Yeah, the whole thing has very obviously been (to me at least) the racist older whites realizing by the election of Barack Obama that the world is changing and their time of white, male dominance may be very much coming to an end and trying to throw down as much apartheid style chaff as they can to try and slow that progress.

But then, that’s just conservatism in general, desperately attempting to slow the inevitable progress of history so they can ride to their deaths without having to see any more upsetting change.

I’m worried that we’ll see more of this apartheid style crap though as these older whites use their temporary short-term advantages to make life suck as badly as they can before enough of them die off and enough young people grow up to replace them.

The comments on the Boston Globe story about expanding a port of entry to Canada in Vermont were telling - all those complaining the real problem is south, Arizona is where they need real PoE improvements, this is a 911 world, etc.  There are lots of propblems with the plan, but these aren’t them.
You would think people in Boston would remember that 2 of those 9-11 planes left from BOS and that the terrorists on them came here via car from Canada and drove to Boston or entered New England via plane at Portland, ME.  (the two I remember off the top of my head)

What always gets me is that, even if you say you’re looking at the thing from a geopolitical, strategic angle, its still fucking stupid to start a tribal war of the White Americans on the Mexican Americans.  Only ones that make out on this crap are corporations who want to hire immigrant labor and pay even less. Even there I’m not sure. Mostly it looks like a big ‘ol tribal tantrum.

You don’t have to press 1 for English if you’re willing to wait a moment—English is still the default.

Arizonan Anglos shouldn’t complain as Spanish was the official language when they first arrived.

Somebody on a sociology forum was slagging white people who adopt black or hispanic children as having some sort of white savior complex.  I pointed out that one reason white people adopt nonwhite children is simply that people who are old enough to adopt are more likely to be white than people who are of an age to be adopted - even if you assume that white and non-white children are put up for adoption in the same proportions as their peers in the population.

This, in turn, might explain the extreme amplification of the anti-abortion crowd when it comes to propaganda aimed at college age white women.

‘Course the Tea-Baggers and Know-Nothing immigrant haters don’t necessarily want to solve any problems, they just feel resentment and they want blood. And they’ll get blood, no question.

What’s interesting to me about all this is that this explosion of anti-immigrant sentiment has blown the cover story about how conservatives aren’t opposed to immigration because they’re racist.  We were all supposed to pretend that their hostility to immigrants had nothing to do with difference, and was just a principled political opinion.

Were we? From a conservative blog in February 2007, a bunch of conservatives complain first that businesses are presuming to provide services to their customers in the several languages spoken by their customer base, and then - same thread! - grumbling angrily about businesses that cater to a Hispanic-speaking market and provide services primarily in Spanish. Someone on the thread makes a joke about Ebonics, too. One conservative on the whole thread saw the point that businesses have a right to maximise their business by providing services in multiple languages - all the rest just stuck doggedly to the idea that “Real Americans” speak English only, and real American businesses don’t cater to Hispanics.

From #5

This, in turn, might explain the extreme amplification of the anti-abortion crowd when it comes to propaganda aimed at college age white women.

Sorry, I don’t understand the connection between that and your earlier paragraph Ms. Kate. It is probably I am missing something obvious, could you explain? The extreme amplification of the anti-abortion crowd with college age white women is explained by the fact that whites are older on average or what do you mean?

“It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it” is now my default response to anyone grousing about cultural change. Well done, Nicole Vespia.

No, Atheist - the fact that most babies being born are NOT WHITE while most prospective parents available to adopt (again, assuming just straight up proportionality) are white.

Lots of white parents, not a lot of white babies = massive whinging aimed at white women to breeed breeeed breeeeeeed and not abort.

What gets me is how incredibly stupid these racists are.  It’s like they think Latinos just showed up 5-10 years ago and that they are all illegals with anchor babies.

You see it in all the ‘justifications’ for SB1070—>immigrants are supposed to carry their papers all the time anyway, so what’s the big deal?  Isn’t it just mirroring the federal law?

No, assholes, it’s not.  Immigrants are required to carry papers.  Citizens are not.  How can you tell a citizen from an immigrant?

You can’t.  You simply cannot tell from observation.  They didn’t just come here yesterday, or just within the last few years.  They’ve been coming here, legally, for longer than the country has been the country.

Sports radio guys were whining about this the other day…their great grandparents came over legally, not like these people.  Never mind the brown people who also had their great grandparents legally immigrate: this is an idea that doesn’t occur to them.

They’re brown, so they aren’t real Americans and should have to carry papers, no matter if they were born here nor how many generations their ancestors have been here.

What I really want to see is some company make the assholes press 2 for English.  Have the whole damn message in Spanish and then come on with “For English, press 2 please.”  Even just one day out of the year would be enough.  The idiots would have a fit, heads would explode everywhere and I would be highly entertained.

No, Atheist - the fact that most babies being born are NOT WHITE while most prospective parents available to adopt (again, assuming just straight up proportionality) are white.

Ahh, I knew it was something like that. Yes, that totally makes sense, thanks.

I like the things Eva Longoria told an interviewer a couple of years ago.  Her family has been on their land in Texas for longer than there has been a Texas, and probably longer than the written records going back to the first Spanish invasion.  500 years.  Yet, she is from a Spanish-speaking family and would proably be harassed were she not famous.

As she puts it: her family didn’t come the the United States - the United States came to them.

The article itself is kind of weird; the focus is on young white people resisting older white people and their racism, but what’s missing is much discussion of the fact that younger people are also just a lot less likely to be white than older people.  Not that there can’t be racism across all sorts of lines, but the brutal reality is that the anti-immigration temper tantrum is being thrown by a bunch of older white people that are pissed about the multi-cultural direction this country is going.

It’s funny how often media writers take the POV that America is still basically, “essentially white”, and that the “real Americans” are white. I must admit, as a White American I sometimes find myself thinking this way too, before I snap out of it. Still, it is so common in reporters and writers, who theoretically should know better, that I sometimes wonder if they are trying not to offend nativist sentiment, or what?

You know, we’d have had to press 1 for English back in 1985, too; the difference was not “OMG, there just WEREN’T ANY HISPANICS HERE BACK IN THE 1980s”—it’s that phone trees didn’t exist yet, at least not as a widespread thing.  I’ll sympathize with anyone who wants to bitch about phone trees; I hate phone trees, too. I don’t know where these guys got the idea that being a luddite is unacceptable but racism is A-OK.

You don’t have to press 1 for English if you’re willing to wait a moment—English is still the default.

I was trying to think back to when the last time was that I was instructed to press any button for English.  It’s usually “press 2 for Spanish,” a pause, and then it continues in English without me having to do anything at all.

So people aren’t even having to press anything for English, and yet they’re absolutely enraged that they have to listen to a 2-second announcement in Spanish.

Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.

I once talked to this old guy who started complaining to me about immigrants not knowing how to pronounce his English name (which made me think, HA! see how you like it!), and ended with, “In Canada, we speak English!”

I didn’t respond to that because I was working, but it was funny, and this post made me think of it.

I wonder if the short-term immigrant bashing straegy of the GOP will really hurt them in the long-term; my guess is no, as the GOP is so good at revising history in ten or fifteen years most people will think it was the Dems that were all for the border fence and “papers” laws.

I wonder how much anti-census fear was borne of fear that there would be objective evidence of non-white reality?

The press one for English people are really the bottom of the barrel.  It just lays bare what they really think about immigrants - it’s not an economic argument, or any other kind of policy.  It’s just about the personal offense they feel at not being acknowledged as the only worthwhile caste.

#18

Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.

Oh, they do blow gaskets over that too Ms Kate, believe me. But I guess that one would be harder to attack, they’d have to start regulating commerce and other “socialist” stuff.

I wonder how much anti-census fear was borne of fear that there would be objective evidence of non-white reality?

Nail, head, hammer

Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.

I generally dread being sent to a customer “service” center in India, but that has more to do with the fact that they usually have only been given a script to read from and can’t actually resolve anything.  Either that, or things get resolved wrong and you have to call back and hear from the exact same script another two or three times before you luck out and get transferred to a call center where they can actually solve the problem.

But that’s because the company has deliberately designed a really craptastic customer “service” system, not because Indians are bad at customer service or something like that.

John, I do think that the Republicans are mostly good at rewriting history.  But when you signal to an entire group of people that you hate them, they tend to remember that over generations.  See: black voters, gay voters.

Betraying my old lady hokeyness: articles like this make me so excited for younger generations! I’ll throw out the idea that perhaps the internet and the way the planet feels increasingly smaller probably has something to do with changing attitudes as well. National boundaries just don’t seem to mean as much as they used to (or so I hope).

“Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.”
“Oh, they do blow gaskets over that too Ms Kate, believe me.”

I can testify, ‘cause I’ve witnessed it on several occasions.  Being in IT, we would frequently have to make calls to get support for various pieces of hardware and software, and a good percentage of the time the support calls are handled by people in India or elsewhere. 

I’ve worked with people who have become unglued when faced with talking to someone on a support call who has a tinge of accent.

It’s a big old world, and there are lots of other people who live here, but some Americans just can’t accept that fact…

Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.

Well, the Know-Nothings can’t conceive of anyone but another Real ‘Murkin (or maybe a Brit) speaking better English than themselves. If they hear a thick accent or a funny furrin name, they do blow gaskets. The most successful Indian call centres now train their operators to use Midwestern accents, have them choose American first names, and have them study up on American pop culture to fool the kind of rube who’s attracted to nativism and racism.

