<p>Personally, I think someone should “interface” with Americans. Our ignorance of science and geography is startling and different from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>A country evolves. It exists on a land mass. If new kinds of people occupy that land mass the values of the country will evolve. Why shouldn’t they?</p>
<p>For me, there is nothing sacrosanct about the WASP culture hammered out by the first European immigrants to New England and Virginia. St. Augustine, Santa Fe and Albany (Dutch) are older settlements than Jamestown or Boston. </p>
<p>The Puritans were interesting, but they had their own quirkiness and in Jamestown missing church two weeks in a row was a capital offense.</p>
<p>I see nothing inferior about new cultures being brought here. That’s what makes America so vital.</p>
<p>And our major cultural contributions, movies, cars and jazz and rock and roll seem amalgams of many cultural traditions (well maybe not cars.)</p>
<p>If stiff competition from Asian students bumps up the academic chops of non-Asian Americans perhaps this is a good thing.</p>
<p>I teach community college students who think they deserve A’s just for attended class and completing all assignments, albeit in a mediocre way. These attitudes are not going to cut it in a global market, and I can’t convince them of this. Perhaps harder worker classmates might.</p>
<p>And I say this as the mother of a male violinist who could not compete with his female Asian counterparts. Some of the Western guys could. I told him to practice even more. He didn’t want to, and now the violin is just a hobby. His choice.</p>
<p>Xenophobia seems part of humans’ genetic inheritance. However, we can transcend knee-jerk reactions that ghettoize different cultural assumptions.</p>
<p>My father remained bitter his entire life about his treatment as a Jew in the 1940’s. He was an officer in the Air Corp and then the OSS, so I think he was accepted and integrated into mainstream American life. He wasn’t an immigrant. He was a college grad, but he always felt one down and judged. His problem? Maybe. </p>
<p>I don’t want to do this to other Americans.</p>
<p>We can stigmatize all cultures if we want to or gently satirize them with love or just respectfully embrace them.</p>
<p>In the movie Fools Rush In the WASP parents appears as parochial as the Hispanic parents, just in a different way.</p>