamsburg? Had 420 some people moved into the region, all speaking a foreign language and with no sanction from the Virginia Company, the existing population would have taken it as a threat despite that they needed the labor force. Again, the issue is not immigration, but the rapidity of it. The same 420 people, coming in gradually as did all workers at the time, would likely have been put to work. That was the system and the control of the time.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You also realize that the effect of 420 people on a group of 6000 is far more pronounced than say... 42,000 on 600,000, right?</p>
<p>
[quote]
There was always a system and there was always control.
[/quote]
No, not really. You get off the boat, the customs office writes your name down, makes sure you don't "look like a criminal or a crazy person" and that was about it. Nothing like the beurocratic morass an immigrant has to go through these days. Visas didn't exist and in many countries neither did passports. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Again, the issue is not immigration, but the rapidity of it. The same 420 people, coming in gradually as did all workers at the time, would likely have been put to work. That was the system and the control of the time.
[/quote]
It has been said before. There were more immigrants relative to the population in the earlier waves of immigration. The ONLY difference between then and now is that now we have more institutional oversight over who comes in and out and the people coming in are Asian and Latin American rather than Eastern European.
So which of these two differences do you have a problem with?</p>
<p>I for one want rid of the Asians. Except for the Japanese. They can stay. I enjoy their silly cartoons and video games.</p>
<p>But can we get rid of the Jews? ;)</p>
<p>[/sarcasm to the f'in extreme]</p>
<p>
[quote]
That's not what the Know-Nothings said. You realize that in terms of percentages, the waves of immigration during the 19th and early 20th-centuries were far larger, right?
[/quote]
As I said, by the time this happened, there were scores of Germans, Irish, Italians already here. In fact, the Germans were probably the largest of all the groups, huge numbers of them so thick that whole regions were named after them. Towns like Harrisonburg, Gettysburg and others probably got their names because of the large numbers of Germans who settled these regions, especially after whats his name discovered the Swift Run Gap. (Whats that guys name? Ah! I forget.) The culture had already adjusted to these populations.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But they were white people, who are much more likely to "add" to the system. Not those Asians, who just sit around in opium dens, speaking their "exotic" languages, right?
[/quote]
Why are you trying to make me out to be some kind of racist? I am here talking about maintaining historic American ideals and you are trying to get me to talk about keeping out the Chinese. Its crazy. I am concerned that we are having a lot of people flowing too fast into the country so that they cannot stay in touch with the history of the place in a meaningful way. It is important to me because that history is responsible for the problems we are discussing here. If the newcomers are detached from it, well, forget about ever fixing it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sheesh. My girlfriend speaks less Mandarin than I do, and she's Chinese American! Yet you'd probably assume she's not "adding to the identity" or some such rubbish.
[/quote]
I dont know anything about you or your girlfriend. And I assume very little about either of you.</p>
<p>edit - Spotswood. I think 1710?</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You're assuming that the newcomers don't "Americanize." Most Asian families I know in the US very quickly take to becoming American. Most sociological studies I've seen on Latinos show them very quickly integrating as well.</p>
<p>So then what's the problem?</p>
<p>By the way, let me put it in another light:</p>
<p>Most Jews don't share the same values as WASPs. In fact, many of their values clash. </p>
<p>Yet I doubt that most Jewish-Americans would consider themselves anything but "American."</p>
<p>The problem with defining "American values" is the fact that they're so variable, even within very "typical" Americans. Most New Yorkers and Angelinos would probably disagree on a number of things regarding what it means to be "American." Yet both are American.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No, not really. You get off the boat, the customs office writes your name down, makes sure you don't "look like a criminal or a crazy person" and that was about it.
[/quote]
And that is certainly a control, a legal control that the gatekeepers obviously thought sufficient for the time. In a day of terrorism, it does not surprise me a bit that many leaders see fit to pass laws that set up stricter controls.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Nothing like the beurocratic morass an immigrant has to go through these days. Visas didn't exist and in many countries neither did passports.