The neoCons prefer that cheap-labour solutions like outsourcing be as low-profile as possible, so as not to rile up their sucker base. Their ideal gastarbeiter plan would keep those multiple generations of dusky non-citizen workers confined to special complexes and camps run by the employing corporation (and subsidised by bad ol’ Big Gubbmint).

Is there a smaller breakdown of the ages somewhere (it wasn’t at the NY Times site and a google search didn’t find it—ok I’m too lazy to really look)? It would be interesting to see how support changes with respect to the percent of people foreign born. You can see this a bit from the data they give:

41 percent of Americans ages 45 to 64 said immigration levels should be decreased
36 percent of older Americans
24 percent of those younger than 45

Notice the percent does not go up as people get older—the highest percent they give is 45-64 year olds which makes sense since the percent of people foreign born decreased until about 1970 and then started to go back up (the percent in 1930 was about the same as it is now). Is the peak for percent who want reduced immigration somewhere around 40 with the percent generally going down on both sides? Remember that generation X seems to be more conservative (scroll down to the bottom) than other generations, so maybe it’s not only age?

I’d be interested to know how many of these racist, cranky and selfish Boomers would have identified as members of the “transformative” peace-and-love generation in their youth. Since Bo-Bo Brooks continues to have a NYT column and continues to get panel show gigs, I’m thinking that it’s a good percentage.

“I generally dread being sent to a customer “service” center in India, but that has more to do with the fact that they usually have only been given a script to read from and can’t actually resolve anything.”

My experience is this is the norm for corporate America, and it doesn’t matter whether the call center is here or elsewhere.  I have had some very frustrating experiences with Americans on support calls, and I’ve had some excellent experiences with Indians on support calls — and everything combination in between. 

“But that’s because the company has deliberately designed a really craptastic customer “service” system, not because Indians are bad at customer service or something like that.”

Yes, this…

I’ve worked with people who have become unglued when faced with talking to someone on a support call who has a tinge of accent.

I’m going to rise to the defense of the concept because people in front line customer service position should be able to speak clear English, even if it is slightly accented. Of course, that would require paying money for salaries of people who are well educated, and most institutions are unwilling to do that.

Also, one of the problems we have with our immigration system is that we can’t have a rational discussion about the possibility that we may actually want lower levels of immigration and more tightly control it, because the pro-reduction crowd has such a large racist component. No one who takes policy seriously would want to ally themselves with such a dangerous group.

My experience is this is the norm for corporate America, and it doesn’t matter whether the call center is here or elsewhere.

Same here. First-line support is scripted and flow-charted with little flexibility because training isn’t cheap, and therefore would affect the sacred quarterly numbers American MBAs are taught to worship with a similar lack of flexibility.

I’m going to rise to the defense of the concept because people in front line customer service position should be able to speak clear English, even if it is slightly accented.

Agreed, but your typical Know-Nothing would get more outraged over a rep with perfect grammar and a distinctive Indian accent than they would over a semi-literate rep who spoke with a Midwestern or Southern American accent.

#27: “perhaps the internet and the way the planet feels increasingly smaller probably has something to do with changing attitudes as well. National boundaries just don’t seem to mean as much as they used to (or so I hope).”
I hope so too, but I’m not that sure. I’m brazilian, and I’m online a lot, and it’s rare the day the fact that I’m not from USA isn’t made clear to me in some way or another. Yesterday I went to myspace to try to contact an old time friend and killed some time reading old messages, and even I was surprised to see how many messages I accumulated in a few months period either saying “I’m going to Rio and I want to meet you, how much do you charge” (I live as far from Rio as Texas from New York state, maybe, but nevermind, everybody knows Rio is the only city in the country and is surrounded by Amazon), or telling me that brazilian women make good wives because we cook well, are faithful, understand our men, stand by them and support them and are proud of loving them, unlike american women who are too modern for their own good. Some of them also added that the tropical climate and the racial mix makes us good in bed and with hot bodies that won’t get fat.
And last week I was driven to tears by someone who was baffled that some guy from Colombia dared to identify himself as american (from the America continent), because how could him deny the fact that only people from USA could call themselves americans because the other parts of the continent were a completely separated continent called SOUTH America, not America at all. I’ve known this polemics my whole life. I’ve even read a book that mentioned it in the same year I learned to read, and this book was written in 1935, and I never really cared about identifying myself by continent. But this cut really deep because of how clear it was that we (latin-language-speakers here down south) don’t have the right to define how we can call ourselves, and just how insignificant we are to the point that major parts of Latin America History can be ignored like this (like Pan-Americanism, Bolivarianism, etc.). She wasn’t even mean about it, she was just matter-of-fact, which showed just how much we Don’t Matter.

colorlessblue, what can I say, all that stuff is totally true. USA-ers are just notoriously xenophobic, and the fact that we’re currently a (the?) Global Hegemon has given us a ridiculously huge heads. So, you’re right about the chauvanism about “American” and how many USA-ers can’t understand that from a Colombian point-of-view, a Colombian IS

colorlessblue, what can I say, all that stuff is totally true. USA-ers are just notoriously xenophobic, and the fact that we’re currently a (the?) Global Hegemon has given us ridiculously huge heads. So, you’re right about the chauvanism about “American” and how many USA-ers can’t understand that from a Colombian point-of-view, a Colombian IS an “American”, and how USA-ers view Latin Americans as a big undifferentiated mass of brown Mexicans. It’s all true and it sucks.

What you should probably realize, though, is that the USA-ers we’re talking about here are actually much more chauvanistic than that. They are an unusually chauvanistic bunch in a chauvanistic country. They are actually distinguished from the rest of the USA by the sheer passion of their resentment against anyone who isn’t like them. And furthermore, their resentment is reflected in powerful political forces in the USA, and their passion is such that it could help destabilize the entire America. (America in this case meaning all of North and South America.) That’s what we’re talking about here.

Sorry for double post.

No, absolutely, I agree. It’s something like action and omission. The teabaggers-like people being discussed are actively doing all they can to discriminate, while people like the one I (tried to) argue with just have some blasé ignorance of the rest of the world. But I also think one group feeds the other, and that the less malevolent kind at best allows the worst the freedom to act.

Note it is fairly easy to say Brazilian.  It flows off the tongue, as do most country based designators.

American as a national designator is really a shortened “United States of American” which is clunky, long and inspires a “huh” reaction.  It isn’t only people from the US who say people from the US are “Americans” for just this reason.  That does not mean that someone from Columbia isn’t as much an American, just that using that to describe themselves is going to confuse most people, and not just US Americans, because most people refer to themselves by nationality as the highest level, not contenentiality. (is that even a word?)

“Oh, they do blow gaskets over that too Ms Kate, believe me”

Oh yeah, they do.  I work two phone jobs and have had people get all blustery at me until i assure them in my unaccented mid-western english that I am not “in India” or “outsourced.”  I can’t even imagine the disrespect people who actually ARE in India put up with.

Some of that is racism, but then there is a similar streak of localism that you get from people and I don’t know if you can separate the two.  I get attitude from people in Duluth when they find out I am in St. Paul… right, cause a person who is 3 hours drive south could not POSSIBLY understand the needs of a Duluth dweller.

Agreed, but your typical Know-Nothing would get more outraged over a rep with perfect grammar and a distinctive Indian accent than they would over a semi-literate rep who spoke with a Midwestern or Southern American accent.
Comment #34: Gracchus on 05/18 at 10:35 AM

This is by no means a defense of know-nothingism, but it is much easier to understand someone whose accent you are familiar with than someone with “perfect” grammar. The human mind is used to hearing fragmented, ungrammatical, error-riddled language and making sense of it. It’s what the mind does from the time a baby emerges from the womb. It needs practice to understand new accents.

The issue, for the most part, isn’t that people understand but are enraged by different accents. It’s that they’ve so isolated themselves that they have little to no practice listening to accents other than their own and the standard US media accent. Consuming diverse media, interacting with diverse populations, etc. are what give someone practice with different accents. The problem is that the Know Nothings eschew any voluntary interaction with “others” and they are then unprepared when they are put in a situation where they have no choice. They really dp have trouble understanding and that is what angers them.

Of course this doesn’t much matter with call centers because most employees are trained to speak with accents that the average US American will be familiar with, and of course it’s easier for those call center workers to do since US cultural hegemony means they are much more exposed to those accents from an early age than we are to theirs.

colorlessblue - how funny, my family’s Colombian! While I was born and went to school in the states I spent a lot of time in Colombia while I growing up. (Have never been to Brazil, unfortunately.) Both my parents speak with heavy accents and my father has dark skin that definitely identifies him as Not White. My sister and I tend to pass for European as we also have Italian and Spanish roots, and I’ve actually had people on more than one occasion express surprise that I’m Latina because I don’t speak with an accent. So, I do know firsthand what you’re talking about, believe me. And especially on the internet I think you tend to find just the most ignorant of ignorant.

That being said, my experiences also inform the comment I made earlier about the world feeling smaller and how this shapes attitudes toward immigration. I grew up straddling two countries and immersed in the culture of a couple more, so my loyalties are spread all over the place. It really only seems relevant when I’m choosing who to root for during soccer games or the olympics, though, you know? It’s fun, and I guess I’ve always found joy and excitement in diversity - it’s never been a threatening thing - and I think that’s partly due to the fact that my upbringing was so international. I think that’s becoming a more common experience - even if you never travel, actually, the world is coming to you in a way it never has before - and I think it might be a factor in people’s changing attitudes toward immigration.

Helen W. H.,

American as a national designator is really a shortened “United States of American” which is clunky, long and inspires a “huh” reaction.  It isn’t only people from the US who say people from the US are “Americans” for just this reason.

