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What is the difference? Most immigrants came to the US not knowing English at all, and they managed just fine. Surely learning to read is easier than learning an entire foreign language.
Many immigrants weren't even literate in their native languages. This PDF (found here) claims that a majority of Southern Italian immigrants in the 1900–1903 period were illiterate. Yet Italians successfully integrated into American society.
Edit: Another source on illiterate immigrants. Apparently, it was a big concern at the time, but today there are no traces of it left. No Italian- or Irish-American knows the education level of their great-etc.-grandparents who first immigrated. In fact, a few centuries ago the vast majority of people were peasants (or even serfs!) with no "need for literacy".
Yes, immigrants were illiterate. But their children weren't. And whatever the weaknesses of urban public education were in the time period you are referring to, I am pretty sure that they pale in comparison to those of the education provided to African Americans in the South during the same period. Funding isn't everything, but apparently "'Alabama spent $37 on each white child in 1930 and just $7 on those who were black; in Georgia the figures were $32 and $7, in Mississippi they were $31 and $6, and those in South Carolina were $53 and $5[.]'" And, many states even forbade private schools and colleges from integrating
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Sorry, who is the “ethnic brethren” of European Gypsies in North India? Are there Gypsies in North India? Do they often emigrate to the West? Because if you think that regular North Indians are “ethnic brethren” of European Gypsies, you are extremely wrong. They don’t even speak the same language, much less share other ethnic background.
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The ethnic brethren from North India that make it to the West are the ones with a job offer and university education. You'd expect such people to have an easier time fitting in regardless of ethnic origin. Also, the Wiki article about Roma people states in its section about genetic inquiries into their origins that the original population that migrated westwards was quite small, as evidenced by founder effects like several heritable diseases being quite frequent in modern European Roma. Given this, it's very plausible that there are also other genetic oddities in Roma compared to the broader population of their ancestral homeland.
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Fair enough. This is basically my take, too.
However, blaming Black American culture for the modern-day predicament of Black Americans is probably outside the Overton window at this point.
No, it’s politically incorrect, but well inside the Overton window. Lots of people believe it and it probably wouldn’t cause much more than criticism if a non woke said it.
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