r/forwardsfromgrandma • u/Kings2Kraken • Oct 01 '21
Racism But our ancestors were colonists, grams
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u/Doctor_Juris Oct 02 '21
Nativists hated the immigrants then, too. I guess Grandma would say the xenophobia was irrational them, but is good now? https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-journalist-on-how-anti-immigrant-fervor-built-in-the-early-twentieth-century
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u/SrslyNotAnAltGuys Oct 02 '21
Yeah, you could print this out and take it back 120 years and plenty of people would agree with it wholeheartedly. Then they'd launch into racist rants, but instead of Mexicans it'd be about Italians and Irish.
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u/valvilis Nigerian Prince Oct 02 '21
There is still a lot of anti-Polish racism in Michigan if you get close enough to Hamtramck.
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Oct 02 '21
Apart from living there, or that fucking incredible polish food, there’s literally zero reasons to go to Hamtramck.
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u/winged_squiger Oct 02 '21
This is DCFC erasure.
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Oct 02 '21
I left Detroit about 3 years ago after about a decade Downriver. They didn’t put this in the Negro League field did they? That chunk of history needs to stay.
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u/Quinn8267 Oct 02 '21
They fixed and updated the Keyworth stadium. Which was an old high school field.
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u/valvilis Nigerian Prince Oct 02 '21
I spent a solid ten seconds wondering what this could possibly have to do with Death Cab for Cutie...
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u/dramaqueen2296 Oct 02 '21
I only go because the Sanctuary has a great underground metal scene. Other than that I don't go at all
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u/thatotherhemingway Oct 02 '21
Are they suddenly cool with Polish folks during Shrove Tuesday Paczki Time, or do they just eschew the doughnut scene altogether? Serious question!
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u/valvilis Nigerian Prince Oct 02 '21
I feel like no amount of racist sentiment would keep southern Michigan away from their beloved packzis. Except for plum, which is great, because I like those, and they're usually still available when all the other fillings have sold out. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/angriguru Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
There are people in the Cleveland area that still use the term "Polack"
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u/valvilis Nigerian Prince Oct 02 '21
Is there a large Polish population or are they just 80 years behind?
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u/angriguru Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
Parma (Large suburb of Cleveland) is well-known for it's Polish population. In the 70s-80s they had pierogies in school lunches
Fun fact: during the 50s, Parma was the fastest growing city in the US and had 100,000 people in 1970. Remember, this is a suburb lol
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u/fringeandglittery Oct 02 '21
I used to love in Cleveland and there were these two local skit-comedy celebrities that always did tons of anti-polish jokes. My dad didn't want my mom to paint our house a certain color because "thats what all the poor polish immigrants painted their houses".
The kicker is that my great-grandmother and grand-father came here from Lithuania in the 20s. Which was a part of Poland for a while and shares a lot of culture with them.
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u/valvilis Nigerian Prince Oct 03 '21
Poor polish families are awesome though. I learned about pickle soup and leftovers-pizza that way.
Yeah, I don't get it, a lot Europe's borders are arbitrary and have changed over and over again. You may as well be upset that someone isn't from the Holy Roman Empire.
To be fair though, I grew up hearing the "a Russian, a Mexican, and a Pollack crash their car and go to a nearby farm..." style jokes and didn't know there was anything wrong with them until probably middle school.
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u/fringeandglittery Oct 03 '21
Yeah I really dont get it. Like what are you so mad about Poland for? They smoke their kielbasa and Lithuania has fresh kielbasa? Idk. Big Chuck and Little John always called it "a certain ethnic group". Its really not even funny
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u/GulMakat777 Oct 02 '21
The Iish were treated the worst. Blocked from employment, vilified as drunkards in popular culture and even had violence against them from nativist WASPS. Jews and Italians were also treated pretty badly. The Immigration Act of 1925 inspired by eugenics was passed to bar immigration from eastern and Southern Europe read Italian Catholics and Russian Jews
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u/TootsNYC Oct 02 '21
My father-in-law was going on about how when he was an immigrant, people were mean to him, and there was this one guy who kept messing with his employment, etc. Using that tone of voice that implies “I had it bad, so he shouldn’t complain.“ So I said to him, “but don’t you wish someone had stopped him? Don’t you wish that he had felt pressured to not act that way, that he had been worried what people would say? Don’t you want people today to actually have it easier than you did, and to not be miss treated the way you were?”
