We’re Losing Our Culture!

Published March 31, 2006 in Politics.

God knows what would happen if we allow outside cultures to become a part of America.

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42 Responses to “We’re Losing Our Culture!”

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1 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Silly, Oliver, says the English - Welsh - Italian guy with the Puerto Rican wife
2 moonbat monitor
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

come here legally, everything’s cool.

sneak in and I don’t want you here.

like it or not, admit it or not, illegals are a huge burden on social services, commit disproportionately high numbers of crimes, and the lack of border security is a threat to all of us.

I also don’t believe the notion that americans won’t do certain jobs. Americans won’t do them for minimum wage, but they’ll do them if they get paid what they should be paid. This is what legal immigration is for. Those are the people that get screwed by the illegals the most. They are the ones that truly are having jobs stolen from them.

But who cares, right?
3 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said “Take them down — we’re not in China!”

What makes you think they’re “invidious, ungrateful and dangerous,” Paul? Is it that left wing racism showing through?
4 Semanticleo
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

We should be proud that we’ve taken this untamed and unexploited
country and turned it into one Giant Shopping Mall so that all americans
(no matter what race, creed or religion) can partake of the two greatest
american passtimes; eating and shopping. That, is our culture of
human enterprise and opportunity at it’s most basic. Keep shopping and
filling your bigger and better domiciles with more ’stuff’ while you
eat, and eat, and eat your way to bliss. Have another egg roll.
5 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

Apparently, their request wasn’t granted… NYC is, after all run by liberals…

For the record, you directed me to street signs, not Subway stop signs.

I guess now you’re a confused, narcissistic sociopath
6 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

“For the record, you directed me to street signs, not Subway stop signs.”

Please tell me that they reject bilingual subway signs but not bilingual street signs. Please tell me that makes any sense whatsoever.

But would you care to give a link to a story about the issue?
7 Hattie
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

All the colorful, wonderful things people bring in.
8 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

“Silly, Oliver, says the English - Welsh - Italian guy with the Puerto Rican
wife”

Gee, Frank, did you check with your local white supremecist before you got married?
9 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

“the community said Take them down we re not in China!

When did they say that Frank?

PDF FILE: http://www.bigapplegreeter.org/06-resources/documents/MN_Chinatown_Jun05.pdf

Published in June 05. Right hand side top picture.
10 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

I son’y know about anyone else, Paul, but I’m not laughing…
11 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

“What makes you think they re invidious, ungrateful and dangerous, Paul? Is it that left wing racism showing through?”

Hilarious.
12 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm

I don’t want to sound paranoid but I just found one of the most invidious, ungrateful and dangerous examples of an immigrant subnation that exists today in almost every major city in America. Don’t be alarmed, but I have located their central headquarters: http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/
13 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 7:03 pm

“Actually, no.. I don t feel like playing, Paul.”

Does anyone need any clearer evidence that Frank’s full of shit one hundred percent of the time?
14 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 7:03 pm

Actually, no.. I don’t feel like playing, Paul. Take your bat and ball and go home.
15 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 8:03 pm

Leave it to you, Paul. I don’t feel like playing Hamilton Burger to your Perry Mason, and this somehow “proves” that I’m “full of shit one hundred percent of the time?” [And you’re saying it “to everyone,” like they’re hanging on your every word].

You do realize, don’t you, Paul, that it proves no such thing…

I guess now you’re a histrionic, narcissistic, sociopath.
16 frameone
Mar 31st, 2006 at 9:03 pm

Frank,

Let’s be frank. You made a statement that you intended all of us here to take as fact. I presented you with a link to an image that throws something of a wrench into your story. I then asked you to provide evidence of your story and you refused. Indeed, you got considerably defensive and huffy. Like a small child. This is, pretty much, the standard path that most of your exchanges with myself and others here follows, but let’s stick to this thread and the matter at hand.

At the moment, you may not want to “play.” Fine. But I find it hard to understand why you think anyone should take you seriously on this thread if you can’t provide the most basic evidence to support your story. It’s really that simple.
17 Frank_D
Mar 31st, 2006 at 9:03 pm

Nothing is ever simple, except to you. You know why? Because you dig in like some crazed prosecuting attorney, and I am hardly ever in the mood for it. But I humor you. And you keep going. And going. And going. And going.

