Sunday, January 27, 2019

Old Man Shouts Like a Racist

So Tom Brokaw just told the MTP panel that Spanish speaking residents of America won't "assimilate" ("Resistance Is Futile") because they won't learn English. It was so bad Yamiche Alcindor pushed back on it, and Chuck Todd joined her.  (When the transcript or episode goes up, I'll link to it and amend.)  UPDATE:  okay, here it is, though Brokaw's comments are at the very end of the show.

Time for Grandpa to join the rest of "The Greatest Generation" and leave the stage.
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2 comments:

  1. trex12:17 PM

    My Polish grandfather came over on a boat when he was fifteen years old in the early 20th century. Uneducated and from a poor family, he got a job on a factory & worked there his entire life to support his wife and eight children. He became a citizen, bought a home, hung out in pool halls, played cards, went to church, took the bus, and loved to go to the river and talk to strangers while he fed the ducks.

    By the time I came to know him he was in his 70’s and still barely spoke English, spoke only Polish to my grandmother, and his accent was so strong that when he did speak broken English I rarely understood him - yet there was nothing “unsssimilated” about him.

    Brokaw can go pound sand along with Gen. John Kelly. Americans retire to countries all over the non-English-speaking world and yet never hold themselves to this standard of “integration.” This sentiment is nothing but the snarling and yapping of white supremacy.

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  2. Rmj2:35 PM

    I knew people (elderly then, 20+ years ago) who didn't speak English until they went to school, and they're parents still didn't speak English, but German. As you say, their accents were so thick (though their English was good) it was like they'd never left the home country. But they were American by birth and by right.

    And I remember the stories of the German Christians (members of the German Reformed and German Evangelical churches that became the UCC) who were beaten for worshipping in German, this in WWI after America had entered the war. "How can we pray to God?", they asked, "if not in German?"

    I'm with you: Brokaw can pound sand.

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