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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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The ones who have elected to stay on the island, in this reading, would be the ones who intentionally chose not to assimilate into America.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Puerto Rico is a part of America.

What has always amused me is that we've spent quite a bit of effort nationally tamping down discrimination in the basis of national origin, but I've never seen it applied domestically. Saying "Georgians need not apply" and rejecting job applications from those born in Tbilisi is actually against federal law. I don't know of any case law if you do that for Atlanta.

Is there some for Puerto Ricans? They are American from a national origin perspective. You could make an argument that it's a language and cultural thing, but nobody is up in arms about California banning contracts with Texas (because inadequate social justice) for a disparate impact on Spanish-speaking Tejanos.

We've become so fixed on rooting out certain discrimination, but turn a blind eye to it domestically.

In practice, anti-Puerto Rican discrimination would get struck down on ethnic grounds.

It is an unincorporated territory. Residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens, but they cannot vote in federal elections and generally do not pay federal income taxes. The island is largely self-governing, and its residents are highly culturally-distinct from the American mainland. It’s as much “a part of America” as, say, Guam, which is to say, only in a complicated political sense. Like I said, Puerto Rican separatist terrorism was a significant political issue in the 1960s and 1970s, and although that violence has subsided, my understanding is that Puerto Ricans are deeply divided in regards to what degree of political/cultural integration they want with the mainland United States.

Guam catching strays. Guam is way more American than Puerto Rico, hell, at least on Guam English is actually the primary language. I think Guam is at least as American as any Hawaiian island (except in a complicated pollical sense).