Let me see if I can clear a few things up for you.

This is Oliver Willis’s weblog. You don’t control it, or anyone posting here.

This is not the Hague. No one is on trial. The people you are attempting to “prosecute” don’t get punished after you find them guilty.

I think I’ve told you this before — this isn’t Congress, or the Oxford Union, or the McLaughlin Group. It’s not even the GE College Bowl. You take this stuff way, way, WAY! too seriously.

If you are right, you get the same thing as you get when you are wrong — nothing!

Are you getting it yet, Paul?

In answer to your latest “question” I read that story about the subway signs in Chinatown somewhere a few months ago — apparently the author was making some reference to the immigration issue. Since I wasn’t expecting a two day “internet seminar” on race and immigration, with myself as the “roastee”, I didn’t bookmark or Furl this rather inconsequential article with this obscure datum. I just happened to remember it, becaue you made a rather silly reference to Chinatown, and I threw you a “zinger,” and because you couldn’t take it — face it, Paul, you never can — you were off to the races. The hunt was on — you were the hound, and I was the fox.

I had a pretty good day today, and I had jousted with you long enough for one day, and I was in no mood to be your “punching bag,” as you acted out, as you so often do, your narcissistic, sociopathic tendencies.

As to whether or not anyone will “take me seriously” on this weblog, first of all, don’t pretend it concerns you, because we both know better; and, second, just how many people on this weblog ever take me seriously? Do you honestly think that I should concern myself with my “reputation” here? {Here’s a question for you: When did anyone — anyone — on this blog, ever say: “I disgree with you, but I think I understand what you were trying to say (or the point you were trying to make”? And don’t limit it to me and you — when did anyone ever say it to anyone else?}

There are quite a few things in my life that are more important than this.
I have two teenage sons; I spend ten hours a week doing an Internet Radio Show (not a talk show — God forbid!), I’m in Graduate School, six hours of classes a week, with a few pages of something or other to write every week, not to mention that sometimes the classes are mind numbingly boring. I have twelve step meetings to go to occasionally, and my wife and I are getting divorced soon — the boys will be in my custody — a mixed blessing.

So you see, Paul, defining American culture twice, and hunting down evidence that supports some arcane story about New York’s Chinatown, just isn’t that important.

And, if you don’t mind my saying so, Paul, as nasty and creepy as you are, neither are you.
18 Sundown
Apr 1st, 2006 at 12:04 am

You still have been dodging the question, Frank.

Why are other cultures harmful to the US, considering that American culture is an amalgumation of various foreign cultures?

(This is not about the actual legality of some immigrants, which is another topic entirely, even though its being being injected into so many threads. This is just about “culture”.
19 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 12:04 am

Gee, Paul, I’ve posted commas that got more of a reaction out of you.

Don’t tell me the great Paulini has nothing to say?

Now I guess you’re a tongue - tied narcissistic sociopath.
20 frameone
Apr 1st, 2006 at 2:04 am

“In answer to your latest question I read that story about the subway signs in Chinatown somewhere a few months ago apparently the author was making some reference to the immigration issue.”

That sounds a lot like Jay Tea who heard something once, or read it somewhere, that confirmed to him that whites were now a minority in the United States. He thrust this shocking information forward as evidence of something or other and quickly had his hat handed to him with the actual facts. Stephen Colbert is a genius. It is ALL about the truthiness with conservatives. Don’t matter if it’s a fact, if it feels right, it’s good enough.
21 frameone
Apr 1st, 2006 at 2:04 am

” The hunt was on you were the hound, and I was the fox.”

Oh ya, and victimhood. God you guys love to play the victim.
22 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 7:04 am

frameone, and you love to minimize your defects.

And, also, since when is sounding like someone else “evidence”?

BTW, nice dodging of a comment of over 500 words. Talk about “cherry picking.” The truth hurts, eh, Paul?