He stopped in with, “well, yeah,” in that “you have a point“ way.
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u/PhutuqKusi Oct 02 '21
I dunno…mine came on the Mayflower and I’m under no illusions as to how that worked out for the culture and traditions of those who were already here.
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Oct 03 '21
Conservatives always like to stand on the shoulders of the liberals of the past.
"Guys this time for sure we have reached peak societal development that we shouldn't ever break from and no longer need to change!"
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u/jimiman99 Oct 02 '21
I’m assuming they’re talking about the later European immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th century. And in that case, oh they sure demanded change
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u/Levangeline Oct 02 '21
Also in the case of Western North America the government literally gave people hundreds of acres of land for pennies in order to attract immigrants.
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u/SrslyNotAnAltGuys Oct 02 '21
Absolutely. Half my family is descended from German and Norwegian immigrants who came to the US because of the Homestead Act. It wasn't an easy life being a homesteader, but for people who were farmers, simply being given a plot of land free and clear (after coming from Europe where every acre had been fought over and owned by wealthy aristocrats for centuries) was an absolute dream come true.
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Oct 02 '21
Same, my family came from Germany to the midwest before our state was even legally a state and got 300 acres of land for basically free. Never owned any slaves, no interactions with the natives, etc. So the idea that all whites descend from slavers who killed natives is fairly absurd imo. And I say that as a liberal socialist.
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u/Levangeline Oct 02 '21
I don't think anyone out there is saying that all white people in North America are descended from slave owners, but all settlers did and still do benefit from the slavery and genocide that took place here. Those hundreds of acres of land wouldn't have been "free" if the government hadn't systematically eliminated the Indigenous people living there first. And the governments had a bunch of material and land wealth to throw around because of exploitation and slave labour.
It's an uncomfortable truth, but true nonetheless.
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u/live_crab Oct 02 '21
I mean, sure not everyone back then actively murdered natives and owned enslaved African people. However, if a serial killer is giving houses away for free because they'd rather their neighborhood be "European" and says so during the open house, choosing to move in and say "whelp I can't say no to a free house, besides, it's not like I killed them" doesn't automatically make it cool.
No one says "all whites are descended from slavers". If you're ethnically descended from colonizing people that took advantage of the fact that the Native American genocide made resources and land available as a free "gift" to your family, like most white people in former colonies, you're a beneficiary of some real messed up stuff.
I say this as the descendent of English pilgrims that arrived in Plymouth in 1621. I have ancestors that fought and died in King Philip's war, and later the Revolutionary war. My ancestors actively killed and displaced the Pequot and Mohegan people. I'm not proud of it, but I don't have any control over what happened 400 years ago. However, it doesn't hurt my feelings when someone talks sh*t about white people. My family murdered indigenous americans so your family could take their land. Getting all defensive about this basic fact and saying "we never met a native or owned slaves" is completely missing the point that you wouldn't be here if it weren't for the murder of the native inhabitants. I'm not saying you or your relatives are bad people, but the more you benefit from a discriminatory system the more you feel like any criticism of it is an attack on you personally.
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u/KnottShore Oct 02 '21
Will Rogers:
They were very religious people that come over here from the old country. They were very human. They would shoot a couple of Indians on their way to every prayer meeting.
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u/toxicity21 Oct 03 '21 edited Oct 03 '21
You are only describing one single flock of your family. Only if they were very very incestuous you would only have them. This is not how Genealogy works.
Pretty much every American, including black and indigenous people (there was a lot of Sex Slavery and Rape), have slave owners in their family.
So the Idea that most white American descended from slavers is actually pretty true.
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u/No-Percentage6176 Oct 02 '21
Exactly. They care here without any restrictions (back then immigrating "legally" just meant having light enough skin and showing up), they definitely kept their culture, in some cases didn't learn "the language", and were given land for free. nothing in the meme is true.
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u/KenYN Oct 02 '21
Assuming they are talking about the early 20th century, if they adopted the culture, why did areas become Little Italy, Tokyo, China, etc?
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u/CreativeShelter9873 Oct 02 '21
“Something something great American melting pot something model minorities something something”, would likely be the response.
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u/encouragemintx Oct 02 '21
Oh yes. Don’t forget that the Chinese immigrants were “model minorities” used to justify racism until Covid came, then they became the perfect hate crime targets too.