The fact that everyone else’s identity sort of gets erased to make your life easier is kind of the point, though, no?

That does not mean that someone from Columbia

Is spelling it properly too much to ask as well?

So people aren’t even having to press anything for English, and yet they’re absolutely enraged that they have to listen to a 2-second announcement in Spanish.

That actually pisses me off more.  If I’m asked to press 1 for English, I can press 1 and move on with my life.  If they ask me to press 9 for Spanish, I have to sit through that and then wait several beats before the system automatically chooses English for me.  Some of them will also have a long-ass direction in Spanish, not just the Spanish equivalent of “press 9 for Spanish,” but something like “if you want to speak to someone in Spanish, please press the number 9.”  Argghhh!!!

My experience is this is the norm for corporate America, and it doesn’t matter whether the call center is here or elsewhere.  I have had some very frustrating experiences with Americans on support calls, and I’ve had some excellent experiences with Indians on support calls — and everything combination in between.

My beef with Indian tech support is that they either ignore me when I tell them what I’ve already done to try to resolve the problem or they don’t quite understand me.  Typically, I’ve already done all the troubleshooting in their script, so it’s really frustrating to have to go through all that again.

Helen W. H. - forgot to say that the term I use to describe US citizens is USer, actually shorter than “American,” so you no longer have an excuse.

Yeah, the whole thing has very obviously been (to me at least) the racist older whites realizing by the election of Barack Obama that the world is changing and their time of white, male dominance may be very much coming to an end and trying to throw down as much apartheid style chaff as they can to try and slow that progress.

I’m a young white male (under 30).  I feel that necessary to point out that the so called “dominance” of white males has always been a good joke played by the rich white males to keep racial and gender politics front and center.  For the majority of history there has been white males in western civilization fighting on both sides of the economic war and only in the last two hundred has the threat of non-whites been used to attempt to consolidate power.  It never really solidified though as the poorer white males & socially-liberal never joined in the hegemonic farce they tried to portray.  The immigration debate is something that’s designed to play out along racial lines as well because the conservatives need to play to what their aging base feels comfortable with.  The average republican’s age and location practically dictates they were adults or near-adults during the civil rights movement and most of them were the ones cheering on the fire hoses and the dogs. 

There are at least two distinct groups of Hispanics in America today, possibly more but atleast two that have a voting bloc-like power.  The Cuban-Americans in Florida & the south that vote against Castro and don’t care about Mexican-Americans or anybody else.  For the most part I suspect if Castro was overthrown they would emigrate back (atleast the wealthy ones.)  Then you have the Mexican-Americans who settled in the Southwest and the West in general.  They tend to be socially conservative Catholics but due to their majority being blue-collar they vote democratic.  So to Republicans they’re already a lost cause thus why immigration becomes a debate.  I find it mildly ironic though that a portion of Mexican-Americans take offense at the other Central American countries sending immigrants into Mexico & the US.

In fairness to the “press 1 for English” crowd (because being fair is only, well, fair), it probably doesn’t help that after pressing 1 they then have to enter their date of birth, policy number, 1 if it’s a sunny day, 123123 if they have ever experienced deja vu, 6 if they like jazz, 123123 if they have ever experienced deja vu, and then find themselves listening to a message that says all attendants are currently busy and perhaps they might consider calling back at 3:15 a.m. Tuesday using a rotary dial phone and making sure to keep a pair of pinking shears handy.

Having said that, they are still ignorant bigots.

Comment #43: antiope on 05/18 at 11:39 AM

My sister and I tend to pass for European as we also have Italian and Spanish roots, and I’ve actually had people on more than one occasion express surprise that I’m Latina because I don’t speak with an accent. So, I do know firsthand what you’re talking about, believe me.

Well, depending on exactly what kind of Italian or Spaniard you look like, if you come over here to Northern California you’re going to run into all kinds of situations:

1. Anglos who look at you and think you’re an Anglo.  These are the folks who think that all Hispanics are Mexicans, and all Mexicans are brown.

2. Anglos who look at you and think you’re Hispanic.  These folks tend to be northeastern transplants to California, and who have had more exposure to Puerto Ricans than to Mexicans.

3. Hispanics who look at you and think you’re Anglo.  They tend to be Mexican or Peruvian immigrants.  The extreme case tends to be recent rural Mexican immigrants with very little schooling; some of them will actually be surprised at how well you can speak Spanish and congratulate you for it, and maybe even ask you if you learned Spanish so well because your parents are Mexican.  (Seriously, this has happened to me.)

4. Hispanics who look at you and think you’re Hispanic.  These tend to be more urban and educated Hispanic immigrants, or immigrants from Hispanic Caribbean countries.

5. Middle Easterners who think you’re also from the Middle East.  (I’ve been confused for Israeli, and I have Jordanian coworkers who insist that I look very specifically Egyptian.)

#40: Helen, adding to what antiope said in #43, about erasing everybody else’s identify, there’s also the fact that, at least in my experience, when someone is talking about being american in the continental sense, it’s always very clear from the context of the conversation. As you said, people don’t usually identify with the continent instead of the country, and people in Latin America are no exceptions. There’s actually a lot of country rivalry, like Brazil x Argentina (goes deeper than just soccer), and so when someone is talking in terms of continent instead of country it’s usually in the context of a political conversation where continental matters are being discussed. So it doesn’t really confuse anyone. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2Jc7zx8RM  (dammit now I’ll get the earworm again)
Anyway, this specific argument about the word american has been going on for a long time all over the internet (and before the internet existed), so I’ll just apologize for the threadjack.

The people who whine about “my great-grandparents came over legally” are full of crap. Unless their great-grandparents were Chinese, the bar to immigrating to the US for them was incredibly low compared to what it is now. Did your great-grandparents have to get on a years-long wait list? No? Then STFU.

Oh, and my paternal grandparents came over here illegally. But they’re now what people consider “white”, so that Doesn’t Count, amusing as it is to think of my father and aunt as “anchor babies”. But of course they’re not the people jackholes like Duncan Hunter want to deport, because they’re not brown.

Sacundim - I got one for you. Twice - TWICE! - people have thought I was Irish. No clue where that came from. And once this guy insisted I was Croatian (though that makes more sense given the Italian).

I usually am not bothered by these things, though it depends on the context. I like talking heritage and backgrounds and those kinds of things, learning people’s stories, so if people confuse me for something else it’s not something I normally take offense to. And I know I’ve upset people in the US by asking where they’re from. I’ll get that cold stare and a tense response of, “THE UNITED STATES.” I know where the defensiveness comes from and I always apologize and rephrase, but I wish it wasn’t such a minefield sometimes.

Quit with the boomer bashing, will ya—it’s obnoxious and also doesn’t make sense.

If only all those boomer age had been for peace and love and other hippyish qualities! Unfortunately, we had our share of the other.

Yeah, how stupid to support the very aspects of alternative culture the younger generations hold dear.

If you’re going to generation bash, why if the younger generation is so soulful, don’t they fucking vote? (Other than for Barack, who is turning out to be a disappointment for all the ideals progressives hold dear.)

The boomers on this forum are progressives, and have been so through decades of having Democratic politicians fail us. To slag us is both madness and ungrateful. Turn out your supposedly more enlightened generation in decent numbers, at the midterms to vote for the progressive candidates and then we’ll talk.

The issue, for the most part, isn’t that people understand but are enraged by different accents. It’s that they’ve so isolated themselves that they have little to no practice listening to accents other than their own and the standard US media accent. Consuming diverse media, interacting with diverse populations, etc. are what give someone practice with different accents. The problem is that the Know Nothings eschew any voluntary interaction with “others” and they are then unprepared when they are put in a situation where they have no choice. They really dp have trouble understanding and that is what angers them.
Comment #42: Babieca

I can attest to this.  Living on the west coast I’ve grown accustomed to Pacific/Asian accents.  When I had to talk to a representative from Scotland my mind had problems processing the inflections.

The significant difference was that I blamed myself, not the receptionist.

I once talked to this old guy who started complaining to me about immigrants not knowing how to pronounce his English name (which made me think, HA! see how you like it!), and ended with, “In Canada, we speak English!”

I believe one of the few appropriate responses to that one would be, “Excusez-moi?”

I always wondered, if the CSA had pulled off secession, what terms would be used for “americans” now?

The Northerners would be “Yankees” and the Southerners would be “REAL Americans!!!(TM)”. :p

The policy implications of the post is more attempts at voter suppression, which Az has a long and storied tradition, and neo-Jim Crow.

If you’re going to generation bash, why if the younger generation is so soulful, don’t they fucking vote? (Other than for Barack, who is turning out to be a disappointment for all the ideals progressives hold dear.)

Well, Obama was the first time that a large chunk of young people were old enough to vote in a presidential election. You think it wasn’t frustrating being 17.5 years old and watching Bush get re-“elected”? My first introduction to the larger political process was the people in the generations before mine royally fucking it up in 2000.

Why would young people cheerfully and optimistically go vote if everyone under 30 was hitting their political stride right as the Bush reign was ushered in? That was a depressing introduction to reality, quickly followed by 9/11. (“Hi kids! Welcome to teenagehood! You should get involved in politics and the world! OhP.S.politiciansdon’tgiveafuckandtheworldjustifiablyhatesus. Good luck with that.”) I was astonished to watch the 2008 election because it was the first one I’ve ever seen that didn’t completely fuck our country (and the rest of the world.) A successful, decent (aside from the racism/sexism/etc) election is a *novelty* to people my age.