So now I guess you’re a vicious, narcissistic sociopath in denial.

Sundown: I did not dodge the question. The answer to your question can be found here:

http://www.oliverwillis.com/2006/03/31/is-it-ok-now-to-just-hate-hispanics/#comments

It s not our assimilation of them that is problematic… It s their assimilation of us that s the problem.*

* America is not an “amalgamation of cultures” — are all of you so uneducated on anthropology?

Can I clear something up for all of you: First of all, in one sense, with rare exceptions, all cultures are an “amalgamation of other cultures.” Some anthropologists even theorize that, in a “Heisenbergian* way”, once a culture had been observed, it has, to some degree, “absorbed” the culture of the observer.

However, for the most part, this definition of culture will suffice:

The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought… These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: such as American culture [fd]… These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression…

*Colin Turnbull once produced an album of Mountain Pygmy music. The last song on Side 2 was “My Darling Clementine.”

Thus endeth the lesson for today. Any questions? See me after class.
23 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 8:04 am

Don t matter if it s a fact, if it feels right, it s good enough.
As if it can’t be a fact, if it doesn’t come with a URL.
You’ve just performed a miracle, Paul. You have instantly transformed thousands of texts and non - fiction books which have not been reprinted on the Internet into fiction.
So I guess now you’re a vicious, narcissistic, sociopathic Wizard.
24 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 8:04 am

Paul Malcolm Devises New Measure of Reality

“if it ain’t on the Internet, it ain’t real,” said Mr. Malcolm in a comment he posted on Oliver Willis’ Weblog.

Thousands of librarians are now hunting for Mr. Malcolm. It is believed that they have equipped themselves with torches, axe handles, pitchforks, and rope.

Mr. Malcolm could not be reached for further comment. A spokesperson said he had a previous engagement, pulling the wings off of flies at the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro, CA.
25 frameone
Apr 1st, 2006 at 12:04 pm

So … you can’t back up your statement?
26 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 2:04 pm

So I guess now you re a dopey, narcissistic, sociopath.
27 frameone
Apr 1st, 2006 at 4:04 pm

Hey Frank, check the PDF file that I linked to above again. I didn’t catch this the first time but the photo at the very top of the page is from the Canal Street subway stop. The caption (lower right side) reads: “A stylized version of the two-part Chinese ideogram for Chinatown
appears in the Canal Street subway stop.”

So the locals objected to that? Even though their street signs are also bilingual and most, if not all, the stores in NYs Chinatown feature Chinese writing?

You’ve gone on at length here and given all manner of reasons as to why you can’t be bothered to source your claim above that the local Chinese residents objected to all this bilingualism. But if you aren’t willing to back up your claim, why make it in the first place?

I’m sorry you’ve got troubles Frank but your personal life isn’t really relevant to all this is it? Why you felt the need to drag it out into public view is just as baffling as why you go around making claims that you then refuse to substantiate or support in any way. I’m not saying you’re wrong that the residents objected to all this bilingualism, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me since the Chinatowns in LA, SF and New York are dominated by Chinese signage and people speaking Chinese just about everywhere and they’ve been like that for decades.

So afterall this I know you have two teenage sons, you’re getting a divorce, you’re in a 12 step program, you’re in graduate school but you’re bored by the classes (that makes a lot of sense), you do an internet radio show and that this is Oliver Willis s weblog which is also not the Hague. I know all this but I still have no way of verifying your initial claim because “you don’t want to play games.” You truly are a mystery Frank.
28 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 7:04 pm

Of course, revealing something about myself is baffling to you — that’s why I call you a narcissistic sociopath. If you’re not one, you have done a wonderful job of imitating one, and, of course, you don’t think it matters.

All that matters to you is that you are right (or perhaps, that I’m wrong — it’s hard to tell).