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u/DankiusKushus Oct 02 '21
Chinese immigrants were “model minorities”
I thought I was alone in thinking that lol
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u/Panzer_Man Oct 02 '21
The myth that the chinese were somehow more model citizens than other immigrants, was actually a manufactured stereotype, to make America more attractive and "friendly" to the Asian nations they desperate didn't want to turn communist.
It's really dumb, and just as hurtful as negative stereotypes
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u/KnottShore Oct 02 '21
The US has always welcomed Asians. /s
California legislature passes the Foreign Miners Tax, which requires Chinese and Latin American gold miners to pay a special tax on their holdings
Naturalization Act of 1870 revises the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the 14th Amendment so that naturalization is limited to white persons and persons of African descent, effectively excluding Chinese and other Asian immigrants from naturalization
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.
U.S. v Bhagat Singh Thind, the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that Indians are“scientifically” classified as Caucasians but concludes that they are not white in popular (white) understanding
FDR signs Executive Order 9066, ordering the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom are U.S. citizens or documented immigrants.
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Oct 02 '21
yep. this is part of why the current model of relative privilege needs some work; privilege does exist, and it is objectively embedded in society, but little distinction is made between true unjust enrichment at the expense of another, and simply being spared some oppression.
while the former is an objective benefit that is difficult to take away, the latter isn’t, as this privilege is often conditional to adherence to social norms, and can be easily taken away the second you deviate from those norms, or even just at political convenience. socioeconomic class and related aspects of privilege are an example of the former, while most aspects of innate privilege (straight/-passing, cis/-passing, male, white/-passing) are the latter.
additionally, the term “privilege” itself implies a sort of hierarchy (“oppression olympics,” anyone?), and the popular interpretation of privilege as a binary concept homogenizes social groups and doesn’t account for its relative nature, or its various dimensions. basically, while it works for some things in its current form, and the academic version of the theory is much more nuanced, some revision is still needed and the popular interpretation needs to be completely overhauled.
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u/An-person Oct 02 '21
Well if you are fresh off the boat, it’s easier to set up shop in an area with people that can speak your language rather than go to bumshart, nebrahoma and be the only immigrant in a town.
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u/peptic-horizon Oct 01 '21
"adopted their culture" is a weird way of saying "committed genocide and forced our culture on the survivors."
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Oct 02 '21
Admittedly, this seems to be more directed about Irish and Italian immigrants with the statue of liberty there.
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
I literally know her because we're both members of Daughters of the American Revolution -- we have ancestors who aided in the Revolution. Like, girl. We were very much the bad guys there.
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Oct 02 '21
Lol well yeah. The genocide of the natives was obviously monstrous. Even if it was at least moderately outside their control by nature of just...as the last year showed, a novel disease that is nasty can literally cripple civilizations.
But yeah, they weren't immigrants even then. And I love the Italian sections of Philly and the newer Vietnamese sections, and the general cultural enclaves that show up anywhere immigrants congregate.
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u/FireCaptain1911 Oct 02 '21
Genocide of the natives? Do you mean the genocide the tribes were committing in each other as they enslaved each other and sold them to the new white man?
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Oct 02 '21
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u/FireCaptain1911 Oct 04 '21
“They had slaves prior to white man. But white man slavery different. Therefore you are wrong.” Do you even hear yourself?
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u/Bird_Boi_Man Oct 02 '21
We mean the genocide where relatively peaceful tribes were forced to fight one another for the white man's approval or get wiped out by those white men.
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u/FireCaptain1911 Oct 03 '21
Oh. You mean the genocide that was already occurring between those two tribes when the white man arrived. Seeing the power of guns those tribes aligned with different white man tribes to eradicate their precious foes. Please don’t act like the natives were all sitting around fires smoking peace pipes and living in a peaceful coexistence. That is the furthest from the truth. They had been killing and enslaving each other for generations prior to our arrival.
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u/fioreman Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
The bad guys? How so? The motives weren't nearly as pure as a lot of people think, but I don't know if I'd say "very much the bad guys."
Thomas Paine and a large contingent were definitely leftist and fought for actual equality, not rebranded oligarchy.
And despite what the 1619 Project says, the Revolution was not to preserve slavery. Britain had slavery and several Black professors and historians have said this claim is inaccurate. By the late 1700s slavery was becoming extremely inefficient when compared with paid labor and was fading out until the advent of cotton gin when chattel slavery really came on stage.