[/quote]
I certainly dont defend the existing system. I dont know enough about it to defend it. I do think it is important to have people learn our history. And I do fear that is not happening and wont happen with rapid and uncontrolled immigration.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It has been said before. There were more immigrants relative to the population in the earlier waves of immigration. The ONLY difference between then and now is that now we have more institutional oversight over who comes in and out and the people coming in are Asian and Latin American rather than Eastern European.
[/quote]
That is not the only difference. Poles and Italians were here in the 1600s, right down in Jamestown, Virginia, the very first permanent settlement that served as the basis of the start of America. And the Germans were there too. There were no Mexicans and there were no Asians. By the time the Poles, Italians, and Germans began to flow in serious numbers, there were already vast numbers of Poles, Italians and Germans ready assimilated and established parts of the existing culture. That matters because these people were able to buffer against torrential change that might have caused us to lose something valuable.</p>
<p>I really dont know if I am right about current circumstances, but I think I am. I think when you get fast immigration, it basically amounts to colonization and fragmentation. I think I see this already. And if we have attitudes about culture that leads some people to think all cultural practices everywhere are equal and compatible, I dont think that will help anyone over the long haul. Some cultures support things that really destroy human rights. It seems to me we need enough intellectual flexibility in our own culture so that one can question these things without incurring the nonsense I am incurring here with you.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So which of these two differences do you have a problem with?<a href="sigh">/quote</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You're assuming that the newcomers don't "Americanize."
[/quote]
I am assuming we dont really know what Americanize means and that to fix our problem we really need to get a handle on what it means. My fear is that with rapid immigration, the opportunity to learn what it means will be lost forever. It just seems reasonable to me to fix the meaning of America to our history.</p>
<p>When Jefferson said We hold it as self-evident that all men are created equal etc., he really did a remarkable thing that I think most people are missing. He actually submitted this ideal to Britain as the basis for the establishment AND MAINTAINANCE of a new country, our country America.</p>
<p>The huge problem that is just staring us in the face is that even while Jefferson was setting pen to paper here, justifying America on the basis of innate human equality, America was resting firmly on brutal inequality. Was he a hypocrite? Yes and no. Cant discuss it much more for lack of time. I am saying that the way in which this Law of American Identity was destroyed in the lives of black Americans lies exactly at the base of our problems. If we can all see this, and feel it as powerfully as I feel it, then when you and your children read the history, you should feel the thing almost as amazingly as I feel it. If you are holding firmly to this ideal, the ideal that actually is responsible for our even BEING here as Americans, then everywhere you see the ideal being infringed will cause in you a sense of serious injustice as an American.</p>
<p>It is a broad thing, admittedly. But if we can get it, I am pretty sure the unity and trust we need can be developed. Right now, I suspect vast numbers of blacks still think this idea of America is just a fraud, and this thing about freedom and equality is all a sham. No way these folks are gonna trust you as a fellow countryman when you cant even closely identify with gross infringement against the values you claim to hold dear.</p>
<p>I know my thoughts are muddled here. Im now in a rush </p>
<p>
[quote]
Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You also realize that the effect of 420 people on a group of 6000 is far more pronounced than say... 42,000 on 600,000, right?