And, following along with the brown-ing of America (and the ridiculous youth-incarceration rate) don’t you think that there are quite a few barriers raised against younger people voting that you boomers don’t have to face? We’re not *real* voters, we’re easily-swayed idiots who should probably keep our shallow little votes to ourselves! Obama didn’t actually get voted in, he just got voted in by kids, and minorities, and women, and not a few people who had the temerity to be all three.

So yeah, obviously *all* boomers shouldn’t be tarred the same, but don’t you think it’s a little silly to ask why young people aren’t fixing politics fast enough? That’s like asking why we haven’t fixed the environment yet. We inherited a shitty one, courtesy of you all. We’re going to be a little pissed about that.

5. Middle Easterners who think you’re also from the Middle East.  (I’ve been confused for Israeli, and I have Jordanian coworkers who insist that I look very specifically Egyptian.)

My kids are half northern European mutt (me) and half Sri Lankan Tamil.  When we’re out without their dad, I regularly get asked “what they are” and if they are Hispanic (usually Mexican, but sometimes not) or Arabic, and very occasionally African American.  And the question is almost always phrased exactly that way.  I tend to answer that “they are people, what are you?”  Although sometimes my youngest (he’s 4) will answer that he’s a dog and start barking.  Because my kids are smart-asses and kind of funny.

But even aside from the offensiveness of the phrasing of the question, nobody ever asks about the ethnicity or ancestry of white people, because we’re the default.  It’s only the brown others (or otherwise obviously not of European ancestry) that get that question.

The significant difference was that I blamed myself, not the receptionist.

Why would you blame yourself?  It’s not any more your responsibility to understand every accent under the sun than it’s hers to hide her accent so Americans can better understand her.  I have trouble with most accents, but especially Asian ones.  I consider it my responsibility to be polite if someone doesn’t understand me, and I consider it other people’s responsibility to be polite if I can’t understand them.

“My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,”

Excuse me while I go look for my tiny violin to play a sad, sad song about this tragedy (it seems I’ve been using it a lot lately).  I also hate it when people complain about clicking a button on their remote control to get past the one or two Spanish-language channels on TV.  I have no interest in sports channels or home shopping networks, so I just click through those channels without a second thought.  So why is it a bigger deal to click through a channel that is in a language you don’t speak?

pandering now to get a bunch of teabagger votes, but the price you pay is you create a reputation for Republicans as racist towards Hispanics right when Hispanics are growing as a voting bloc.

I think the point here is that many wingnuts think that Hispanic people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, even those that have been in this country for generations.  And the same goes for young people.  My boss thinks that the voting age should be much higher than 18.  In fact, most people who vote against Republicans fall into categories that aren’t “Real Americans”, and plenty of wingnuts would love nothing more than to re-restrict voting rights to older, white, rich, conservative men.  This is why the “Real American” rhetoric is so much more hateful than it seems.  It’s especially bad coming from Palin and other female politicians, because their own votes would be revoked along with all the minorities, and I often wonder if they would consider that an acceptable price if given the choice.

#59

So yeah, obviously *all* boomers shouldn’t be tarred the same, but don’t you think it’s a little silly to ask why young people aren’t fixing politics fast enough? That’s like asking why we haven’t fixed the environment yet. We inherited a shitty one, courtesy of you all. We’re going to be a little pissed about that.

But, Bagelsan, judybrowni wasn’t asking that. She was defending her own generation, and asking why, if Generation X & Y are so much better than teh Boomers, they don’t vote?

Bottom line, generational competition can be an enjoyable pastime, but it stops being useful when you start to actually take it seriously. Children can’t blame all their problems on their parents. Older folks can’t blame all social ills on the youngsters. It is pointless.

If you’re going to generation bash, why if the younger generation is so soulful, don’t they fucking vote?

Perhaps some of us have come to the realization that the electoral circus has ultimatly about as much effect on policies as voting on American Idols?

ks - But even aside from the offensiveness of the phrasing of the question, nobody ever asks about the ethnicity or ancestry of white people, because we’re the default.

And because we all know your story already.

#51

Not only was the bar lower when most Europeans immigrated to the US than it is now, there was no bar. The first law restricting white immigrants was past in 1917 (and WWI made European immigration nearly impossible at the time anyway). Before that the only restriction was a $.50 fine, which was hard for some I am sure, but it was a pretty clear requirement to work towards. Before that there were laws regarding who could become a citizen, but immigration for whites was completely unrestricted.

I have an idea.

Why don’t all the young people go ahead and blame their own life problems on their parents. After all, your parents had the responsibility of raising you didn’t they? So go ahead and blame your ignorant parents who screwed up your life with their goddamn problems they could never solve on their own. I mean whether you want to admit it our not, you always loved them and looked up to them. But their love was tainted, poisoned with their own problems, and now you are poisoned with it as well. They told you to renounce racism but they themselves were sometimes racist, and how can you even make sense of that?

And all the old people, why don’t you go ahead and blame your life problems on your children. I mean, you put in years and years trying to raise them. You sacrificed so much and they never appreciated it did they? I mean you stayed up nights getting ready for their birthdays and you bought them all the nice things they wanted, so they could feel special. And you did it because you cared about them and you wanted them to have the best. And now those ungrateful brats have renounced what you taught them… you tried to explain to them how important it was to be politically involved and they can’t even vote! You gave them a treasure and they just throw it away! Truly, youth is wasted on the young.

See, doesn’t that make everyone feel better?

And because we all know your story already. wink

Yes, we do.  It’s irritating that we don’t know all the other stories.  Or that it is assumed that those stories aren’t as important.

I once talked to this old guy who started complaining to me about immigrants not knowing how to pronounce his English name

Well, most English-speaking people can’t pronounce my German last name.  Therefore, I insist that everyone in the United States must learn German so that I can avoid this inconvenience.

Interesting how they don’t blow a gasket over the fact that they are talking to somebody in english or spanish who is physically in India.

Actually, I’ve heard plenty of them complain.  Because basically, if anyone speaks English with a foreign accent, it doesn’t count as real English.  A similar thing happened my freshman year of college.  Most of my professors had immigrated from India or from other Asian countries.  Of course they had accents, but I never had a problem understanding them.  Then one day I was surprised that one student complained that he failed his tests because the “teachers don’t speak English”.  None of them had thick accents and I hadn’t even really thought about it until then.  I suspect that student automatically stopped paying attention as soon as he heard the accent, or maybe he was just scapegoating his failure since he hadn’t been responsible enough to study from the notes and book (which were in English with presumably no accent at all).

I suspect that student automatically stopped paying attention as soon as he heard the accent, or maybe he was just scapegoating his failure since he hadn’t been responsible enough to study from the notes and book (which were in English with presumably no accent at all).

I would guess it’s both. It may be hard to begin with, but after a while, you learn to listen, even if the professor has an accent. The same people who wouldn’t bother to learn to listen are the ones who wouldn’t study.

(My sister’s physics teacher got a lot of complaints because no one could understand him - he’s from Romania. Except we have loads of relatives from Poland and Israel, so we’re used to deciphering accents.)

In fairness to the “press 1 for English” crowd (because being fair is only, well, fair), it probably doesn’t help that after pressing 1 they then have to enter their date of birth, policy number, 1 if it’s a sunny day, 123123 if they have ever experienced deja vu, 6 if they like jazz, 123123 if they have ever experienced deja vu, and then find themselves listening to a message that says all attendants are currently busy and perhaps they might consider calling back at 3:15 a.m. Tuesday using a rotary dial phone and making sure to keep a pair of pinking shears handy

So why don’t they complain about all that other stuff while they’re at it?  There are many reasons why we have such ridiculous phone menus, and part of it is actually to force to cell phone users to use up more billible 6-second increments (for things like voicemail).  Yes, it sucks, but the people who complain about pressing 1 for English are essentially blaming Hispanic immigration for the ridiculous menu problem, rather than actually admit that some sacred corporation could do something dishonest and no customer-friendly.

This is by no means a defense of know-nothingism, but it is much easier to understand someone whose accent you are familiar with than someone with “perfect” grammar.

When I first moved to southern California, I had a hell of a time understanding people with Spanish accents, which was very strange to me, because it’s not like I was unused to talking to people whose first language was Spanish.

I finally figured out that it was because most of the Latino people I met in Illinois were Puerto Rican, and most of the Latino people I met in California were Mexican or Central American.  Still, it was several very frustrating months of trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t figure out what these goddamned people were saying.

bagalsan, word. way more frustrating than being 17.5 in 2004 was being 16 in 2000, trust me. First time I actually got to vote, bush got elected for reasons i couldn’t fathom, and a bunch of other laws designed to mess up the environment and deny gay rights got passed in my state. ‘Course, I do remember Clinton getting elected in ‘92 because my parents are staunch dems, but it’s not like that was an amazing day for mankind either. The 2008 elections blew my mind, even if prop 8 did pass.

Being 17 in 1980 wasn’t so great.

Because basically, if anyone speaks English with a foreign accent, it doesn’t count as real English.

G still says that the TA he had who had the most difficult accent to understand by far was the guy from Scotland.  Technically, his first language was English, but the English he used was so far from American English that he was actually harder to understand than someone whose first language was not English but had at least learned US English.

#74

Yeah, I mean the past decade was pretty bad, but not actually that much worse than the eighties, or certainly the thirties. Not to mention the eighteen sixties.

Ashley, I don’t think the article you pointed to says what you thought it did:

By the end of the high school years, there’s a “high point of agreement” between parents and children, he said.

But during the college years, children who no longer live with their parents are “pretty malleable,” subject to influence from peers, the media and current events and issues, Franklin said.