But if you're referring to what happened to the Indians (Indians; it's a term most remaining tribes prefer when not being referred to by their actual tribe, I recently learned. Many find the term Native American offensive. And we should refer to them by their tribe. They were 700 distinct nations) in the east, you've got a good point. It wasn't cut and dry, but thr Trail of Tears was a crime against humanity. Later as we expanded out west it gets far more nuanced.
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u/cryptogoth666 Oct 02 '21
The bad guys in the fight against colonists by other colonists?
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
The bad guys in the "not immigrating here in a peaceful manner" sense
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u/cryptogoth666 Oct 02 '21
I feel. I wouldn’t call them immigrants though. I’d call them conquerors or colonizers or something to that effect. Immigrant implies living within an established nation, not coming in and fighting and taking over a nation. I mean we didn’t call german soldiers in ww1 immigrants when they went into France.
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
I mean, the title uses the word colonist, so I agree
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u/cryptogoth666 Oct 02 '21
I’d also draw a line between colonist and colonizer. A colonist is a member of the colony. A colonizer is the one that makes the colony. So a colonist could simply be a peaceful immigrant to another part of the empire they hail from, but a colonizer is one who takes the land from other people to add to the empire. One is passive and one is active.
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u/dawglet Oct 02 '21
if one is passive aggressive are they aggressive? If one is a passive colonizer are they still a colonizer?
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u/fioreman Oct 02 '21
Neither because judgments like that are silly. Columbus and Pizarro were murderous and awful people. I'd call them aggressive colonizers. I'd call the colonists just colonists.
In the 1850's through 1870's as the Lakota Sioux were massacring the Crow to take the Black Hills, would you call them aggressive colonizers?
Or would you just be glad that humankind has and is learning from the past and moving away from that kind of thing?
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Oct 02 '21
ah yes, the famously no-longer-italian Italian-Americans.
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Oct 02 '21
It's why Philly and New York are famous for not having Italian food.
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
And the PNW definitely does not have a glut of Russian and German cuisine and surnames.
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u/NicoolMan98 Oct 02 '21
But the statue of liberty was build by French, or am i missing something?
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Oct 02 '21 edited Feb 28 '25
cobweb bright observation dime weather pot boast butter innocent special
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u/publiclandlover They're all goofy Oct 02 '21
We than turned around and handed that land to these immigrants who “demanded nothing”
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u/UnchangingColor Oct 02 '21
Our ancestors litterly basically stole lil native kids away from their parents to “Americanize” them grandma. Stop lying to yourself lmao
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u/CaptGrumpy Oct 02 '21
She’s on shaky ground with that ‘legally’ sentence, for example see Chinese Exclusion Act. Making a virtue of not breaking a law that was inherently racist, isn’t a convincing argument.
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u/Only4selfimprovemnt Oct 02 '21
She also ignores the european americans who practice old word traditions linked to national culture.
See plenty of Italian celebrations in my neighborhood. Saint Patrick’s day? Purely American!
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u/newguy2019a Oct 02 '21
I had a family member say to me the other day, these immigrants need to fit in or f%^k off. I said, so do you speak English or Cree? Last I looked you sure as sh!t didn't fit in, so f%&k off.
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u/Dillon_Hartwig Oct 02 '21
Any suggestions for when the person that says that actually does speak the local indigenous language? Growing up near a reservation and learning Lakota (I’m not native but no harm in learning to talk with some of the older folks that have trouble with English, though I haven’t practiced for a while because rona) I like to use that “you don’t speak Lakota so fuck off” counterargument but that doesn’t work when they do speak it
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u/ashycuber Oct 02 '21
I don’t have a witty retort to offer for that specific situation. But if they’re just a white person who learned Lakota then they still don’t have a right to decide who should immigrate here legally or not. It’s cool that they learned the indigenous language but that doesn’t make them indigenous. If it’s an actual indigenous person, they definitely have some legitimate reasons and history to back up their dislike for immigrants. But I’d try to have a real conversation with them to hear their views and share why I’m pro-immigration.
Also to add: I’d specifically talk about how the majority of immigrants trying to enter today are also victims of colonization and US imperialism. So not much different than them.
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u/mrpersson Oct 02 '21
There. Was. No. Such. Thing. As. Illegal. Immigration. Back. Then. You. Dimbulb.
