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> I'm not saying that the Amish don't have crime or any problems, Nor do I believe that's your point. It was a caution that pacifism isn't the same as not bein
by eesmith 2y ago
> I'm not saying that the Amish don't have crime or any problems,
Nor do I believe that's your point. It was a caution that pacifism isn't the same as not being violent.
Many Americans, Amish included, consider physical violence against children as part of proper childrearing, while Sweden is famous for being the first country to ban it.
So no, don't equate pacifism with not being violent.
And I asked elsewhere here, "Are there really no forms of violence which are concentrated in highly segregated ethnic Swedish neighborhoods?"
> and the least likely to assimilate
I infer you haven't heard the phrase "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." Some of those Tejanos came from families which were in Texas before its succession in the name of slavery.
New Mexico has families who speak Spanish at home and who can trace their local ancestry back to the 1600s.
So if you think you can explain away Brownsville as being a border town, then look to Santa Fe and ask what "assimilation" really means.
> everyone speaks English and it's taught in schools
How does knowing English reveal the level of integration?
As the Wikipedia page points out, the Amish "maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination", and "Most Old Order Amish, New Order Amish and the Old Beachy Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch".
Yet it also says "almost all Amish are functionally bilingual in Pennsylvania Dutch and English."
> the people still are pretty much American.
I think we have very different lenses. Of course they are Americans.
Tejanos, Amish, the Diné, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Haredi Jews in New York, most Tlingit, the Gullah, and Cajuns are all pretty much American.
Tell me again what you think assimilation and integration should look like?
For that matter, I grew up in Miami. Half my schoolmates were Cuban immigrants, or children thereof. Most of these immigrants were refugees. The first generation struggles, and tends to stay with others like them. The second generation is bilingual, and able to navigate both cultures.
Like, I wanted to go on a date with a girl but her Cuban-born parents wanted me to come over first so they could grant permission. I had to bring my Spanish-speaking father as a translator because the girl's parents didn't speak English well enough and I didn't speak Spanish well enough. You really could lead a normal life in parts of Miami speaking only Spanish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_migration_to_Miami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_migration_to_Miami tells me that over half the county now has Cuban origin.
So don't you go tell me they weren't American, or go thinking that the US is some sort of uniform society. That dog won't hunt.
Are Sweden Finns, who speak Finnish as their mother tongue, or the Samí, not Swedish?
Based on my experience, Syrian refugees to Sweden haven't been there for long enough for the integration you want, just like the Cuban refugees around me when I was a kid.
I assume all the Syrian kids are learning Swedish in school, just like my Spanish-speaking classmates learned English at school. (Or is the Swedish education system worse than the Miami one of the 1970s and 1980s?)