Basically, it says that kids who live with their parents tend to share their parents’ political beliefs but, as those kids go out on their own, their parents’ beliefs are less likely to be paramount.  Which, as others have pointed out, is the reason that fundies are desperate to keep their kids living with them for as long as humanly possible, and to send them to closed-loop places like Patrick Henry College when they finally do have to let them go.  I think the old phrase is, “You can’t keep the boy down on the farm once he’s seen Paris.”

I got to vote *against* Ollie North in my first election, but that’s the only memorable thing about it.  I can’t even remember which milquetoast Democrat I voted for, because he kinda sucked, but hey, at least I got to cast a vote against Ollie North!

I have trouble with accents too - I think most English speakers do, because there are so freaking many.  I’m from VA, but my mama’s from NC and, as I discovered when I went to college, has a pretty heavy accent.  Seriously, my roommate from NY couldn’t understand my mom’s phone messages.  I spent many years at summer camp in NC which had a large number of Southern girls at it, so to me my mom’s accent is pretty mild, to my roommate it was indecipherable.  Part of why college is fun, though!  My friend Masha’s dad sounded like the bad guy from every single ‘80s movie! (Russian accent)  My friend Sarah’s mom was so stereotypically NY Jewish that I didn’t quite believe she was real when I first met her.  They couldn’t understand my mom when she was speaking clearly, but then I couldn’t understand their parents very well either!  It was interesting and fun!

I have a good friend who is Australian, and I tell you what, if we haven’t talked for a while, it takes me *ages* to get back into her cadence, though she doesn’t ever have a problem with mine.  She says it’s because they get so much American TV over there.

And also, I never identified as American until I went to Europe and people kept calling me that.  I always identified as Virginian!  This did not make sense to the Europeans I met.  Before going over there, I wouldn’t have ever called myself American as a primary identity.

catgirl@71:

To answer your question, I refer back to the final line of my original post: “Having said that, they are still ignorant bigots.”

What I was trying to (humorously) say is “Pissed off people look for something to strike out at.  That they strike out is no surprise.  That they choose to strike out at non-English speakers rather than at the companies that create those phone trees reveals their bigotry.”

In all seriousness, KS, I have to admit that it just doesn’t occur to me to ask people without some sort of non-US ethnic/cultural marker where they’re from, if that makes sense. And white people do have them - I have a friend who looks very Irish to me, and another friend who looks like a viking he’s so nordic looking - but they’re not usually as obvious to me, if that makes sense. I definitely tend to operate under the white=“non ethnic” setting, so I guess I just assume they’ve been around forever and I’m not interested. It’s unfortunate because really, the only “white person’s” story I know is the one I learned in school, and that obviously isn’t every white person’s story, so I’m missing out.

Interesting. I’m going to watch myself more and make more of an effort to chat up white people* about their background.

(*I realize the use of “white” is sloppy here since I am technically white and still latina, but hopefully people know what I mean.)

If one is talking geopolitically, I would think North American, South American and Central American would be far more useful than American, no matter what country of origin, antiope.  Clearly, you have an axe to grind as I was making a comment not a value judgement.  colorlessblue seemed generally confused as to why this would happen (the person she was talking to was a jerk IMO.)
On the internet, I tend to say from the USA or US American myself.  Also, I would be one of those who gave you a stare - I was born in Iowa; reared in IA, CA, WA, TX, and ID; as an adult I have been a legal resident of ID and MA while living for extend periods due to work in MN, CA, FL, LA, NY, NJ, AR, AK, PA.  Where the hell am I supposed to say I am from?
I have mentioned, often and recently, that I am commenting on the fly, at work with a limited internet time allowed policy, and have dyslexia.  So yes, spelling is probably too much to ask for.

they couldn’t understand my mom when she was speaking clearly, but then I couldn’t understand their parents very well either!  It was interesting and fun!

I’ve lived in NW Ohio for over 10 years, but I’m originally from southern WV and I have a noticeable accent to people around here.  In fact, my oldest son’s friends all think I sound hilarious when I speak.  And my husband, who has a vaguely, sort of, almost British accent but not really (he learned English as a very small child from his Tamil as a first language mother, grew up in Nigeria, came to the US at 15 and has been in the midwest for almost 20 years), has really serious trouble understanding some of my older relatives back home.

I’ve never had any trouble with students understanding me, though they do usually notice the accent (I’m a physics prof), but I do hear lots of complaints about Chinese and Indian grad students and their heavy accents.  I usually ask the complainers if they’re fluent in Mandarin or Hindi.

I got to vote *against* Ollie North in my first election, but that’s the only memorable thing about it.  I can’t even remember which milquetoast Democrat I voted for, because he kinda sucked, but hey, at least I got to cast a vote against Ollie North!

You may not remember the name of the milquetoast Democrat, but I’m betting he was a Boomer or a Silent.

This was the Xer liberal’s dilemma in a nutshell: not enough of a demographic footprint to get one of our own in the door, so instead we were stuck with candidates who were positioned to appeal to the only Dem voters who counted: Boomers still obsessed with the 1960s. And then fingers were wagged because Gen Xers were all cynical and disengaged of politics—go and figure.

That really changed in the last election, the first in which Millenial voters could flex their own demographic muscle. However disappointing his follow-through in office, Obama’s campaign saw that and positioned him not as a late Boomer but instead as the sort of “positive” early Gen Xer that Millenials might see as an ally.

In the primaries, that allowed them set Obama off against a Boomer-style competitor who did a lot of resting on her ‘60s laurels, who appealed explicitly to “my turn!” identity politics, and who threw in some triangulation to attract, y’know, “hard-working, white Americans.” Neither Millenial nor Xer Dem voters wanted that busted old approach, especially knowing the next guy would have to clean up 8 years’ worth of elephant dung.

And after the primary, cranky old Senator “Get off my lawn” McSame did even worse with voters under 45 in the general election.

Comment #72: Mnemosyne on 05/18 at 02:17 PM

When I first moved to southern California, I had a hell of a time understanding people with Spanish accents, which was very strange to me, because it’s not like I was unused to talking to people whose first language was Spanish.  I finally figured out that it was because most of the Latino people I met in Illinois were Puerto Rican, and most of the Latino people I met in California were Mexican or Central American.

A sort of flip-side to that: I once went for a summer to Santa Barbara and was completely unable to understand the locals’ English pronunciations of Spanish-derived street or place names, which were completely different from the way people in the Bay Area would pronounce them.  Like, they pronounced the name of the Isla Vista neighborhood right outside UCSD as “eye-lah vis-tah,” where somebody from the Bay Area would probably say “ees-lah vees-tah”; more generally, the Spanish placenames were pronounced closer to their Spanish pronunciation in the Bay Area.

Antiope: 

Interesting. I’m going to watch myself more and make more of an effort to chat up white people* about their background.

That’s cool and I’m sure you’ll get some interesting conversations.  But it really wasn’t my point.

By all the other stories, I meant that we don’t get the stories of all the obviously not-white people that live here.  My story (not mine individually, but white people’s collectively) is the default and everyone else seems to have to justify their presence here while at the same time having their past and their collective stories ignored.

And then I got all curious and stuff - the milquetoast Democrat I voted for was Chuck Robb who is pretty much a total “lesser evil” candidate.  Sigh.

Gall durnit! My son has had to learn to say “quick - pull your pants up” and “Where’d you put the weed” while his friends are on the phone with their parents in Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin!  What’s happened to MY country??

But even aside from the offensiveness of the phrasing of the question, nobody ever asks about the ethnicity or ancestry of white people, because we’re the default.

No, white people ask each other about their ethnicity/ancestry all the time. The difference is that it’s in the context of comparing heritage and sharing information: oh, your grandparents came over from Germany during WWI? cool, mine were Scotch-Irish who moved up from Mississippi during the Depression; that kind of thing. It’s not in the context of challenging the other person: are you really an American? how many generations of immigrant ARE you? what right do you have to be here, brown person with a funny name?

For example, if you overheard the following conversation

A: Where are you from?
B: Seattle.
A: No, I mean, where are you from?
B: Dude, I just told you. Seattle.
A: But where are your parents from?

...you would likely win any bet that A is a white person who considers themselves to be ‘natural-born American’ and B is a person of color, and A is trying to find out B’s ethnic ancestry, with an approach A would never use if B were white.

Ms Kate @88: thanks to a friend who is also a mother, I have learned how to say “Sit down and shut up” in Cantonese.

A sort of flip-side to that: I once went for a summer to Santa Barbara and was completely unable to understand the locals’ English pronunciations of Spanish-derived street or place names, which were completely different from the way people in the Bay Area would pronounce them.

It’s a Southern California thing (Santa Barbara is generally considered the northern tip of Southern California).  If you’re ever in Los Angeles and need to get down to the harbor, it’s pronounced San Pee-dro, not San Pay-dro.  And it’s Los Fee-liz, not Los Fuh-leez.

I’m willing to blame my people (Midwesterners) for that—we butchered the hell out of all of the French names in the Midwest, so when we came out here, we did the same to the Spanish names.

...you would likely win any bet that A is a white person who considers themselves to be ‘natural-born American’ and B is a person of color, and A is trying to find out B’s ethnic ancestry, with an approach A would never use if B were white.

Yep.  It can lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings if a non-white person has had the above conversation multiple times and a white person asks the real question you use when you’re talking to someone and want to know about that person’s ancestry (“where is your family from?”).  The questions are similar enough that the subtle difference just doesn’t come across and it sounds an awful lot like the extremely rude, “Where are you from?”

“Where are you from?” is the question a white person asks another white person to find out what part of the US they come from, so from one white person to another, “Seattle” is a perfectly cromulent answer and would be accepted.