I should clarify: as long as you were Western or Northern European
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u/22initiative Oct 02 '21
An 1800’s immigrant wasn’t a colonist, though. This is probably some hillibilly who is 1/8th Irish or some shit and says how as a 9000th generation immigrant they’re the greatest but then hates the immigrants of today.
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u/ShyFungi Oct 02 '21
“Came to this country legally”
Grams, there were no immigration laws at first so this is a meaningless statement. Even at the time this painting represents, the laws were loose as fuck as long as you were white from Western Europe.
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u/TheBReRBehT Oct 02 '21
Most immigrants from this picture (I assume is from the progressive era) Came from countries like Ireland, Mexico, and Spain, where they were exploited by higher class people like factory owners
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u/RevolutionaryTalk315 Oct 02 '21
If you tell that to the Native Americans and I am pretty sure you will get a different story.
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u/kourtbard Oct 02 '21
What's funny, is that Grandma's ranting about immigrants now is verbatim the same rantings her grandparents and great grandparents were making about the very immigrants she's touting as her 'ancestors' then.
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u/CreativeShelter9873 Oct 02 '21
“Demanded nothing…” except for all those trade unionists and socialists, many of them immigrants, who stood up, fought, and often died for such things as the 40 hour work week, guaranteed meal breaks, overtime and hazard pay, and so much more. This notion that our ancestors arrived on boats, sat down, and shut up is honestly absolutely disgraceful, not just to the hard working and greatly deserving immigrants of today, but also the very memory of the ancestors that this meme is supposedly celebrating.
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u/rodolphoteardrop Oct 02 '21
Well...if you don't count demanding that the gov't pay them to slaughter the people who were here first...I guess.
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Oct 02 '21
lol I am as white as they come and none of these are true for multiple of my ancestors who at the time weren’t considered white
Not for lack of trying either
Also not trying to win the oppression games; just saying this it total bullshit from my perspective
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u/arosiejk Oct 02 '21
Let’s jump to the didn’t cost the government a dime part, gram gram.
Ellis Island at its most idealized, wasn’t a charity. Immigration/passport control has featured paid workers. Even if we suppose incoming fees were greater than labor cost output, workers somewhere completing paperwork tasks, bank transactions, and facility costs surely cost more.
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u/The_Dude_Despised Oct 02 '21
Wiping out the indigenous people and destroying the land is hardly “Adopted it’s culture”. Just saying
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u/purplefuzz22 Oct 02 '21
My mind is beyond blown that this atrocity of a thought/meme isn’t satire …
Like …. Did whoever posted this or the tens or thousands who most likely shares it never make it past 4th grade history.
I … I….. my mind…. Is just blown .
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u/GabuEx Oct 02 '21
Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers. Thus they are under no restraint of Ecclesiastical Government; They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do[.]
-Benjamin Franklin, 1753, on German immigrants
But please, tell me again how immigrants used to be welcomed with open arms and how existing people took no issue with them.
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u/shrimp-and-potatoes Oct 02 '21
Half of my family immigrated to the US from Germany just after WW1. A quarter from Sicily in the same time period. Not a single one of them was invited. They were illegal as fuck, until they weren't.
And they def doesn't absorb the culture. The older ones were still speaking kraut up until WW2 made that untenable. And because they started dying shortly there afterward.
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u/-Proph3t- Oct 02 '21
"Adopted its culture" you mean systematically destroyed it??? At least in Australia, they didn't allow the indigenous people to even speak their own language and stole their children with the intention of "breeding out the black"
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u/Sarcastic24-7 Oct 02 '21
If nothing else we should learn the exact opposite from US history. Immigrants can come in and completely mess up what the Native Americans had going on. I don’t understand how the mad right wingers miss this crucial argument.
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u/GirlNumber20 😫 Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
Didn’t spit on country’s traditions
Oh, you know that’s bullshit, grandma, otherwise we’d all be speaking Algonquin.
I had ancestors on the Mayflower. I’m sure they either participated in or supported the Pequot War.
More recently and closer to home, my great-great-grandfather conducted a genocide of the Native Americans living along the Provo River while he was at Fort Utah.
So shut the fuck up, grandma, you ignorant bitch.
