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Notes -
See my girl scouts comment.
I think there is a reason the "anti-immigration is racist" argument has lived on for so long. Ultimately it feels like no metric is ever good enough to convince anyone when there are just too many brown people by their approximation.
I went to George Mason, I've lived in the area for over a decade. My parents grew up in Northern Virginia (but neither stayed there). I grew up in a slightly rural area of Virginia. I only really know the English language. Aside from the area not being as white as where I grew up it still feels very American to me. I've been to India and multiple countries in Europe, so I know what a foreign country feels like. There is a discomfort in not knowing the language, in missing so many of the basic cultural understandings of everyone around you, and of not having the grounding feeling of knowing people around you. Its a feeling, I acknowledge you can feel differently about things. But if we are just gonna go on vibes, then I'm telling you where my vibe is at.
So its not just "your" backyard. Its at best "our" backyard. Though I don't claim any form of ownership over the area despite having lived here and had parents that have grown up here. That is one of my ongoing frustration with anti-immigration viewpoints and woke viewpoints. You don't solely own the common spaces. You don't own the right to determine who and what is acceptable there. So much of what they said is kind of status jockeying to be like "well I am the ultimate american, so i should get more say in how the common spaces look" or "i am the ultimate oppressed victim, so i should get more say in how the common spaces look".
So, you are committed to just skipping over all the unassimilated pockets I mentioned? After you claimed they only exist in "New York in the neighborhood of Little [country name]"? This isn't a dick measuring contest about who's more American, it's a "You've point of fact lied" problem. I get why you want to just ignore that to the same degree you wanted to handwave away unassimilated pockets in the first place. But I'm not going to let you.
Yes, and that's exactly the feeling I get in the Eden Center at Seven Corners. In large sections of Manassas, and Centreville, and Herndon. It's bizarre having the place I grew up literally become a foreign country out from under me. I don't understand how you can look at those place, where they don't speak english, all the businesses aren't in english, nobody is dressing, speaking, or conducting themselves like Americans, and then say "Well they're selling thin mints so it all looks good to me. Nothing is as American as getting fucking fat."
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