...you would likely win any bet that A is a white person who considers themselves to be ‘natural-born American’ and B is a person of color, and A is trying to find out B’s ethnic ancestry, with an approach A would never use if B were white.

You’d win that bet, although the older A is, it’s just as likely that B simply has an “ethnic” look.

Funniest example I saw was an old white guy on the train in NYC pestering what seemed to be a Latino guy about “where he was from” in a pseudo-friendly aggressive manner. It was funny because the old white guy was asking in a thick East European accent, and the Latino guy kept answering “Brooklyn” in a standard American accent.

JohnL, my husband is at the high end of Gen X—I can assure you most of the GenXers fall into the YOUNGER category and it’s the Baby Boomers who make up the vast block of that bigoted generation breakdown you gave us.
What the hell makes you think GenXers are conservatives? We got tarred by the Boomers as the Slacker generation. We grew up knowing the Boomers would have the best jobs for most of our lives, the better retirement packages, etc, etc. We knew we’d be eating crumbs from their table, and then came the Boom Echo behind us. Most of us expect life to be hard for us— hardly the kind of “if I’m not rich now, I will be one day” thinking that gives us financial conservatives. Socially conservative? My peers include openly polyamorous groups; more of my female friends are bisexual than not; in high school, the boys were constantly having to remind the school newspaper editor to be Not Sexist about the accomplishments of the female students (i.e. give the girl’s teams front page coverage, etc); my school and workplaces are racially divorce and sometimes my lack of Spanish-speaking has put me in a linguistic minority.
We grew up desegregated and with Affirmative Action. We watched Electric Company when we were young, with it’s racially diverse cast. We had Cinco De Mayo festivals at school and looked forward to music, dancers in pretty skirts, and good food in the cafeteria. Nguyen was the most common name in my high school yearbook. In short, we did not grow up thinking America was White as much as the generations before us, and I don’t think you know where GenX actually falls on a timeline.

diverse not divorce. its not it’s—I need more coffee.

JohnL—oops, I didn’t check your link, just your quote which was above the GenX years. Your link does indeed show a spike in GenX conservatives.

The only explanation I can think of for why something so contrary to my experience is true, is the red state/blue state divide. I have lived in California my whole life, and am myself the child of Silent Generation parents. The reason Gen X is smaller than the Boomers, I think, is a larger percentage of Boomers putting off having kids until they were older and more established.
But Red Staters have kids younger than Blue Staters, on average, right? So maybe the liberals of my generation are just numerically overwhelmed by the conservatives.

And one flaw we did have was privilege—it seemed to us like the battles for equality were mostly won. I learned otherwise, but maybe a lot of my peers didn’t.

What the hell makes you think GenXers are conservatives?

C’mon, he cited a nationwide poll with a sample size of almost 800 people! What more do you want?

We grew up desegregated and with Affirmative Action. We watched Electric Company when we were young, with it’s racially diverse cast. We had Cinco De Mayo festivals at school and looked forward to music, dancers in pretty skirts, and good food in the cafeteria.

All true, but which generation takes credit for enlightening us poor Gen Xers in our childhoods?

We’re never gonna win against the wonderful Boomers, who can blame all the bad things on their parents or on slackers like us and take credit for all social progress over the last half century. It’s all about them, and don’t you forget it!

I work in IT technical support and I cannot count the number of people who have tried to *subtly* ask if I’m from overseas (“How’s the weather in your country today?”) while I try to fix their problem, even though I have a generic American accent.  I used to say, “Oh, it’s raining today in Seattle, like usual”, but now I just let them guess.

When I was a young teenager, my family moved from Minnesota to Arkansas.  We stopped at the real estate office to pick up the key to the house we bought, and the agent came out to talk with my grandfather for a while. After ten minutes I was in tears, thinking, “They don’t even speak ENGLISH down here!”  Turns out he had a particularly heavy Southern accent, but I hadn’t recognized that he was even speaking English.  I feel right at home now when I call my “local” phone company’s customer service in Louisiana.

The questions are similar enough that the subtle difference just doesn’t come across and it sounds an awful lot like the extremely rude, “Where are you from?”

Although the ‘subtle difference’ here is the assumption that if you’re not white, you must be an immigrant or at best a child of immigrants; thus the question is not really “where did you grow up” but “do you have as much right to be here as I do?”

As she puts it: her family didn’t come the the United States - the United States came to them.

“We didn’t cross the border - the border crossed us!”  :D

*******

Yeah, I mean the past decade was pretty bad, but not actually that much worse than the eighties, or certainly the thirties. Not to mention the eighteen sixties.

My mother has this rule where she doesn’t talk about who she votes for.  The closest she’s ever come to breaking it was to tell us who she was planning on voting for the first time she was old enough to vote for president.

Unfortunately, Robert Kennedy didn’t live long enough for that to happen.

***

People are unique, generations are about trends.  And sometimes the trends don’t line up precisely with how we define things like generations.

In general the greatest generation tends to be more conservative than baby boomers.  Xers tend to be more conservative than boomers, but much less so than the gg.  Millennials are usually much less conservative than boomers.

But, aside from those being about trends, not any specific person here, it’s also not quite that simple - the younger half of each of these generations trends more like the generation younger than them.  Younger boomers are more likely to be conservatives than older boomers.  Those on the cusp of being Millennials vs. Xers tend to act more like Millennials when it comes to voting.

And with regard to the whole “young people don’t vote” thing.  That’s just a matter of age and overall trends, not a characteristic unique to Millennials.  People, in general, are less likely to vote when they are younger, the only blip on that stat in recent memory was when they lowered the voting age.  Also boomers are less likely to vote than their parents did at their age, Xers are less likely to vote than boomers did at their age, and so on and so forth.  This is a long term trend, not something that’s new or unique to the youngest block of voters.

“What the hell makes you think GenXers are conservatives?”

As a *group*: voting trends.  It’s not your parents conservatism, but older Xers (if I’m remembering this right) did trend more towards Perot than any other demographic.  etc.

But, like I said, aside from these being trends, not absolutes, the voting trends don’t coincide neatly with how we define generations.  Younger Xers trend just as liberal as older Millennials.  (and we really don’t know what the younger Millennials are like yet.)

(sorry I don’t have the stats on this.  I poured over them in the aftermath of the last 3 presidential elections - and the CA recall - but I no longer have the bookmarks.)

The only explanation I can think of for why something so contrary to my experience is true, is the red state/blue state divide.

Two words:  Ronald Reagan.  I don’t remember him fondly, but I think quite a few Gen-Xers do, unfortunately.

Two words:  Ronald Reagan.  I don’t remember him fondly, but I think quite a few Gen-Xers do, unfortunately.

I’ve been hating that douchebag since I was six years old.

Heh. I *learned* to speak, instead of just picking it up (anti-lisp training, theater training, voice deepening training, public speaking training), so many people think I sound foreign. I used to worry I had a terrible accent, but a friend analyzed it that I speak too carefully to sound native. I do get asked about my origins, but, being white, it’s usually in friendly curiousity. This thread has made me realize it would be a lot less mild an annoyance if I wasn’t so pale.

Two words:  Ronald Reagan.  I don’t remember him fondly, but I think quite a few Gen-Xers do, unfortunately.

Yeah, it was the Gen Xers we can blame for giving Reagan his two terms, because no-one loves an elderly Republican jingo better than teenagers and college students. The Boomers, especially those who went from “make love not war” to “greed is good” without batting an eye, had nothing to do with it. If only the slackers didn’t have such inordinate numbers, the nation would have followed the Boomers’ overwhelming support for Carter and Mondale.

Alex P. Keaton was funny because his political views were the opposite of the typical teenager.

#82: “colorlessblue seemed generally confused as to why this would happen”
I’m not confused at all. I understand why people from USA call themselves americans, and the explanation you gave is the same explanation I’ve known since I was 7 y/o. Everytime someone from another country *mentions* that some call themselves americans, there’s always at least one person from USA repeat it to explain why they’re wrong and shouldn’t identify themselves that way. So I know, and I’m not confused.
I wasn’t talking about why people from USA shouldn’t call themselves americans, but about why people from other countries might choose to do so and why it hurts when they’re denied this. The person I was (trying to) argue with declared she was baffled with the Colombian man’s refusal to accept facts. I was trying to tell her that him, and others, and maybe even me, could maybe, possibly, have a little reason to do so based on the fact that basically since the time when most of the America(s) were colonies there have been political movements all over the continent(s) constructed about some concept of all peoples in America(s) sharing some aspects of their Histories, that justifies these people’s beliefs that we’re all part of the same family. For some people this belief is an important part of their identity. Dividing America in 3, for all that it’s useful when you’re sitting in Geography class and trying to memorize countries’ names, is counterproductive if you’re aiming for unity.
Most of the non-USA people who identify as americans aren’t trying to take the word away from USA-people. They’re just claiming it for themselves *too*. They’re greeting as a sibling, and getting a face full of “Ew, no, we’re not related, I don’t even know you, go away.”
Granted, there are some people who want USA-people to stop calling themselves americans. There are people in some spanish-speaking countries who’ll use estadounidense, and some people in Brazil have adopted the word in portuguese too, and won’t use americano at all. Yeah, the people who go that far usually are holding a grudge. But honestly, they usually have a very good reason to be grudging.

Yeah, it was the Gen Xers we can blame for giving Reagan his two terms, because no-one loves an elderly Republican jingo better than teenagers and college students. The Boomers, especially those who went from “make love not war” to “greed is good” without batting an eye, had nothing to do with it. If only the slackers didn’t have such inordinate numbers, the nation would have followed the Boomers’ overwhelming support for Carter and Mondale.