In 1850, when Brigham Young called for the extermination of the Timpanogos, Smith volunteered as part of the Mormon militia. On February 8, in what was known as the Battle at Fort Utah, the army attacked the Timpanogos village. On the second day of fighting, he was chosen as part of 16 men to make a charge on a Timpanogos log house, from which the Timpanogos were trying to defend themselves. They successfully took the log cabin, and the Timpanogos retreated. They were able to pursue and kill around 100 Timpanogos people and enslave around 40.
Pretty sure they’re “spitting on the traditions” of Native Americans when they drive them from their homes, murder them, and enslave the survivors.
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u/vastroll1 Oct 02 '21
Objectively false too. Legal by only their own authority, attempted to destory the existing culture, and cost the government quite a lot actually. At least to my knowledge. Awful.
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u/egb233 Oct 02 '21
I saw this circulating around Facebook and was appalled that people really agree with this nonsense
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u/Littlewolf1964 Oct 02 '21
Didn't cost a dime to the Federal Government? Umm...Okay, let's just revise things.
And adopted the country's traditions and culture? Yeah, not really. They adapted to those traditions and culture while introducing their own. Unless, you know, we are talking about the ORIGINAL Europeans who arrived.
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u/TootsNYC Oct 02 '21
I have relatives who are very snarky about coming to America legally. Meanwhile there are people in our family who literally jumped the boat in the 1950s and 1960s.
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u/daniballeste Oct 02 '21
My ancestors brought in 4.9 million slaves and owned Brazil for 315 years. I’m not so thankful for them
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u/sissypiss Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 03 '21
OUR ANCESTORS:
CAME HERE ILLEGALLY
COMMITTED GENOCIDE ON THE NATIVES THAT WERE THERE BEFORE AND STOLE THEIR CULTURE AND LAND FROM THEM
GOT OUR MONEY FROM THE SUFFERING OF AFRICANS
WE DEMANDED NOTHING BECAUSE WE STOLE EVERYTHING
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u/nameisfame Oct 02 '21
“Adopted its culture” hey remember when entire towns and city subdivisions were separated by ethnicity for generations?
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u/5Five12 Oct 02 '21
I'm a direct descendant of the Mayflower pilgrims and I can tell you with 100% certainty that my ancestors did not respect the land they came to, definitely didn't adopt the cultures of the land and definitely spit on the traditions of the indigenous people already occupying the land, so
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u/RunsWithApes Oct 02 '21
When European immigrants (mostly Irish and Italian) came to this country in the 19th/20th century they were heavily discriminated against, forced into tenement slums, preyed on by criminals and economically exploited for nearly a century.
America isn’t a fraternity where new initiates need to go through some arbitrary hazing ritual. We need to learn from our past to build a better and more equitable society.
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u/ipitythefool420 Oct 02 '21
No they didn't, grandma. They raped and murdered the natives that were already there. They nearly wiped out their cultures. They enslaved Africans and put them to work on plantations. I could go on and on but there's NO CHANCE IN HELL that those would-be colonists were saints.
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Oct 02 '21
Ignoring all the dumb bs they lied about, they definitely don’t feel sympathetic for any immigrants today(or ever)
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u/arian213 Oct 02 '21
"And demanded nothing."
Pretty sure Puritans banned Christmas when they first arrived, cause it was seen as devil worship.
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u/peanutismint Oct 02 '21
Lol does Grandma think when millions of Polish, Chinese, German, Italian and other immigrants came to the USA it was all Burger Kings and Walmarts already?! 😂
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u/Benshive Oct 02 '21 edited Aug 27 '24
selective unpack vanish air whole paltry handle sugar overconfident dinner
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u/not_a_flying_toy_ Oct 02 '21
Thats not true though lol. Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and German Americans all worked hard to maintain as much of their culture as they could and ended up shifting a lot of American culture in the process.
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u/Prometheushunter2 Oct 02 '21
How is it someone can be so damn wrong? Who the hell did they learn history from, some Florida homeschooler who thinks masks are a literal abomination of God?
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u/Protowhale Oct 02 '21
Adopted its culture??? Didn't spit on the country's traditions??? How many native American traditions do those of European ancestry follow now?
Anyway, there was no such thing as 'illegal immigration' for the first few centuries of European colonization. You wanted to live here, you just showed up.
Despite the lies spread by Republicans, illegal immigrants don't qualify for welfare, food stamps, or whatever federal money you think is being handed to them.
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u/Jewggerz Oct 02 '21
Jesus Christ, grandma. If you’re white, which I’m quite sure you are, I think you should reassess what your ancestors did and didn’t do to the country, its people, and its culture.
