From pritheworld:

Today on The World: The attention being paid to the two Tsarnaev brothers raises important questions about assimilation.

Researchers have found that immigrants who arrive here as children or teens often have a tough adjustment. If they came from a region beset by war, their challenges are even greater.

A fresh look at immigrant students and how they become Americans, next time on The World. 

This raises a very interesting—and controversial!—question: Can xenophobia “radicalize” minorities? 

My own experience, as a young immigrant (I came here when I was almost 10) suggests that this might be true. I was lucky, I spoke fluent English (my mother was an American who was living overseas when she married my father, a Bolivian). But it took me several years to acculturate to becoming “American” in the same way as my peers (I didn’t use contractions when I spoke for the first two years I was here, for example).

In the end, I was torn. Half of me set out to become as “American” as possible. I devoured American pop culture (to this day I have a firmer grasp of pop culture than my wife, a native Chicagoan, does). And so did many of my immigrant friends. And it was the little things that made the biggest difference. My friend Bay recounts how she didn’t feel “American” until she could order a veggie cheeseburger from a fast food restaurant (as an observant Israeli Jew, she ate kosher). 

But I also became ardently Bolivian, and probably in a way I might not have been had I stayed in Bolivia. I even remember in sixth grade being taunted and beat up by two class bullies (ironically, African-Americans) because of my foreignness. My response: I stood with my fists clenched and crying and started signing the Bolivian national anthem. For years, I would look away from the national flag at sporting events or graduation commencements when the anthem was sung. 

And so I’ve remained conflicted. I’ve had times when I’ve become much more American than Bolivian, and then times when the pendulum has shifted. And then there’s the fact that I have a state of Michigan tattoo. But I’m also lucky. I “look” “American” (unless you see my name written out, I could pass for a white American male pretty easily). I also speak with a fluent American (midwestern) accent. But I’m also really good at spotting accents and code switching. After all, my first task as a 10-year-old was to figure out how to fit in, how to assimilate, how to infiltrate mainstream culture. I got really good at it.

Hence, my first reaction when I started learning about the Tsarnaev brothers: I suspected that how they were treated by other Americans (both in their daily lives and—perhaps more importantly—in the broader media narrative) probably contributed to their radicalization. In the end, my personal gut feeling is that what the Tsarnaev boys did has more to do with their experience living in America than about their ethnic background.

From shortformblog:

Today In Bad Ideas: Some guy named Brad Paisley recorded a song, with LL Cool J, talking about how hard it is to be a white man who just wants to wear the Confederate flag in peace. It’s called “Accidental Racist”, and you can find the (completely problematic) lyrics here. source

Here’s the thing that you just need to understand. The Confederate flag is a symbol of the Confederacy and what it stood for, not the traditions and values (like hospitality) of the South. 

The Confederate flag was adopted only by the Confederacy. It doesn’t predate the Confederacy, and it stopped being used with the fall of the Confederacy. In fact, the flag was only rarely used in the Confederacy; it was the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (Robert E. Lee’s army) and only later became associated with the entire confederacy. In fact, the “Confederate flag” you’re familiar with was never the official flag of the Confederacy.

The flag had a renaissance of sorts much later. Much later. The flag began appearing during WWII on units with Southern histories. The first use of the Confederate “stars and bars” on a Southern state flag was as early as 1894: no surprise, it was Mississippi. But that means that Mississippians didn’t mind revoking their heritage (the Magnolia flag, which was carried into battle during the Civil War by Mississippi regiments). Georgia’s controversial Confederate flag wasn’t introduced until 1956.

My problem with the “it’s part of our history” argument is two-fold: (1) The history of Southern states extends much further back than the Confederacy, so I’m left wondering why that pivotal (and controversial) moment has become identified as the historical juncture that should define what “the South” is about. (2) The history of the Confederacy was extremely brief: it lasted less than five years. (By contrast, the Third Reich lasted more than twice as long, giving the Nazi flag a stronger claim to historical tradition.)

So we’re left with an interesting historical juxtaposition. The Confederate flag was not widely used within the Confederacy, but is clearly identified with the Confederacy’s cause. And that flag had a boom in popularity starting in the 1950s. Coincidentally, the 1950s was the start of the modern US Civil Rights Movement. In other words, a symbol of the Confederacy (which will forever by identified with slavery) became popular in South at the same time as African-Americans began advocating for political and social equality.

Now you see why the Confederate flag is “controversial” (to say the least). It seems remarkable that people who want to defend their region’s rich cultural traditions and history (and they have many good reasons to do so, I should point out) have gravitated to a very particular symbol identified with racism. Attaching themselves to that symbol meant jettisoning historical state flags (where was the reverence for history then?) and doing so at the same time as Jim Crow and segregation was being challenged in the South.

Perhaps it’s because I’m just a “carpetbagger” (as I’m sure many of my students think), but I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone who—once confronted with the sheer historical narrative of that flag—would continue to embrace it. Waving a Confederate flag around is a clear sign that either (1) you don’t like black people very much, (2) you are in favor of violent overthrow of the US federal government, or (3) you really don’t care if people think you believe in the first two options or not. 

EDIT: And please don’t even get me started on people in northern states that embrace the Confederate flag. When I see the “stars and bars” in Indiana, I know exactly what it means.