Is Assimilation Necessary?

(Imagine that the bear is an immigrant dressed as an American, and the word "bear" was substituted with the word "immigrant")

For an assignment I recently interviewed a friend who came to America as a refugee from Liberia. When I asked him about what the differences in America and Africa he told me that he loved his culture and tried to keep it as much as possible; he also told me that he had a hard time in his new school because people were not that friendly. Last year I interviewed another friend for another assignment, and she told me about what it was like moving to America from Slovakia. She said that her boyfriend (who emigrated from Poland) did not want to assimilate in and did not have the need to fit in as an “American”. This was hard for her because she wanted to fit in as an American and live the “American dream”. He eventually learned English and they have assimilated in to American culture, but while doing so they lost a lot of their own culture.

Comparing the two of them, I asked myself whether or not a person needs to assimilate to become an American. While my one friend has tried to hold on to his African culture, he has not completely assimilated into America. On the other hand, my other friend assimilated but lost a lot of her culture. It seems that to become American it needs to be all or nothing with assimilation. This is clearly not the case for all immigrants, but for many that I know it is. To be able to fit in with their new country, they need to sacrifice a lot. Becoming “American” comes at a cost.

The question now is whether or not it is worth it. Everything comes at a cost, but the trouble is deciding whether or not it is worth it. Is losing your culture, your old life, worth making a new one? Exactly how much of your culture must you lose before becoming an assimilated American? There are too many questions that can be asked, and the answers are never clear cut, but in the end it really comes down to how much a person if willing to give up to get their new life.

In many countries Americans are seen negatively because they expect everyone to speak English when they come to the States, but when we go somewhere else we still expect them to speak English. For the most part Americans don’t have to worry about losing their own culture, and that makes it difficult to see the impact it can have on a person. The price of being American is a high one to pay, and assimilation may be the price.

Waterboarding and Our Country

The soldiers in the picture have smirks, almost smiles, on their faces while toturing this man

In an episode of Law and Order SVU, ADA (Assistant District Attorney) Novak becomes upset when the FBI refuses to give details on a suspect’s alibi. She says the police questioning these “people of interest” to verify the alibi would jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Novak becomes upset by the FBI’s self-appointed superiority and questions the hierarchy of the parties involved: “So your work trumps putting murders and rapists behind bars because there is a terrorist around every corner?” The FBI representative later says to ADA Novak that “there is a terrorist around every corner… you just don’t know about it”.

When sending troops to Iraq, the public was told that it was because of weapons of mass destruction. This was never proven, and it is questioned as to if it was a fabricated statement giving the government an excuse to deploy troops. They went in without the public having real knowledge and tried to justify the government’s actions by saying that we needed to go there because of information relating to national safety. Recently information about water boarding has been shown publicly, and the Obama administration has described it as illegal torture. Obama ordered that memos on these actions should be released to the public, hopefully in an attempt to change Bush’s secrecy that has caused many Americans to lose trust in the government.

It can be nearly impossible to draw a line in war, but one must be drawn. The War on Terror is debatable as is, but with torturous methods being used, Americans can lose faith in the war and the government as a whole. Still, the question remains: do the ends justify the means? This question can be applied to numerous topics, but in war it can be even more debatable. If the public cannot be sure about the justifications of a war, how can we be able to agree with these techniques? It can neither be confirmed nor denied on if this has even helped, because the public doesn’t know everything about what’s going on overseas, but as a general statement, torture is many times not a good thing. Not only do we hold the risk of putting innocent people trough a terrible ordeal, but torturing people in countries we are at war with only gives them motivation to do the same to our soldiers. A line can be hard to draw in war, but if one is not drawn, who knows what the consequential actions, to our country and from our country, could be.

An article talks about some of the details on waterboarding.

Can Patriotism Go Too Far?

While watching the movie “Born on the Fourth of July” in class, Ron Kovic, while in high school, said that he was willing to die for his country in Vietnam. “That lack of comprehension for his own mortality is what makes him a great soldier,” (as Mrs. Logan said), that he is willing to do anything. It isn’t until after he returns home, paralyzed, that his views on the war change. He becomes an anti-war protestor, but is still just as patriotic as ever. It takes an incredibly strong person to fight in a war, risking their lives for their country, and they should be seen as just that; however, it takes an even stronger person to be able to speak out against war, to say that we can “fight communism” without guns. This should not take away from the bravery of soldiers; we should be supporting our soldiers in Iraq right now, by bringing them home. When he demands to his parents that he will die for his country if he needs to, it seems melodramatic and childish, but that may be necessary. If a soldier didn’t demand that they were willing to die for their country, for what they think is right, we would have no military. Kovic went to fight, while some were forced to fight. During the draft many young men were proud to fight, but there were many that tried to afford it by all costs. If people do not want to be in a war, it will be easy to see based on how they respond to it. People should not be forced into a war, and war should not be made with false pretenses.

Earlier this month in a “rampage in a West Bank settlement,” a Palestinian man, Moussa Tayet, killed an Israeli child and injured another. The murderer confessed and even turned in the knife used, but that doesn’t seem to change much. An innocent child is still dead, and a family will never be the same. After the attack, a Palestinian group falsely claimed responsibility, as if they were proud, as if they would have been happy if it was their killing. The killing was premeditative, as an article in the Chicago Times said, and Tayet said it was religiously motivated. I don’t know any religion that would say to kill an innocent child, and although I am not religious, it insults me that people try to misinterpret religion to justify killing.

