I know, right? WTF? I live here in Texas, and I am continually appalled at Texans’ idea of what proper behavior regarding other cultures is.
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The common French-speaker might not go in for bullshit; but I’m not so sure about their ministry of frenchification. Those guys hammered out one of the most horrifying keyboard layouts in commercial use.
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I wouldn’t know about that. I’m just a hairy Yank from down south, oo oo ah ah, scratches self, bites croissant.
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In case anyone on BB wondered who kept voting Michele Bachmann into the House of Representatives, “working class white people in Coon Rapids, Anoka County, and other southeastern parts of Minnesota but north of the Twin Cities who are suspicious of African and Asian immigrants” was her bedrock constituency.
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I wonder if, for a Kenyan, the fact that the locals are substantially occupied by the looming Mexican Menace, and La Raza using their anchor babies to steal Texas(which we stole fair and square) by subterfuge for their ‘Aztlán’ acts as a degree of cover?
I assume that even the frothiest xenophobe has some sense of the value of prioritization; and Texas certainly has a lot more to keep a nervous white nationalist busy than Minnesota does. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the warmest of welcomes; but being the non-scary other, when there is a much more plausible Other around, might well make it a lot easier to avoid being the center of attention.
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Same here. I spent three weeks there and did not encounter a single person who did not speak English. In fact most of my attempts at Dutch (in the Bruges area) were instantly responded to in better English than I speak myself. Immensely frustrating, since I’m trying to learn Dutch! 
I think the only person I ran into who didn’t speak good to perfect English was a recent Syrian immigrant, who looked at me like I had two heads when I spoke to him in my lousy Arabic.
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Best part of last week was ordering black bean tacos in Spanish the other day and having the waitress come back at me with a burst of Spanish that lost me just beyond the first word. I hopefully didn’t disappoint her with my own lousy reply in Spanish, but the food sure was good. Oh, frijoles negros, you never disappoint!
Beyond that, in most of my travels around the world I’ve found locals who spoke passable, if not excellent English, and it always gave me that twinge of feeling like an ignorant American given that I couldn’t return the favor in kind.
And two years of German in High School? “Mein bleistift is groß und rot” is all I recall, and if that doesn’t get me attention when trying to order a beer in Munich, then I’m not sure what will.
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Part of it is that people feel threatened, and they feel threatened because they lack basic security and so are very vulnerable to things outside their control, and they lack basic security because the USA has decided that the basis of society is I got mine, fuck you.
(Australia has a better social safety net, so it doesn’t even have that much of an excuse.)
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Australia sends everybody it doesn’t like to Christmas Island, indefinitely. At least in the USA, we smash you directly in the face and destroy your modeling career. More direct. (except a few go to Guantanamo.)
Not likely for third-degree assault.
How many already knew what that piece of white trash looked like before you scrolled down to her image?
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They are. I work with a fella like this. He’s a good Christian man. Kind and generous to a fault. But I always notice how uncomfortable he gets when some of the temp workers speak among themselves in their native language. Not angry mind you, just uncomfortable enough to mention it to me because I’m fluent. I always have to assure him they’re not talking about him. Just the usual ladies’ small talk. He would never say anything to them about it. He’s too well mannered and always respects them. He has no reason to think they would be speaking about him. I guess it’s just human nature or culture clash shock. Many people who don’t live in big cities have little interaction with immigrants. Having grown up in the northeast I’ve been around immigrants from all over the world and what I’ve learned is, people are people. The same small talk, the same worries, the same aspirations for their children.
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Totally what dennismartinez81 wrote.
Also, quoting Miguel de Unamuno:
“Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling.”
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How is this different from stereotyping Muslims as suicide bombers because you just read an article about terrorism?
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You, my friend, seem to be indicating that the US justice system acts as a deterrent. I’m not sure that that has been proven to be the case.
“Other things going on” I think is a safe assumption. Sadder yet, maybe no other things at all.
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Didn’t California see an increase in violent crimes after the introduction of the three-strikes law?
As people with two strikes, who knew they were facing a hell of a sentence if caught again just said “to hell with it” and would commit much worse crimes. Because hell, if they’re going to go away for 20 years why not make the crime worth it?
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The French have their reputation, so I tried my best to use my highschool French when I visited Paris, and yeah, they replied in English. They knew a hopeless tourist when they heard one.
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After seeing the pictures of the victim, I’m guessing the attack had more to do with the headscarf, and less to do with the Swahili being spoken.
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Yup. I guess deep down, at my core, I’m a huge doofus. 
I personally lay more than a little blame at the constant barrage of Islamophobia from the news media. I obviously can’t say for certain, but I don’t know that it would have escalated this quickly if the woman wasn’t obviously a Muslim. Recently a woman in my town was attacked by someone yelling racist shit while he tried to rip off her headscarf while hitting her. Fortunately her husband and a random decent person were nearby and they managed to subdue the guy.
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