You keep coming back to these things: Look, Frank, I’m right, see? Look, Frank, you’re wrong, see? Read that again, Frank… I’ve found another link, Frank…

If I were a profiler, I’d say you had (maybe even still have) an extraordinarily demanding male figure in your life. A biological father, stepfather, grandfather, that’s not important. He set very high standards for (perhaps only in your view); standards so high you never felt you had met them. No matter what you tried to do, it didn’t seem to be good enough. Of course, there was a conflict there: This person was central to your life, but they just weren’t cutting you a break. It had to hurt, didn’t it, Paul?
29 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 7:04 pm

So lacking in feeling are you can’t even be polite, let alone gracious (”no quarter given”). So lacking in feeling are you that framefan has you perfectly pegged, yet you are speechless: No “idiot”, no moron”, no “dumb ass”. Why, Paul? Why no comeback for the guy who lampoons you perfectly?

I’m expecting a one word answer from you, Paul — introspection is by no means your long suit — another symptom of the sociopathic narcissism you wear like a custom tailored cloak. Freud once said that “No man is truly mature until his father dies.” Someday you’ll realize what a fool you’ve made of yourself. Then the healing might - just might - begin. Narcissism is a hard nut to crack therapeutically (as evidence, right now, you’re probably thinking, “What an idiot this guy is!”. Right, Paul) Sociopaths aren’t even cured by prison, or the threat of execution — see Caryl Chessman, Ted Bundy).

Your life sucks, Paul. And everyone knows it but you.
30 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 7:04 pm

It’s no mystery, Paul. You won the argument! YaY!

I’m not a “mystery”, Paul, I’m a person who’s tired of your crap. You love this shit, and you don’t even understand what I’m saying to you, and that’s not mysterious — it’s pathetic.

You can’t even repeat what I’ve said, without distorting it, and insulting me: “you re in graduate school but you re bored by the classes (that makes a lot of sense)” which, of course, is not what I said: “sometimes the classes are mind numbingly boring.”

But that’s so typical of you that you have becoming mind - numbingly boring. And the saddest — the saddest — thing is that you can t even consider that there may be something wrong with you.
31 Frank_D
Apr 1st, 2006 at 7:04 pm

One day, you decided you had had enough. Someone was going to pay! Without realizing it, you had become him!

You were going to demand perfection from others; you were going to show them that Paul accepts nothing but perfection (how did you put it? “I expect no quarter, no quarter will be given.” Remember, Paul?

That was the first of many signs that followed that something was seriously wrong with frameone — so “bold” he posts with a fake name. So “bold” that when people began bugging him on a personal level, as he had done so many times to others, he withdrew his website from his profile. So “bold” that when he demands an answer from someone, he taunts them: “So, you got nothing?” “So I assume my answer is correct?’ But when he gets the answer he so tenaciously pursued, he just slinks away with nothing to say.
32 factcheck
Apr 1st, 2006 at 9:04 pm

Not for nothing, but someone who posts his home address on a blog ,challenges posters to fights on street corners, posts 30-40 times/day, and personally attacks posters who challenge his ideas is in no position to call anyone a “narcissist”.
Get help. You are letting frame control your life, because he has the nerve to oppose your political views.
33 frameone
Apr 1st, 2006 at 10:04 pm

“I m not a mystery , Paul, I m a person who s tired of your crap.”

But not so tired that you can’t throw up four more lengthy pointless tirades. Sigh.
34 Frank_D
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 7:04 am

I rest my case.
35 Frank_D
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 7:04 am

factcheck: Do you ever know what you’re talking about? I sure don’t.

You are letting frame control your life, because he has the nerve to oppose your political views.

So now opposing my political views takes nerve? You crack me up!

Frameone: Now the taciturn narcissistic sociopath.
36 frameone
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 11:04 am

Frank are you done?

Here’s the bottom line. The right has a vested interest in promoting some immigrant groups as models of assimilation in order to paint other immigrant groups as dangerously aberrant. How else can one read this statement:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said Take them down we re not in China!

The assumption is that the Chinesse are the “good” kind of assimilating immigrant who only communicate in English and assert their Americanness over their past heritage in order to better assimilate and adapt themselves to American culture. You and other conservatives position Hispanics in contrast to this model as an immigrant group who refuses to speak English, asserts their native identity over Americanness and rejects assimilation in favor of separatism.

