@djsumdog @DaddyO

So I grew up in the most diverse part of North America. Knew a lot of kids, from basically every background, including Jews, Iranians, Indians, Africans and African-Americans, Mexicans, Argentinians, Chileans, Fr*nch, Dutch, Germans, and endless Russians.

At first, I bought into the assimilation narrative.

Now I see it as a hateful attempt to control people by removing their culture.

Almost all human rules are semi-arbitrary; culture accepts that aesthetics is the final determiner, and lets each group have confidence in its choices on that basis.

The non-WASPs who assimilated ("acted like regular Americans") often were more lost than those who stuck with the old ways.

It was a scarring event to recognize this, but it also let me see how passive-aggressive bullying is behind the assimilation/integration narrative.

I think at that point I became a pan-nationalist.