It has come to my attention that something I tweeted with a heavy dose of sarcasm, and actually making fun of nativists who scream "ENGLISH ONLY!" all the time about Hispanics speaking Spanish, has been interpreted as a very serious, and deeply offensive remark.
I've deleted the tweet, because clearly people misunderstood the point I was making and where I was coming from. But a couple points of clarification. 1) I speak Spanish. I speak it pretty much every day. Part of what I was attempting to get at with the tweet...
... even if it didn't come across (obviously, and particularly to Americans who are bad at detecting sarcasm) was that I wished I'd been able to answer the guy's question. If he'd asked it in Spanish, I bet I could have because his Spanish was crystal clear.
I actually do not like being the person who gets asked things on the street by people who are lost or seeking information and shrugging and saying "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying." If we'd just been speaking Spanish, that wouldn't have happened.
2) I am obviously not a nativist, and anyone who thinks I am seriously lacks basic Internet research skills. I'm one of the foremost attack dogs who goes after nativists, and I've always been openly pro-amnesty (yes, I use the word!) and in favor of vastly increased immigration.
Anyone who doesn't know this can go ask people like Mark Krikorian at CIS and see how nativist or anti-immigration or anti-immigrant I am. The answer = not even remotely.
3) On which subject, it's worth pointing out the fundamental interpretation problem that I think existed with regard to this tweet. I AM BRITISH. British people are sarcastic. I'm married to a British immigrant (OMG) and British people think it's funny...
...to make fun of people we disagree with by faux-applying labels that apply to them to ourselves. A good other example that people can choose to get offended by: I have been known to crack jokes about how I am a big racist because I've generally never been fond of Belgium.
I also routinely refer to bossy members of my family as "big fascists" and sometimes even will call myself a proponent of domestic fascism when I am, for example, ordering my kid to get in the bathtub now.
For those who were offended by my sarcastic reference to myself as a "nativist" for being sad I couldn't answer a Hispanic immigrant's question because he honest-to-God sounded and looked Mongolian (we have Mongolian immigrants in this area, btw)...
... and he was asking in English instead of what would have been crystal clear, easily understood Spanish, I would respectfully suggest that a) you familiarize yourself with my own background and biography before getting offended and...
... b) if you're as concerned with cultural sensitivity as you purport to be, please do me a favor and familiarize yourself with my culture, too-- i.e., the British, highly sarcastic one. Get a Britbox subscription, and go from there. I'm serious.
There's only a certain extent to which I am willing to "Americanize" myself in terms of my sense of humor or tweeting. If you think I need to go further, I'd suggest you need to think about your own views about cultural differences and the superiority of American culture.
To the extent you buy into the concept of an "American culture" at all, that is... Nativists do. I generally do not, except with regard to an inability to detect sarcasm and a propensity to react like a Hollywood audience to Ricky Gervais poking fun at them.
If that's the particular standard that you want to foist on everyone, that's fine. I'll be over here in the corner making fun of the Mark Krikorians of the world using a heavy dose of sarcasm, in a foreign language while you remain offended.
Hopefully, this clarifies things for some of you. It probably won't for all of you. Some people just want to be offended, even if they're purporting to be "offended" by someone who is probably on their side on the exact issue in question but has the wrong letter after her name.
Anyway, I'm going to leave this thread here. Honest to God, I thought you all were offended because I said we didn't need stronger federal regulations to prevent interns at zoos being eaten by lions. (That, for the record, WASN'T a sarcastic comment-- so get offended about it!)
