Ask Lemmy

Okay let's play a game. Let's pretend you're Italian, you said Italian, we'll go with that. You speak Italian, you're used to traditional Italian food, you believe in traditional Italian values. Things are done a certain way in Italy, and you're used to it that way. Then one day, for whatever reason be it economic prospects, famine, war, whatever, you decide to leave Italy forever and board a ship bound for America. New Life in the New World and all that jazz.

What do you do when you step off the boat at Ellis Island? Do you:

A. Continue to speak your native language at least at home, become part of a community of fellow Italian emigrants, continue to cook and eat your traditional dishes...as best as you can with the ingredients available in this new hemisphere at any rate, do things the way you're used to doing them, retaining your traditional values...or

B. Delete all that tedious "back in the old country" nonsense and instantly become an English speakin' cheeseburger eatin' stetson wearin' rootin' tootin' howdy y'all.

Going with option A, huh? How original. We've run this experiment on real hardware literally hundreds of millions of times over the last 250 years and not a single immigrant has gone with Option B.

Okay so...now you're an American. You're still an Italian though. It's who and what you are. You get married and have children. How do you raise those children? Do you...

A. Speak Italian to them at home, take them to the same church you were raised in, feed them the foods you were raised eating, teach them the same values you believe in, tell them the tales of your home country's folklore as bedtime stories...or

B. Speak to them only in English, send them to the First Baptist Church, feed them apple sauce and happy meals, and raise them on Sesame Street and Marvel comics.

Going with option A again? Daring today, aren't we? Your children are required to go to American public school. They're formally taught to read, write, speak and understand English, and invariably put in the role of translating for their parents during doctors visits and the like. They're taught American legends like the first thanksgiving with the pilgrims and Indians, of George Washington and that cherry tree. They grow up eating the food their parents invented out of necessity, like spaghetti and meatballs, or chicken parmesan.

One day, well into their adulthood, someone asks your children a question. It might be "Where are you from?" or some similar phraseology. How do your bilingual spaghetti-eating children answer this question?

"We're Italian."

Now that we've been on that journey, I want you to imagine logging onto the internet to find some dumb fuck who never left the Old Country, who has never been to a place where "What is your current nationality" and "What is your personal heritage" are different questions with different answers and thus has no grasp at all on the concept of diaspora says "No you're not."