In order to hold such a set of views one has to entirely erase both historical fact and present reality. To stick with the Chinatown example, Chinatowns in SF, LA and NY and elsewhere formed in response to the often violent racism that met the earliest Chinese immigrants to this country and lasted for generations. They are separate, immigrant enclaves founded as much as a defensive reaction against an unwelcoming culture but also as a matter of necessity because of racial discrimination in housing and employment. Over 150 years after the founding of the San Francisco Chinatown it remains a distinct neighborhood, dominated by Chinese signage, stores and speakers where a new immigrant can live and work without much necessary contact with the larger surrounding country. At the same time, this Chinatown and others are integrally connected to the larger culture BECAUSE of their separateness as tourist sites. Tourists visit SFs Chinatown, and LAs and NYs, to experience “authentic” Chinese immigrant culture. In other words, the very immigrant separateness that so many conservatives fear has itself, in the case of the Chinatowns all over the country, itself been appropriated by the larger culture for its own ends.

There’s a section of downtown LA called Olivera Street. It is a preserved section of the oldest neighborhood in Los Angeles back when it belonged to Spain (Mexico claimed it in 1821 with the US Army arriving in 1847). It functions in contemporary Los Angeles for its Hispanic heritage the way LAs Chinatown, just a few blocks northwest, fucntions for LAs history of Chinese immigrants, although Olvera Street is no longer a residential neighborhood, it is entirely a tourist attraction.

Miles around Olvera Street in all directions you will find hundreds of thriving, vibrant Hispanic dominated neighborhoods where you will find first generation immigrants living alongside the great great great grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants and native born Hispanic Americans from generations ago. You will find illegal immigrants living alongside legal immigrants and native-born Mexican Americans. Each group, each generation is assimilated to varying degrees but they are nonetheless, assimilating. I guarantee you that if you visit any Los Angeles High School you will find more Mexican and Latino kids who hope the Dodgers malke it to the World Series than care if Mexico makes it into the World Cup. At the same time, the Los Angeles Coliseum is home not only to USC football but regular sold out soccer matches involving teams and leagues I’ve never heard of. In my daily life in this city I hear Spanish spoken everyday, literally. (The workers who are presently converting my apartment building into condos are most likely all illegal, they speak Spanish all day and they bust their asses 6 days a week for a landlord who’s probably paying them peanuts without healthcare.) Am I worried that “my” culture is in danger, that my personal identity as an American is being threatened? No. Not in the slightest.

The picture you paint of some borg like wave of brown people that will overhwhelm “American culture” simply does not match the reality I see everyday in which most newer immigrants, legal or illegal, make due the best they can, while second, third and so on generation immigrants are assimilating into American culture at a steady pace just as your so-called “model minorities” did over the course of generations.

You and other conservatives who want to paint these people as a threat to our culture are in league with the same racist reactionaries who attacked Chinese immigrants a century ago, the same Chinese immigrants you now want to hold out as “model” minorities in a bid to rationalize your present racist paranoia.

Cultures are a shared set of experiences and forms of expression but the only constant of culture is that it culture always in a state of change and contestation. Your reactionary fear is a part of that process but it is still reactionary fear. You simply fear change and you map your fears onto whatever group of people is close to hand. Today its illegal Hispanic immigrants. Tomorrow, they’ll be the model minority and you’ll be bashing some other group of immigrants or whoever appears the most threatening to you.

The fact that you refuse to source your initial claim about NY Chinatown was indicative to me of the irrationality that drives your whole response to this issue. You read or heard somehwere something that fit the good/bad immigrant mindset you have constructed for yourself and you clung to it like a life preserver: Here’s another bit of evidence to rationalize my beliefs. Like I said, you may indeed have read this somewhere but until you can provide the source I will maintain my doubt because that information flies in the face of the self-evident reality of every Chinatown I have ever been to: They are all voluntarily, massively bilingual urban spaces, if not totally dominated by a foreign language. Indeed, as tourist sites, the dominance of the Chinese language is one of their selling points, it is their raison d’etre as tourist destinations.