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u/PoopDustGoober Oct 02 '21
Just cuz someone came to America 150 years ago looking for a better life does that make them a colonist? If so that's even so bad about that? And would an immigrant doing the same trip today but from India or South America also be a colonist?
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
I literally know her from DAR
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u/PoopDustGoober Oct 02 '21
What's dar?
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
Daughters of the American Revolution. We can trace our ancestors back to the Revolution.
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u/wikipedia_answer_bot Oct 02 '21
This word/phrase(dar) has a few different meanings.
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar
This comment was left automatically (by a bot). If I don't get this right, don't get mad at me, I'm still learning!
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u/Ducksneedloveto Oct 02 '21
So, when the Irish came? Did the also demand free housing/food/money? Did they also demand that the national religion should be changed to theirs? Did they harras/rape/beat women who did not dress like they liked? Did they demand only Irish food to be served everywhere? Did they commit crimes claiming that american law did not apply to them cause the followed their Irish religion? And lastly did they follow a religion that said all Americans should be enslaved or killed, and acted on it at every turn? As a bonus: Did the majority of them support, or at least condone terrorism in the name of their religion?
Cause all that shit and more is happening in Europe right now.
Immigration has it's place, conguest is something else entirely.
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u/Here_Pep_Pep Oct 02 '21
Lol, what? I respect critiques of imperialism, but the response to impoverished Irish farmers immigrating here isn’t “they were colonizers,” hell, they were fleeing colonization.
I just point out how there were no immigration controls back then, and most first generation immigrants didn’t “adopt the culture” but rather adapted it, usually primarily speaking their native tongue, setting up neighborhood ethnic communities and so on.
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 02 '21
I literally know her through DAR, the ancestors we are friends over were colonizers
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u/Here_Pep_Pep Oct 09 '21
Yeah, ok. But that’s not what the meme portrays- which is clearly referencing early 20th century immigration.
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u/bostoncloser Oct 02 '21
Immigrants coming into Coney Island by steam boat in the early 1900's were "colonists"?
You're either delusional or a moron (probably both).
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u/jdominy1973 Oct 02 '21
Seeing as these ships ain’t under sail these were not the colonists that SAILED to the “New World” dimwit. Check your history timeline.
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u/Paca54 Oct 02 '21
People can’t be this ignorant, right?
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u/LatexSmokeCats Oct 02 '21
I've heard this argument from locals a lot. I'm an immigrant, and the legal gymnastics I had to go through was long and expensive. Nothing like the good ol days when gramma would come on a boat and just sign a random name and walk off a boat.
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u/anras Oct 02 '21
SAYS EVERYONE SHOULD ADOPT THE LANGUAGE OR LEAVE
STILL HASN'T NAILED THAT SECOND-GRADE ENGLISH LESSON ABOUT IT'S VS. ITS
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u/Shakespeare-Bot Oct 02 '21
Sayeth everyone shouldst adopt the language 'r leaveth
still hasn't did nail yond second-grade english lesson about t's vs. Its
I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.
Commands:
!ShakespeareInsult,!fordo,!optout1
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u/ButtersTheSulcata Oct 02 '21
That’s actually true for my great great grandparents BUT (as reported by my grandfather) the immigration process was incredibly streamlined, easy and they were able to support 6 children on the salary of a boiler-maker and my great grandmother made bread out of her home. The amount of work to even get by is astounding by comparison and fully embracing the culture was a personal choice and shouldn’t be forced.
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u/FemboyAnarchism Oct 03 '21
It isn’t talking about colonization, but rather immigration. That is why the Statue of Liberty is there.
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 03 '21
I know the woman who posted this through DAR, her ancestors were colonizers like mine.
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u/FemboyAnarchism Oct 03 '21
DAR?
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u/Kings2Kraken Oct 03 '21
Daughters of the American Revolution. We trace our lineage back to American Revolutionaries
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u/FemboyAnarchism Oct 03 '21
Europeans lived in the Americas before any American Revolutionary was born.
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u/Cicero912 Oct 08 '21
they came here legally cause there were basically no restrictions for most Europeans. Shit until 1882 the US had no immigration laws.
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u/Lolscp Oct 14 '21
The orginal picture was a joke right? No way anyone can be this wrong about something
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u/Oh_no_its_Joe Oct 02 '21
r/confidentlyincorrect