S/O You can be canceled even if you aren’t a bigot, it happened to me
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Anonymous
Off topic, but that's what you took away from TAR? Wow. |
Anonymous
Yes. Bcs you have been a U.S. citizen for over a century. And North America was colonized and invaded. As mentioned, Anglos did not call the Vikings immigrants. There is a vast difference between you and me. I immigrated here during my lifetime. You have NOT. Nor was there such a thing as a poor "immigrant" around the turn of the 19 to 20 centuries. They had money to leave. I will never been see as an American, even though I have been one since 1996. You know it, I know it, all the people here know it. So, enough with your BS. You are not an immigrant. Long ago, your ancestors took a ship here, not you. Facts matter. Nation of immigrants, a nation of invaders, a nation of colonists, not we are all immigrants here. |
Anonymous
Perhaps people are reacting to your hostility towards them. You should try to smile more. |
Anonymous
+1 I learned that from the JK Rowling podcast myself and it was one of the most fascinating tidbits in the podcast. The people who were trying the accused "witches" were often Harvard-educated, and the odds were high that the accusers were literate because education was a priority in Massachusetts colonial society. The judge and jury grappled with their consciences, discussed the rules of evidence and how to apply them, and consulted clergymen (who were also well-educated). The witches were not burned by an unruly mob of dumb farmers with pitchforks. They were accused, tried, and burned by the ivory tower. That was unsettling and illuminating to learn. |
Anonymous
People like you are the reason OP got cancelled and had to endure a lot of anguish and trauma. Because you just make things up. |
Anonymous
It’s one of the things. She wasn’t the nicest woman but her student(s) did take things out of context and put them on social media. That’s a fact |
Anonymous
Another immigrant here (as in: I immigrated) but you sure are a peach. You are giving us all a bad name. If you don’t like your social standing maybe you should leave |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
This is not true. There are many people who are bound to an orthodoxy (worse than any religion) that makes them cut off friends and family who violate any facet of their beliefs. Just watched a bizarre situation when we hosted some of my son's friends for Spring Break. We had a policy discussion over dinner on cartel violence at the border and two of them spent an entire day crying in a bedroom. I want to say that "you are an adult now, use your words to make a policy argument." But somehow that discussion was so egregious that he has been cut-off as being "anti-immigrant" by those two after four years of friendship (and hosting them). So just think of how little co-workers could value you. |
Anonymous
I will bite. You are right, despite being here for 27 years, I do not consider you an American. If you come to this country and denigrate its people, history and institutions, you are not an American. You are here solely to take from its economy, which makes you a leech, not a citizen. Change your tune and you will be welcomed. |
Anonymous
I didn't say I was an immigrant. I said that I might say "we are a nation of immigrants" and that one reason I feel that to be true is that my own family immigrated here not that long ago and my family history is one of immigration. My family experienced discrimination and poverty when they moved here. I have a great great grandmother who worked, and died, as an indentured servant (she still "owed" her employer for her passage when she died at 29). I'm not claiming "immigrant" as a descriptor for me, but my family were (and definitely not colonists or invaders). It's pretty clear my family came here looking for opportunity and freedom, not to conquer anything. You know, immigrants. I'm not even sure how I feel about the phrase "nation of immigrants" because, for instance, it does not account for the many people whose family were brought her forcibly as slaves. But I also don't find it offensive as a term and I generally think the intention behind it is a positive one. To return to the subject of this thread, I think "cancelling" someone for using this phrase would be incredibly wrong-headed. I do think it's different than actual prejudice/racism and that you could have a productive conversation with someone about this kind of disagreement. To me, cancellation indicates that there is no point in engaging, but I think these are situations where engagement is actually desirable -- maybe we all learn something and are better people for it. |
Anonymous