We will also stretch back the GenX timeline to prove our point about GenX love for Ronald Reagan….even if it goes all the way back to 1962….or even 1958 rather than 1965 - late 1970’s.  Dammit!!!

Funny how I was one of the commenters who was arguing with junibrown on an earlier thread about Boomer greatness vs. GenX ignominy about how the actual GenX timeline does not really add up to her assertions of massive GenX love for Reagan…..especially if we’re talking his first term. 

hen one day I was surprised that one student complained that he failed his tests because the “teachers don’t speak English”.  None of them had thick accents and I hadn’t even really thought about it until then.  I suspect that student automatically stopped paying attention as soon as he heard the accent, or maybe he was just scapegoating his failure since he hadn’t been responsible enough to study from the notes and book (which were in English with presumably no accent at all).

That’s also been my experience.  Undergrads who do this almost always tend to be underperforming and using the TA/Prof’s “foreign accent” as a pretext to justify their sub-par academic performance that’s nearly always self-inflicted through lack of adequate studying, tuning out/sleeping through lectures, and/or partying too much/showing to classes in an inebriated state. 

I also find this mentality to be a sign of severe immaturity in its expectation that the Profs/TAs must cater to complaining student’s whim to get them to learn as if they were helpless little kids.  IMHO, once you become a college/university student and thus, a young adult, it is YOUR responsibility to do whatever it takes to get the most out of your college education…including working around any issues with Prof/TA’s accents….not the Profs/TA’s. 

As one famous literary author and Professor of Anglo-Saxon studies once said, “It is not my job to be a schoolmaster.”

Well, most English-speaking people can’t pronounce my German last name.  Therefore, I insist that everyone in the United States must learn German so that I can avoid this inconvenience.

Well, clearly you’re pronouncing it wrong…  (The previous generation of my family settled on a pronunciation that everyone gets wrong but is also not the way it would be pronounced back in the Old Country. And no one can spell it without asking.)

But snark aside, that reminds me that nativism and scapegoating of the current Foreign Evil has a long and dishonorable history in the US. (My father changed his first name shortly after coming to the US, so that there would be less stigma associated with being a foreigner…)

Alex P. Keaton was funny because his political views were the opposite of the typical teenager.

I graduated in 1987.  Given that I am a GenXer, I’m sorry to have to tell you that, no, Alex P. Keaton was not nearly as much of an anomaly as you seem to think, at least at my suburban Illinois high school.  A whole lot of people I went to school with thought Reagan was the greatest president ever and he really did singlehandedly dissolve the Soviet Union.  A frightening number of them still think so to this day.

Don’t forget, I was old enough to vote for George HW Bush had I chosen to.  I didn’t, but I knew plenty of people my age and a little older who did.

I was born in 1979, which I guess makes me a cusp GenXer? In any case, I can totally see the Gen-X-being-more-conservative thing, though with the proviso that this conservativeness frequently manifested itself in the form of libertarianism and quasi-libertarianism—a trend that I, thankfully, see much less of in the Millennials.

This resentment of the generation known as the Boomers, I don’t quite understand it. It breaks out like herpes on leftwing blogs, from time to time. It itches and oozes.

It seems that the Boomers stole things from their children, the Generation X. They stole their thunder, or they stole their jobs. They stole their chance to shape the future. These boomers, they ate a full meal of their own lives, and they left only the crumbs for their children. What selfish parents they must have been.

Generation X, I understand you’re angry at your parents. I understand that, when you a child, they were distant, yet smothering, and never really let you express yourself. But tell me, how long will this be a defining feature for you? Will this old family conflict continue as a kind of sideshow during our inevitable slide into death?

“Helen W. H. - forgot to say that the term I use to describe US citizens is USer, actually shorter than “American,” so you no longer have an excuse.”
Except for how STUPID it sounds…

iirc, the USA is the only country in the Americas that actually HAS “America” in its name, and it is in fact the only unique part of our name.

Generation X, I understand you’re angry at your parents.

Bwhahahaha!!!!! ROTFLOL!!!*

Parents?!! More like older siblings/cousins who continue to try puffing themselves up to continue intimidating their younger siblings/cousins….even when they’re like the washed up middle-aged adult whose life peaked in high school when s(he) was the captain of the high school football team or debating society and the younger siblings/cousins have long surpassed them academically and professionally. 

In my family, the boomers tended to be older cousins…not parents…...and most being non-impressive ones at that….especially considering amount of self-aggrandizing and contempt they displayed against me and other GenX cousins when we were growing up. 

Quite amusing in retrospect considering how a few in particular were specifically singled out by older relatives as examples to avoid emulating….especially one cousin in particular who came close to flunking out of college multiple times at a fourth-tier state college and had continuing career problems despite having graduated from one of the best private schools in Hawaii because he prioritized partying and getting drunk over academics/skill acquisition….a trait which continued well into his 40s.

Angry with parents? No.  More like rolling our eyes at older siblings/cousins recounting his/her days as the football/debating society captain for the upteenth time with the expectation of impressing us when it has long since gotten old and moldy. 

* With a few exceptions, all of my classmates’ parents tended to be from the older silent generation.  Boomers were more likely to be regarded by them as younger aunts/uncles or older cousins/siblings.

Generational bickering is fucking stupid.  It’s either, “the old farts screwed up the world,” or, “kids these days, they just don’t know.”  Give it a goddamned rest already.  There is not a single period in history when both were not true statements.  Get over it. 

On the difficulty some have understanding properly grammatical English spoken with an unfamiliar accent: 
It occurred to me when AZ passed its stupid law putting teachers’ jobs at risk if their English was too accented that there is a genuine pedagogical benefit to having teachers speak English with different accents than what the students are used to.

It means those students will be better able to understand more people more easily wherever in the English-speaking world they may travel to or wherever the people they meet later in life come from.  It has a benefit for them personally, professionally, and academically. 

(I think my experience growing up in a city with a wide variety of accents and dialects proves this out; I notice I rarely have much difficulty understanding the dialogue in English language foriegn (mostly British, but also some African and Australian) films while people I know whose childhoods exposed them to less diversity with the language require subtitles.)

The ear becomes more flexible perhaps, or maybe one just aquires a habit of listening more closely from an early age.  Either way, it’s hardly a bad thing.  It makes the AZ law just as stupid as it is unjust.

(...acquires…)

I’m a physics/math major at a major university. The worst professor/TA I ever had in terms of understanding wasn’t the East Asian (Chinese, I think; not quite sure) TA I had to use hand signals to communicate with in intro chem lab. It wasn’t the math professor who pronounced alpha ‘arpha’ (also Chinese, this time I’m much surer) and source ‘souk’ teaching my ODE class. No, it was the all-American guy teaching my quantum mechanics class last semester. Couldn’t understand a sentence he said, it was all mush, and I ended up dropping it. I’m actually looking forward to taking the class (again) with a Chinese professor—I had him for the previous half of the sequence, and he was *much* easier to follow.

So yes, complaining about the accent is stupid.

This was waaaaay back in the thread and is not particularly on topic, but, to whomever said they spoke in
“unaccented mid-western english” , no, sorry - you are not “unaccented”.  You have an mid-western accent.  Everyone has an accent.  There is no default.  Seriously, come over here to London and try to tell anyone you have no accent.

I graduated in 1987.  Given that I am a GenXer, I’m sorry to have to tell you that, no, Alex P. Keaton was not nearly as much of an anomaly as you seem to think, at least at my suburban Illinois high school

I graduated around the same time. We had a couple of Alex’s (Ayn Rand fans who were trying to be different) in the preceding senior classes, which places them more on the cusp of Boomer/GenX, but the majority of my own classmates who were politically aware were liberals or progressives. Granted, that’s my hippy-dippy school in Southern California, but I don’t recall many people of my cohort who were of age actually voting for Reagan in 1984—even the ones who went to conservative prep schools. Even the kids I knew from Orange County were in rebel mode against their Reagan-loving Silent Generation parents.

I would agree that a politically-aware 18 year old in 1988 would seem conservative in comparison to a politically-aware 18-year-old in 1968 (approx. one generation removed). However, I’d also argue that the a politically-aware 18-year-old in 1988 would be more liberal than a politically-aware 38-year-old in the same year—unless the 38 year old was still mired in memories of the 1960s.

Which brings us back to the premise of Family Ties, a premise designed to appeal to (surprise!) Boomers: here are some good progressive parents, former flower children, with Gen X kids who are conservative. How could it be otherwise, with Boomers being an apex of coolness, not to be outshone by any teenage generation to follow?

The only teenaged rebellion against that kind of fabulous parent was Alex’s lame Gen X version—similar to those Ayn Rand fans at my school. The running joke about Alex was that he was always trying to act a lot older than his age, and that’s what also made him funny to teenagers at the time —the people imitating the Preppy Handbook and worshiping Reagan in the mid-80s were already in their 20s: trailing Boomers (AKA “Generation Jones”).

Of course, as time went by and thanks to the guidance of his parents, Alex learned the value of altruism and compassion. Not co-incidently, that’s when a lot of younger viewers of the show started losing interest.

Don’t forget, I was old enough to vote for George HW Bush had I chosen to.  I didn’t, but I knew plenty of people my age and a little older who did.

But again: the Gen Xer vote has never been the majority; and the choices in the elections from 1980 to 1988 were between an elderly and regressive GOP candidate backed by an impressive campaign apparatus and a hapless and uninspiring Dem backed by incompetents. During those years Xers were always voting against someone (mainly out of rebellion of one sort or another), while Boomers were always voting for someone (mainly out of economic self-interest and/or ideology).

ks - I get it, I was just referencing back to the idea that no one ever asks your (meaning you, your personal) history or ethnicity. Given the context about your children that’s what I assumed you were talking about in your first post, and I was acknowledging that your personal story may not be reflecting the larger one told in history books. So even though I know white people’s general history, that doesn’t mean I know every individual white person’s history.