Although the murder occurred the day after Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's new Prime Minister, took office, his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said “there is no reason to begin negotiations on a final peace accord with the Palestinians” because they “shouldn't be freed from their obligations”. But why? Tayet should not be vindicated from his responsibility for murdering a 13 year old boy, but in order to stop the killings to come, some sort of peace must be reached. The Middle East’s violence is not going to stop unless proactive measures are taken. Just like any other war, there will not be change unless both sides are willing to work together. This is clearly more easily said than done, but unless people and countries are willing to try, peace remains a distant thought, an idea of what the world could be like, an image that doesn’t seem real. A proverb says that “he who sweats more in peace, bleeds less in war.” If we are not willing to work for peace, then we should be expecting war. Peace is not something that happens on a whim, but it seems like war is. We know war is bad; we know it is so bad that we aren’t even willing to admit it. With numerous US wars in our history, an actual declaration of war has sparsely been made. We are currently in a “War on Terror,” but technically, it is not a war. To put an end to war, we must first be willing to end it.

War, what is it good for? If innocent children are being killed and countries aren’t even trying to resolve their problems, then absolutely nothing.

The effects of the holocaust and World War II are not completely gone… yet

An article titled Tattoos from Auschwitz Horror Reunite Lost Inmates tells the story of four men who suffered through the holocaust, never knowing or talking to each other, reunited. Not only were these men together at Auschwitz, but they were together in line, with consecutive serial number tattoos. These men, once treated as sub-human, have become men, not serial numbers, to hundreds of thousands of people who are now going to hear their story. Holocaust deniers can say what they want, but these men are no longer B-14594, B-14595, B-14596, and B-14597. These men are Menachem Sholowicz, Anshel Sieradzki Shaul Zawadzki, and Yaakov Zawadzki. People said “never again,” we need to say not now? Genocide is a war that needs to be fought. These men are around the age of 80 now, and they are not the only living survivors, but soon there will be no one left. There will be no more survivors to prove the effects of the holocaust, and there will be not survivors left to tell their story. This genocide could become a thing of the past, a history lesson that we read about in our text books, a thing thought about that seems almost unrealistic. Unfortunately, genocide is not going to be a thing of the past. There are still people dying from genocide, from war, in Darfur. This cycle of war and killing needs to stop before the world can know peace. We will not be silent. It is within our control to stop genocide. These men are real examples of what war can do to people, and it needs to end here.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace” –Jimi Hendrix

A War or Not a War?...It Doesn't Really Matter

The definition of war is definitely debatable, and while some people think that war is sometimes necessary, one type of “war” is never necessary: genocide. To me, war is people dying unnecessarily or as a result of others’ mistakes. Genocide, which may not be classified as a war, is definitely an unnecessary killing because of and supported by a lot of mistakes. This weekend I went to a Darfur Rally downtown. It was cold and rainy, which was probably why the turnout was good, not great, but what a speaker said made a big impact on me. He was a Lost Boy of Sudan, and said that he was not sorry it was raining, because the rain is the tears of the refugees in Darfur.

Not everyone may agree that this is an example of a war, and it may not be, but considering the facts, it should be treated like a one-sided war. First of all, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was recently indicted on war crimes by the International Criminal Court. 400,000 people have died in Darfur, and too many are in refugee camps in Chad and other places. Sudan does everything in its power to stop outside help, but should that stop us? Several aid groups from Sudan were forced out of the country by al-Bashir during a meningitis outbreak. Just because Sudan is saying jump does not mean that we need to say how high, or even jump at all. If we cannot even help to stop this obvious genocide, how can we ever expect to have peace?

At the rally there was a man handing out fliers. I took one, assuming that it was information on Darfur, and didn’t look over it until later. Before I read it, my friend said that the guy was talking to people, and once again I assumed it was about Darfur. Once again I was wrong. This man was preaching that we need to destroy Israel’s government by “non-violent” measures. He said he was a pacifist and against any group that makes war, and he stood there with the diluted idea that destroying a country by any means is anti violence. He went on to describe how it was Israel’s fault that countries across the world had gun problems and war, and other similar statements that were equally as ridiculous.

Luckily, every time he preached there were people there who argued with him. At one point I asked him how he could think that he was a pacifist when he handed out papers with swastikas on it. He spurred off a mumbled response and changed the subject. With this amount of hate in the world, it’s hard to see peace in sight, but it needs to start somewhere, and ending this genocide and standing up to people like this man is a good start.

This article talks about how Sudan has tried to keep aid out of the country.

Does the poor's health not matter?

A recent article from the Chicago Tribune portrayed the flaws in health care system. “Indigent and under-insured patients” were sent to Cook County's Stroger Hospital after not getting treated fully at other non-profit hospitals. Some of these patients came to the ER at Stroger's with discharge slips and prescriptions from the non-profit hospitals. People with broken jaws and tumors were sent with discharge slips saying to go to a Cook County Hospital, as well as a woman who came with one saying to get a follow up on a uterine tumor surgery. This hospital that is trying to help people without insurance is being overloaded with patients, and in this economy resources are scarce. It’s hard enough not being able to afford health insurance, but then being turned away from hospitals after major surgery, or with broken bones or tumors just seems ridiculous. Universal Health care definitely has its ups and downs, but things like this make it seem pretty good. Privilege entitles people to a lot of things because of status and resources, but that doesn’t mean that others should be left behind. A lot of things in life come at a price, but for health care it doesn’t seem right. In class we read "Being Poor." Being poor isn't a choice, it isn't because some people work less hard, it is a situation that is difficult to get out of, and people’s health should not be penalized. People are too quick to judge, and too slow to put themselves in other people's shoes. Not having insurance can be a scary thing, and fear of not getting any medical attention should not even have to be a thought.