This is why your initial statement rang false to me and why the only possible explanation I can think of for why someone would try to assert it as fact is because they have a vested interest in denying both history and the present to rationalize their racist paranoia about present day immigrant groups, legal or illegal.
37 frameone
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 12:04 pm

As if that wasn’t long enough, the fact is that Hispanic immigrants make up 78 percent of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. Which no doubt suggests that you will no doubt find some number of illegal Chinese immigrants living and working in any Chinatown you might mention. Naturally, of course, you would support rounding them all up and sending them back to China or Tawain, right?
38 frameone
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 2:04 pm

Now do you want to respond to any of this or do you jjust want to run through another list of your personal problems?
39 Frank_D
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 3:04 pm

In order to hold such a set of views one has to entirely erase both historical fact and present reality
You’re doing it again, Paul…

The assumption is that the Chinesse are the good kind of assimilating immigrant… blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda…

“When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and sumption”

There was no such assumption. Their statement represented to me the idea that they didn’t need for the signs to be in Chinese, so why give the impression that they did? If, indeed, Chinatowns are all voluntarily (and I question the “voluntary” — your little photo exhibit didn’t confirm that, one way or the other), massively bilingual urban spaces, who says that that makes Chinese people reluctant to speak English?

I would feel the same way about signs in Italian or Welsh, mainly because I don’t speak either of those languages, but also because I speak English. When I was in Europe, hardly anything was simultaneouly translated into English for me. It was challenging, but not impossible, for me to get around and get things done.

The fact that you refuse to source your initial claim about NY Chinatown is not a fact [BTW, you just don’t give up, do you, Paul?]… I couldn’t find it, because I couldn’t find it. I believed it , because I know Chinese people. Chinese people in business speak some of the language of everyone they do business with. If there is a Chinese restaurant near the UN building, the owners probably speak languages and dialects, you I have never heard of. And it is to that, and to nothing else, that I was referring.

My father grew up in a household where he was forbidden to speak English at home. Do you think he grew up not speaking English? Of course not.

Stop beating the drum on my “reactionary fear.” That is just “parrot talk” for “I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, evidence and your own statements to the contrary.”

“… the only possible explanation I can think of… ”

That usage is peculiar to liberals — or at least the liberals on this blog. In all my years, I have never heard anyone say, “You might be saying A, and justifying it by saying B, but the only possible explanation I can think of is C.

Without passing judgement on you, what immediately comes to my mind is, “Are you that limited in your imagination, that a person’s statement could only have one explanation?” Never mind your ability to think of another explanation, or why you fail to accept the person’s justification as valid.

What purpose in the world could be served by my thinking that Chinese immigrants are “good” immigrants, and Mexican immigrants are “bad” immigrants? I’m not saying that it’s true, but if I did believe that it were true, surely there is more than one possible reason for that belief. Even if there were irrefutable, direct evidence that my belief were false, would I be “compelled” to hold that belief only — only — because I “have a vested interest in denying both history and the present to rationalize [my] racist paranoia about present day immigrant groups, legal or illegal.”

I don’t know about you, but that just simply makes no sense to me.

So, I don’t believe what you think I believe, I didn’t do what you think I did, so I couldn’t possibly have done it for the reasons you imagined.

Paul, are you done?

Paul: The vicious, narcissistic, sociopath, with no imagination
40 frameone
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 7:04 pm

Frank,

Have you ever been to a Chinatown, in New York or anywhere else? If you have I am stupified by this statement:

“Their statement represented to me the idea that they didn t need for the signs to be in Chinese, so why give the impression that they did? If, indeed, Chinatowns are all voluntarily (and I question the voluntary your little photo exhibit didn t confirm that, one way or the other), massively bilingual urban spaces, who says that that makes Chinese people reluctant to speak English?”

First of all, “their statement” is a statement that only you have any knowledge of as you have yet to actually point out where you read it. Second, I never said that Chinese immigrants are reluctant to speak English. I merely pointed out that I have never, ever seen any evidence to suggest that Chinese residents would object to bilingual street signs or subway signs. Indeed, why would they object to these things when every store in every Chinatown I have ever seen has either bilingual signage or signage entirely in Chinese characters. Unless you’re telling me that the city of New York forced these people to include Chinese characters in the signs of their private businesses. Your description of “their statement” simply doesn’t make any sense.

