The 22nd Century Trump may be brown-skinned, named "Jorge"

From the Santayana “same as it ever was” files comes this somewhat depressing report from the social science desk at NPR:

Hearing this, I was immediately reminded of my wife’s great-aunt, who is a hardcore right-winger and fond of griping about immigrants who don’t “assimilate” and learn English.

One year at a holiday gathering, she was doing her routine, and I had recently read something that I ambushed her with. It was an article about how church services in the Upper Midwest (where she is from and where she still lives) were conducted in German for the first half of the 20th century, into the Eisenhower years. She, who is of German and Norwegian stock herself, would have been a teenager by the time this practice died out completely. She sputtered something about how she remembers those services from childhood, but that it was “different”, somehow…but she was pretty busted and knew it.

I would love to say the story has a happy epilogue, that this opened her eyes to the point that she had lost her xenophobia by the next time I saw her, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this is not what happened.

So, unfortunately, I expect we will just keep seeing the same thing ad infinitum. Even if the interloping “Other” is no more dark-skinned than the 22nd century’s Trump, it won’t matter. After all, it seems strange now that even if we acknowledge the reality of racism, the Irish, and before that Germans, were so reviled–when they are obviously just blue eyed white folk like the English. It just doesn’t matter. Everyone wants to be the last group in and to pull up the ladder behind them.

I’m sure the 22nd century will be a time of peace and harmony in our country, when people will no longer be divided by arbitrary and ultimately meaningless labels of “race”, and all Americans–“white”, “black”, “Latino”, “Asian-American”, and so forth–will be united in opposition to those zorping same-gened clones and all their devious plans to replace Real Humans!

Not saying I’m against same-gened marriage, but can’t we just call it a civil union?

LOL

I wouldn’t want my Country to be invaded by fifty-million white Europeans now.
Does that make me racist and xenophobic?

Good thing no 50-million strong invasion is under way.

But yeah, there will always be this pushback against those who fail to adhere to majoritarian-middle-class culture and social standards.

Oh well, let them get steamed over people who are not cis-het anglophone white middle class acting looking and sounding unlike the cis-het anglophone white middle class…

Hey!! “z***ping same-gened clones” is risking a warning! The origins of the z-word are well known.

Eventually there will be no more groups to be xenophobic against, once we have enough who are woven into the fabric of America. There aren’t an infinite number of religious/ethnic/national/etc. groups in the world.

Except for space aliens, I guess.

But as this NPR story notes, even earlier Cuban immigrants have been shown to be biased against later Cuban immigrants. So that suggests to me that the supply is inexhaustible.

He’s black on the LEFT side!!!

It seems like any form of immigration control will offend someone.

We would hate based on height.

Can we stop calling “people that move” invaders? Did you ever move, as a child or an adult? Did you “invade” your new home? Or just show up with your stuff and start living there, same as you did before in the place you moved from?

No, unless humans become undifferentiated clones of one another, there will still be differences between people that we will learn to hate. Religion, race, national origin are just the current traits-to-hate du jour.

It used to be you has to be the right kind of white person and the right kind of Christian. Anglo Saxon protestant. Now any white skin or Christian faith will suffice.

So yeah the tent will expand. It is somewhat humorous listening to second and third generation immigrants talk about the perils of multiculturalism.

As I said the other day, which may not be entirely accurate, but hopefully you get the jist of it: “Five hundred years from now Americans will look like Italians with a splash of Asian.”

But of course, transportation has always been the key to movement of peoples. Right now, it is super easy for millions of people to move thousands of miles at a time en-mass, such as the northward flow of Hispanics to the wealth of the USA, and the flow of Syrian, African and Arabic migrants to Europe.
But “Ok, shut the door behind me” is a common enough piece of Human Nature. When I was close to getting my black belt, I heard it from people who got theirs in the year before me. After I got mine, I heard it from a couple of people who got theirs at the same time or in the next graduation test.

I’ve seen people show up late for a packed event, expect that they’ll be allowed in and the doors closed just after them. “ok, we’re here now, close the doors”

What Americans look like 500 years from now will depend mostly I think on what they choose as fashionable with their genetic engineering menu.

Does your house have walls and a door with a lock? What would call someone who was in your house illegally? An invader or a someone who has moved?

The metaphor doesn’t hold. You have no expectation of private enjoyment of every square foot of land that lies within U.S. borders.

Hell, the Nazis had to put markers on the people they hated because they couldn’t tell them apart from everybody else.

So all immigration is fine as long as they don’t commit the crime of breaking and entering? I’m cool with that policy. Let them live only wherever someone will voluntarily rent or sell to them.