[/quote]
No. I dont realize this. I think it quite depends upon the respective natures of these populations. 42,000 people can profoundly affect 600,000 depending on who they are and how FAST their circumstances change.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>I have nothing but admiration for your achievements. </p>
<p>Maybe I live in a very educationally-challenged area, but I'm not aware that the workforce is saturated with female Ph.D.'s who successfully combine a long-standing full-time career with raising children. I would consider you the exception rather than the rule, especially as I read that women are opting more and more for the stay-at-home mothering experience.</p>
<p>I, for one, wouldn't call it lack of progress so much as I would a pendulum swing. Betty Friedan sounded an alarm and women of the next generation responded to it. Maybe the opportunities for which they strove look less glamourous to young women who watched their mothers manage career and family. </p>
<p>I wonder if any research has been done that studies whether the young women now choosing to leave the workforce to raise their children are the daughters of mothers who combined family and career, or daughters of women who did not heed the call of "having it all", or if the phenomenon is common to both groups.</p>
<p>I think the confidence young women now have to feel comfortable making either decision is proof enough that their mothers did a great job.</p>
<p>yes, dross, when I reread my post I can see why you answered by addressing the question of guilt. The reason you are making progress with me regarding
[quote]
What I am trying to do is let them see that there are real and genuine problems of thought in all of us, and that they are due to our rigid adherence to our own feelings
[/quote]
is because I cannot fail to notice how honestly you listen to other viewpoints. I believe that you do not hurry through someone else's ideas simply to get the chance to reinforce your own opinions but thoughtfully arrive at measured conclusions. It is your respect for thinking and your belief that understanding the complex duality of issues can slow down the insane actions of the overconfident. This decency of yours allows the cynical and paranoid me to learn from you with grace.
[quote]
we are both right depending upon our separate frames of reference. What I wish to do is get you to my frame and me to get to yours.
[/quote]
There is a thrill getting liberated from crippling habits, having ones windows smashed, especially as it seems to offer relief from certainties that increasingly plague me. For instance, if a car cruises down the street with music so loud it knocks the leaves off the trees and the driver's angry black face glares out defiantly satisfied with the menace projecting from his ride, I try to get past this assault and understand the reasons behind his need to announce himself to the neighborhood. I try to look for the child that once was there. There's more than this. There's discussions in my house about race that weren't here before. When we hear gunshots in the night, screams, and read about the incident that left one dead, and my daughter wants to know his race and my other daughter, oversensitive to anything that smacks of unfairness, asks why that matters, and the other gropes for an answer until she realizes that it would be a comfort not to learn the violence was random but remained within the neighborhood a few streets down where there are too many bars and people with nothing much to do but get insulted because of the pride and dignity lost through the cruel climate of our history, then I assure you that there is some little difference being made here where I am trying to look beyond easy blame and appearances which is never an easy thing to do,..</p>
<p>Dizzymom:</p>
<p>Somehow, I seem to be surrounded by lots more working women with children than perhaps you are, whether or not they have Ph.D.s, J.D.s, M.D.s Believe me, I am no exception. </p>
<p>The point I am making, though, is that there should be no a priori supposition that a woman of child-bearing age WILL opt out of work. She may or she may not. But my experience is that the people changing jobs tend to be men. Sure, they are likely to stay in the workforce since very few take time off to raise children, but from the point of view of an individual company, it does not matter whether an employee decides to quit to stay at home or to join another company.
Nor can you see far in the future. A couple of months after getting his Ph.D., and looking forward to his first job, a young man I knew dropped dead while playing tennis. It was during the summer and the college that had hired him had to scramble like mad to find a replacement in time for the fall term.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I could only stare at him because never had I had the intent of being a stay-at-home wife and mother.