Previous poster here who tried to engage with you earlier but no response.. You do not want to engage with anyone. Your rigid thinking and self righteousness is pitiable and perhaps why you feel so hostile because you can’t comprehend the world is more Complex than your fragile construction of us vs them. If you feel like no one will ever see you as an American perhaps it’s because you cling so tightly to the idea of your own difference—that only current first generation immigrants count as such as you refuse to See that you have a lot more in common with the millions of people who call this imperfect place home. . This country has had many waves of immigrants for centuries (from Colonists to those seeking asylum) and the wonderful thing is how immigration has made this country a better richer more interesting place even with challenges and anti immigration sentiment. This idea you have if you vs everyone else is a colonists is stupid. Look around. Half the country speaks Spanish. There are east and south Asian and Middle eastern communities everywhere in every state now. And the forced migration of millions of Black—will you deny their heritage at Americans and yet also descendants of a painful diaspora, one their ancestors did not choose? I’m white and I’m sure you would call me a colonist . one side of my Jewish grandparents fled Poland in 1935 , the other side the pogroms in 1890s. No they did not have money to leave. They left everything they had. (What about you? Did you come here I. 1995 penniless or what it to study or work?) My great grandmother lived with 6 people in. 300 sq fr tenement sewing clothes 10 hours a day. My grandfather who came in the 1930s lost everything (including extended family) and restarted here. He became a citizen, and ultimately a renowned professor. Thanks to him I have benefited from both being an American but also have a family heritage. I’m not going to claim I’m an immigrant by any means but the idea that reminding people that this country’s best achievements and aspirations have come from generations of immigrants is important. Of course this country was founded on exploitation and genocide. That’s undeniable. But it’s also been formed by immigration and you are not the first nor the last immigrant here. You are part of a larger story. The idea that this story does not count and that you want all people who are not recent immigrants to identify as colonists (and bigots!) actually fuels a right wing nativism/xenophobia that pits “white Christian Americans” against everyone else. But you would rather attack people than engage in real dialogue. |
Anonymous
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Op…
Did you apologize? Acknowledge the (real or performative) hurt feelings? Obviously I wasn’t there and I don’t know the dynamics of your workplace but I worked with someone in the past who had a similar situation. She made a comment that was relatively benign but someone reported it. It wasn’t the comment but many other comments she had made in the past coupled with the types of things she posts on social media. The comment wasn’t offensive on its own but in the context of all the other things, it was. She asked me for advice and I told her to apologize and do better. Even though she felt that she hadn’t done anything wrong, she was going to have to apologize to get certain coworkers off the warpath. |
Anonymous
OP here. Interesting comment. Some context (again, I’m being careful here to protect my anonymity). I did attempt to apologize to the person who raised the issue, a colleague at my level. That was at the beginning, when I thought it was a genuine allegation based on what I assumed was a misunderstanding. They refused to speak with me. No complaint was ever filed against me, it was all done via informal gossip. A major issue was that the person complaining had many close friends in this workplace, and while I was friendly with many people, I was not particularly close to anyone. This allowed the rumors to spread pretty unchecked. I also made the mistake initially if declining to discuss it or defend myself the first couple times I had the opportunity, because it was raised with me as idle gossip (“I heard there’s some drama between you and [X], what’s that about?” I honestly thought I was being respectful to the other person by not engaging with people in the subject. I only learned later that this just resulted in making me look guilty because people assumed I didn’t want to discuss it because was wrong. But actually I was dying to discuss it because it felt so unfair to me, but I viewed that as an immature impulse and tried to avoid the gossip mill. There was no formal complaint or investigation, so no opportunity for me to provide context and get actual feedback. Maybe if that had happened I would I been able to better understand how or why my words had been taken out of context and be able to apologize in a real way for anything I’d done to contribute to harm or misunderstanding. I’ve since come to believe there was no misunderstanding, and no formal complaint/investigation specifically because it would have given me a chance to explain and the explanation would very obviously undermine the narrative. It was done entirely through gossip, mostly spread outside work via socializing. But my name was mud, and many people simply associated me with mess and drama— it wasn’t about the underlying supposed offense. If this had been handled with direct conversation and a chance to apologize, it would be a very different story. They didn’t want to fix the perceived problem. They wanted an excuse to smear my name in a way that gave me no chance to defend myself. |
Anonymous
Perhaps you should not call me a butcher and a savage (BCS, I am from a specific country) when you go around murdering and bombing people worldwide. |