4 ms·

Have you been, or personally know, a minority immigrant in the US?

icelancer 10y ago
Seeing as I am an Asian one living in America...
hguant 10y ago
This is a bad question/statement for two reasons. First, your purpose from first blush is to stifle the discussion, not enhance it. Second, and more disturbingly, you make the implicit arguement that if you're not a minority living in the US you don't have anything to say on the matter, either because you can't possibly know what it's like, or because your (implicitly) white opinion is invalid when it comes to the case of minorities. This argument has been moving through academic and now progressive circles for the last few years, and while its initial purpose was noble - empower minority groups to tell/own their own histories as opposed to being told what/who they are by the existing power structure - I think it has been taken to an extreme that is as radical as it is intellectually hypocritical. In making the argument - that unless you are a minority, you can't have any meaningful statements about being a minority in America - you're arguing against the idea of a universal human experience, against empathy, and against reason. If what you say is true, why should I bother reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's run of Black Panther[1], or Sylvia Plath, or any of MLK's letters? My ability to understand these figures would be curtailed to the point of meaninglessness by my whiteness, my middle-classnes, my sex. This is patently untrue. There is something uniquely human in us that is touched by these issues. I will never be targeted by police because of my skin tone, but I am still outraged by it. I will never live these problems but I can still see them, and can still work to fix them. Your argument denies that, and I defy it. [1] It's excellent by the way. Highly recommended.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Yes. Since my wife (and all of her immediate birth family, and lots of people I know through her, as well as lots of people I'm close to not through her) fits that description. Some of them even have experience with other immigration systems for comparison. The US immigration system is far from ideal (especially from the perspective of prospective and not categorically barred immigrants.) It's also much, much better for actual admitted immigrant and non-immigrant foreigners than systems in most of the rest of the world.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255 and marked it off-topic.

Seeing as I am an Asian one living in America...

This is a bad question/statement for two reasons. First, your purpose from first blush is to stifle the discussion, not enhance it. Second, and more disturbingly, you make the implicit arguement that if you're not a minority living in the US you don't have anything to say on the matter, either because you can't possibly know what it's like, or because your (implicitly) white opinion is invalid when it comes to the case of minorities. This argument has been moving through academic and now progressive circles for the last few years, and while its initial purpose was noble - empower minority groups to tell/own their own histories as opposed to being told what/who they are by the existing power structure - I think it has been taken to an extreme that is as radical as it is intellectually hypocritical. In making the argument - that unless you are a minority, you can't have any meaningful statements about being a minority in America - you're arguing against the idea of a universal human experience, against empathy, and against reason. If what you say is true, why should I bother reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's run of Black Panther[1], or Sylvia Plath, or any of MLK's letters? My ability to understand these figures would be curtailed to the point of meaninglessness by my whiteness, my middle-classnes, my sex. This is patently untrue. There is something uniquely human in us that is touched by these issues. I will never be targeted by police because of my skin tone, but I am still outraged by it. I will never live these problems but I can still see them, and can still work to fix them. Your argument denies that, and I defy it. [1] It's excellent by the way. Highly recommended.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Yes. Since my wife (and all of her immediate birth family, and lots of people I know through her, as well as lots of people I'm close to not through her) fits that description. Some of them even have experience with other immigration systems for comparison. The US immigration system is far from ideal (especially from the perspective of prospective and not categorically barred immigrants.) It's also much, much better for actual admitted immigrant and non-immigrant foreigners than systems in most of the rest of the world.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255 and marked it off-topic.