[/quote]
Its amazing you never had this intent because it has been only in recent, very recent, years that women have been free enough to make these kinds of choices and be serious about them.</p>
<p>I think this is yet another thing in history that really bugs me. All those years, century after century weve had some amazingly gifted women, people who were born and who, while perhaps wanting to raise children, also had other interests that they really could have developed. But we had a certain way of living in the culture that was never really evaluated until recent times. And that way meant that any woman who would develop interests outside of her home took some serious hits socially.</p>
<p>I understand the whole division of labor thing. I mean, in my case, I see firsthand that being a stay-at-home mom is about as noble a thing as can be. Im not just saying this. I mean it. But you cant just take a physicist in a female body and keep her from being a physicist. I think it runs smack against the thing Jefferson was talking about concerning human freedom and natural rights. (Some of my own kids probably think that Jefferson just came up with this stuff cynically, pretty much because he wanted to justify the Revolt. They are the first ones to think they are equal to people, and all that, but I kinda wonder if they feel this thing in the way I feel it. I personally think it is rooted in biology. But I dont think theyve made the connection. But were working on that)</p>
<p>If you get a whole ton of people running into the country and who really havent made the connection between this philosophy and womens rights, well, you may not get a great setback in womens rights, but it would have a fragmenting effect within the culture, which is exactly what we dont need.</p>
<p>I guess I think this idea of Jeffersons is not just made up. That it is pretty much as concrete in nature as the fact that we gotta eat. So, in my view, I think it should serve as the basis of our culture and that everybody who comes here needs to be taught to believe it and be incensed when it is not followed rigorously.</p>
<p>
[quote]
yes, dross, when I reread my post I can see why you answered by addressing the question of guilt. The reason you are making progress with me
is because I cannot fail to notice how honestly you listen to other viewpoints.
[/quote]
Well thanks. Really. I do try to listen very closely to what folks are saying because of several reasons: 1. I am really interested in how they interpret the world., and 2. I figure they may be right about things and have a better way of living, and 3. maybe they are wrong and I can discover the hangup to get them to see another view. I am not exactly interested in winning anything. Id be the first to change my view if I could really see a basis for changing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is a thrill getting liberated from crippling habits, having ones windows smashed, especially as it seems to offer relief from certainties that increasingly plague me. For instance, if a car cruises down the street with music so loud it knocks the leaves off the trees and the driver's angry black face glares out defiantly satisfied with the menace projecting from his ride, I try to get past this assault and understand the reasons behind his need to announce himself to the neighborhood.
[/quote]
I think this is really fine not so much because it lets the black thug off easily, but it gives you a chance to evaluate yourself before you fly off and do something damaging to everyone. But to tell you the truth, I think you still have the right, actually the obligation, to evaluate the black guys behavior against a norm, and then conclude that the black guy is acting like a thug. I think whites need to take freedom to make these evaluations for the protection of the culture. But I think when they are made, they need to be made with your kind of sober mindedness and deliberation. Also, I would personally like whites to allow me the freedom to come to the same conclusions and share the same culture.</p>
<p>In other words, lets say you have an environment wherein the mutually shared goal is peace and quiet, green grass and cleanliness. You are all working together toward this goal when some black guy comes along and thuggishly ruins it all. Man, aint no way you should be sitting around thinking this guy is some great guy and that you need to just appreciate his differences. The thug messed up your stuff and, I think you have a right to be angry about it.</p>
<p>But rather than do what commonly takes place, which is to say blame all those people, making everybody with dark skin pay the price that the thug should have paid, Id think you would use your penchant toward deliberate thought to isolate the thug and people like him, leaving your mind as open as possible to the possibility that there really are other black folks who have respect for the goals of others. I mean, cmon. I like the same things you do. Yeah, I dig Miles Davis (his old stuff) and Clifford Brown. But I am probably much more deeply into Mahler, Bach, Shostakovich and Puccini (especially Puccini these days). And I am not an anomaly.</p>
<p>I think what we need is a bit more freedom to be honest about this stuff, on both sides, keeping in mind the history about how we got here. That would help everyone over time, develop enough trust so that when you see me walking down the street you dont think Ill kill you. And when I see you walking down the street I wont want to. LOL</p>
<p>
[quote]
Its amazing you never had this intent because it has been only in recent, very recent, years that women have been free enough to make these kinds of choices and be serious about them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The beauty of being an immigrant is learning about other people's cultural stereotypes. For example, I was astounded to learn, when I came to the US that being a physician was an overwhelmingly male occupation. When I grew up, women and children were seen by female doctors. I grew up surrounded by women who worked in different kinds of jobs requiring different levels of education and different types of skills, but work they did. It was taken for granted that we all would work, boy or girl.</p>