Moron vs. Moron: Should Immigrants Learn American English?
by Backwoods hicks on both sides who have exactly no interest in learning anything.
You know how those US rednecks love to berate Latin-Americans for not speaking ‘Murrican? Yes, well you don’t want to be a member of either group. Being unable to communicate winds up with you looking like an ignorant ass either way.
The reason the Mexicans don’t learn English is partly about holding onto their own culture. The mistaken notion that ignorance is a virtue when it comes to traditionalism. It is the fear of change, of the different, the same things that your bigoted American feels when they see all these brown people who may or may not be talking about them.
I particularly like how the anti-immigrant types think that the onus is on the Mexicans to learn English, as if learning was this bad thing, this demeaning chore to be cast upon those with no dignity. It is also because they believe that the Mexicans are too dumb to do it. If you set up this impenetrable language barrier as as a barrier to someone staying in this country, and you believe that they are incapable of learning, then you have a reason to ostracize and/or reject them.
Another problem I have is how they refer to their backwoods twang and bad grammar as “English”, but that’s another post.
The problem that nobody sees in American society is that the people who are angry at something, are almost always angry at something resembling their own set of issues. People attack reflections of their own insecurities. The worst stereotypes of one ethnic group has a problem with their counterparts in the group they hate.
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