Third: “Chinese people in business speak some of the language of everyone they do business with. If there is a Chinese restaurant near the UN building, the owners probably speak languages and dialects, you I have never heard of. And it is to that, and to nothing else, that I was referring.”

That’s all you were referring to when? Where? When did you ever even bring up the question of spoken languages and dialects? Again, who ever said that Chinese immigrants don’t speak English ever, assuming they even know it? This whole statement of your is a total non-sequitor.

Fourth: Let’s get this question of assumptions. You wrote this:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said Take them down we re not in China!

No I did not know this Frank and I still don’t know it. But the point is that you never bothered to explain what you meant by this statement but isn’t it obvious that you think this is a good thing, an admirable turn of events, giving you the benefit of the doubt that it actually happened? It also seems patently obvious to me, based on your previous posts, that you think Hispanic immigrants haven’t been taking this kind of admirable attitude. Or am I wrong? Naturally, you think I am wrong because I’m trying to “read your mind.” Unfortunately, that’s really I can do because it’s clear you cannot be honest about what it is you believe. You write:

“What purpose in the world could be served by my thinking that Chinese immigrants are good immigrants, and Mexican immigrants are bad immigrants? I m not saying that it s true, but if I did believe that it were true, surely there is more than one possible reason for that belief.”

Well, Frank. Let’s set aside purposes and reasons for a moment and just tell us, yes or no, whether you do believe just such a thing. If you don’t beleive it to be true then please explain the purpose of your original post because you haven’t offered a single reason for why you posted it or why you thought it needed to be acknowledged. In other words, you claim I have misunderstood what you meant, but what is it, for god sakes, did you actually mean? That Chinese restaurant owners speak English when they serve English speaking customers? Really? That’s what you were referring to when you wrote this:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said Take them down we re not in China!

Well damn, Frank. If I’m confused there is some justification for it, don’t you think?
41 Frank_D
Apr 2nd, 2006 at 8:04 pm

You’re right, Paul. I have no idea what you’re talking about, or where we have to come in that convoluted world called Paul’s Brain, but wherever it is: You’re right. Paul

For the love of God or whatever you find Holy, Paul — YOU’RE RIGHT!

RIGHT, I TELL YOU, PAUL! RIGHT!

I MEAN IT, PAUL! REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, RIGHT!

PLEASE GO AWAY — PLEASE!

I’LL SEND YOU MONEY! I’LL WASH YOUR CAR! IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CAR, I’LL BUY YOU ONE!

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

HELP!

I’M BEING STALKED BY A MADMAN!
42 hrdkandie02
Apr 6th, 2006 at 12:04 am

I am so sick of people “Bush” saying illegals are doing the jobs americans wont do…my only question is…Who in the hell were doing the jobs before they were here?…simple..LEGAL american citizens! Amesty will only make more illegals flood into the country, and its unfair to everyone who has to wait in line..what about the people from other countries who are here on visas..do we give them citizenship also?…I love my government but they are acting like a bunch of idots! Tighten our borders and round em up… I whole heartedly support immigration. Illegals piss me off because they say they aren’t criminals. Entering this county illegally is a crime, therefore you are a criminal! **It also pisses me off that illegals can get tuition paid for in my state (Texas) were its 2nd worse to CA, they get degrees then cant get jobs because they are illegal! What the hell is that about?! Also, I get tired of Hispanics playing the race card…its about ILLEGAL Immigration, but as we all can see…..THEY are the #1 ILLEGAL race…so it isn’t attacking them directly, but even they can SEE that they are #1. AND-AND there are millions of Americans unemployed because illegal immigrants are working for next to nothing..with them out of this country would force employers to pay their employees decent wages. The solution is simple..put a stop to it dammit! Sincerely, Mad Ass Girl from Texas

Oliver Willis

We’re Losing Our Culture!

42 Responses to “We’re Losing Our Culture!”

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