Helen w. h.:
Also, I would be one of those who gave you a stare - I was born in Iowa; reared in IA, CA, WA, TX, and ID; as an adult I have been a legal resident of ID and MA while living for extend periods due to work in MN, CA, FL, LA, NY, NJ, AR, AK, PA.  Where the hell am I supposed to say I am from?

How about exactly that? Maybe people want to know where you grew up, what your story is. Lighten up. I was born in TX, grew up mostly in FL and have lived up and down the east coast. When people ask me where I’m from I don’t take offense to some implied accusation that I am not a US citizen. Like I said, I understand where it comes from and I usually am sympathetic towards it, but in your case I find it annoying for some reason. I mean, talk about having an axe to grind.

I have mentioned, often and recently, that I am commenting on the fly, at work with a limited internet time allowed policy, and have dyslexia.  So yes, spelling is probably too much to ask for.

Please. Three posts and only two spelling errors, one of them “Colombia.” Own it.

Generation X, I understand you’re angry at your parents.

The parents of Gen Xers are usually Silents and early-stage Boomers. We’re not really angry at them—if anything they wanted us to get the jobs and shape the future, as most parents do. No-one blames them for demographic trend that allowed Boomers to dominate the discourse from the time when they were teenagers (the “first” teenagers in the modern sense) to the present. Exholt is closer to the mark on the type—the complaint isn’t that they screwed up the world (as RobW says, this is a constant) but that the Boomers’ self-regard makes it impossible to acknowledge their missteps along with their accomplishments.

Now if you want to see real anger from one generation to their parents, the grudge held by Boomers toward theirs is a classic. I usually joke that a large part of the anger stems from the parents being known as the Greatest Generation, where the Boomers are convinced that title should be theirs in perpetuity.

But tell me, how long will this be a defining feature for you?

Pretty much until most of them retire. Which, the economy and medical advances being what they are, won’t be until Xers are very old. I can easily imagine two Boomer centenarian pundits 30 years hence, re-fighting the same old ‘60s conflicts and culture wars on a 3D smell-o-vision cable news panel show. The good news is that Xers and Millenials will have stopped caring about such things decades before.

colorlessblue:  for example here in argentina someone from USA is called “yankee” no matter wich region of USA is from. we usually don’t identify them as “americans”.
and i think nowdays USA don’t have the political and economic power that used to have over latin america: on the contrary we are starting to have the power to say no to USA . (in my opinion, through populism, that’s why so many people are horrified by populism: no more a “father” (USA) telling us what to do)
so, if people from USA called themselves americans (as if they were the “real” so the better ones: a laugh here) let them….is more that they are used to it, the symbolic power of the word is not there anymore.
and i have similar experiences like you with “americans”. one guy told me that most women in latin america want to marry an “american” for the green card (¡¡!!) meaning: latin american: potential illegal inmigrant.
but ignorants are everywhere so….

No-one blames them for demographic trend that allowed Boomers to dominate the discourse from the time when they were teenagers (the “first” teenagers in the modern sense) to the present.

Not sure about boomers being the “first teenagers”.  Weren’t the first teens the younger members of the silent generation such as the first fans of rock’n'roll during the mid-late 1950s?

I usually joke that a large part of the anger stems from the parents being known as the Greatest Generation, where the Boomers are convinced that title should be theirs in perpetuity.

Sad to say, it isn’t always a joke. 

Not only have I seen such bitterness you describe in parts of the MSM and even on blogs like this one, but also IRL…..take the boomer-aged cousins and their rebellion against their parents…..or the many boomer-aged high school teachers and moreso…alums at my undergrad who still exhibit this anger and taking it out on us GenXers by accusing us of being slackers, too conservative, and “politically apathetic”.....despite becoming big-shot senior corporate execs, biglaw partners, and more increasingly acting and sounding very much like the generation they resent. 

My father had a friend named Val Bjornson, who was the State Treasurer of Minnesota. Val was Icelandic descent and spoke Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. According to my father, he won re-election over and over by going out and speaking to the voters in their native languages. I think of this when people complain about ‘press one for English.’

My father had a friend named Val Bjornson, who was the State Treasurer of Minnesota. Val was Icelandic descent and spoke Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. According to my father, he won re-election over and over by going out and speaking to the voters in their native languages. I think of this when people complain about ‘press one for English.’

Your father’s friend won’t have as much of an issue with this….if he’s even on the radar of the “English only” crowd because he looks like a “Real Murikan”

On the other hand, I know a well-educated US-born Chinese-American Professor at an Ivy who was accused by some idiot undergrad of having a “strong accent” even though her spoken American standard English is indistinguishable accent-wise from other US-born folks and is far better in the grammar department than most “Real Americans” I’ve encountered…..even ones with graduate educations…..and I’m not just talking MBAs here. 

What’s more sad is that most of the “Real American” kids who are entering college, it is very likely they will need to take remedial English writing courses….even at the Ivy/Ivy-level colleges.  I made good money tutoring some of those very “Real American” undergrads in basic writing skills they should have picked up in K-12 during my undergrad and as a moonlighter after graduating for spare cash…..and I have a look which screams “furriner” to “Real Americans”.

Back to my original question: I would think that the percent of people who want to decrease immigration would go up for a bit from the eldest until people who are 40 or so and then decrease again. Does it (ie, does anyone have more age specific results)?

People born in the 1920s and 30s would have grown up around a lot of immigrants and many of their parents would be immigrants, while those born in the 1950s and 60s would have been around far fewer. The eldest are probably much more likely to be racist (because of segregation and governement rules) but they might not have problems with immigration as a general concept. When you think about this oldest age group, remember that the immigration act of 1924 was designed as much to keep out Italians as it was to keep out asians (and many of the stereotypes about Mexicans now were stereotypes of Italians then).

I have seen many polls that show the age group 30-45 is more conservative than those older and younger than them. I’m not quite sure why, but it seems to be true. I’m 47 (and probably in this more conservative group) which means that I’m not assigned a set ‘generation’—sometimes I’m lumped in with the Boomers, every once in a while with gen X, and fairly often I’m left out of both. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always thought this obsession with generations is so silly. I have a lot more in common with many 90 or 20 year old liberals than I do with a 45 year old conservative (and not just in politics).

People born in the 1920s and 30s would have grown up around a lot of immigrants and many of their parents would be immigrants, while those born in the 1950s and 60s would have been around far fewer.
I have noticed a similar split in how people embrace or shy away from technology.  My husband’s grandmother, nearly 100, will see a new gadget and say “let me see THAT” ... while his nearly 80 year old mother will learn it eventually, but initially recoil from it.

Think about what went on between 1915 and 1925 in technology versus 1935 and 1945 and you get some idea of why this is.  I suspect that exposure to large immigrant populations, plus the mixing of those populations in WWII foxholes and troopships and camps, makes some difference in how people view immigration.

I think we also need to get the word out about how very immigrant-laden the armed forces are these days.  I think that is something that older vets could relate to.

“Maybe people want to know where you grew up, what your story is. Lighten up.”

Antiope, if that were true, I would not get asked “where are you from?” much more often than my white coworkers and friends, but I do.  When I politely answer, “I grew up in a suburb just outside of Boston,” and I get, “is that where you are from originally?” or “no, where are you REALLY from?” or even worse, “oh, you know what I meant!”—as if I am the one who is being rude—I can only assume that these people are just trying to find a socially acceptable way of asking, “so, I noticed that your skin is darker than mine.  What’s up with that?”

I mean, it doesn’t ruin my day, but it is pretty annoying.  Maybe instead of telling people to lighten up, you could simply take note of the fact that some people are really sick of having to explain their family’s immigration history to people they barely know.  Maybe instead of piling on and then acting insulted when they are annoyed by an annoying question, a friendlier gesture would be to, well, not.  There are plenty of more relevant questions you can ask if you want to know what somebody’s story is.

My favorite take on this one is Tom Haverford on Parks & Recreation - sure he lives in small-town Indiana and is named Tom, but he’s clearly brown (played by Aziz Ansari) and when asked where he’s from is like, um, South Carolina (which is where Aziz is from).  And also had a green-card marriage to a white Canadian woman for most of the first two seasons.

You would think people in Boston would remember that 2 of those 9-11 planes left from BOS and that the terrorists on them came here via car from Canada and drove to Boston or entered New England via plane at Portland, ME.  (the two I remember off the top of my head)

As I am obviously Canadian, please read the following comment with that in mind.

NO THEY DID FUCKING NOT!  None of the 9/11 hijackers crossed the border from Canada, and we, after 9 years, are still goddamn fucking PISSED OFF at Americans who spread that story, up to an including cabinet members of the current administration.

“I would agree that a politically-aware 18 year old in 1988 would seem conservative in comparison to a politically-aware 18-year-old in 1968 (approx. one generation removed). However, I’d also argue that the a politically-aware 18-year-old in 1988 would be more liberal than a politically-aware 38-year-old in the same year—unless the 38 year old was still mired in memories of the 1960s.”

But, what happens when the 18 year old of yesteryear is now 38, and the 38 year old of yesteryear is now 58?

Granted, my own personal experience is likely coloring this, but I think what you tend to get is what has happened in my family where the 38 year old is not only much more traditionally conservative than today’s 18 year old, but also significantly more conservative than the 58 year old.