I was just reading this piece at the San Francisco Sentinel about The Dis-Integration of Europe – Big 3 are making a cynical hard turn to the right . Yeah, nothing new on the subject of integration and the constant alienation that immigrants (even more so Muslims) experience around these parts.
And here’s where personal anecdote becomes political statement. I speak Dutch fluently, although I have a pretty strong foreign accent (not to mention that I do lack the subtlety I have in either Spanish or English to add depth to my arguments). I learned the language mostly on my own, not through formal training. So, you know, as far as right wing politicians go, I am an “integrated non Western foreigner” (for new readers, it’s the classification the Dutch state has enacted for those of us who do not head from the so called “Western World”).
So, on Saturday afternoon I went to three market stalls looking for duck breasts. The first two stalls are owned by two different Moroccan families. I asked if they had what I was looking for and I was informed they were sold out. I approached the third stall and it was the one that belongs to a native Dutch “chicken specialist”. I asked him the exact same question I asked, in Dutch, to the first two Moroccan guys: do you have duck breasts? While the two non native Dutch had no problems understanding my question, the Dutch guy asked me not once but THREE times to repeat it because he couldn’t understand me. All the while laughing at me and looking at his co-workers standing by his side. At the end, and because I am short of patience, especially with xenophobic asshats, I resorted to an onomatopoeic representation of what I was looking for and I simply pointed at a random bird on display and said in my most obnoxious tone “CUACK CUACK?”. He laughed even louder and nodded no. I walked away.
But this, right there is what immigrants face from the native population when it’s about integration and acceptance. And you know, I couldn’t give a damn about the opinions of ignorant people or their willingness to accept my strange accent, but these are the attitudes that actually make Europe a very difficult place to live for a foreigner. If I had children, my children would be made fun of, precisely because of their accent. They would be denied opportunities, they would have doors closed to them.
All too often media is quick to point at the responsibility of foreigners to integrate. However, I rarely see the same burden placed on the native population to be accepting of those who are different.
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