Mar. 29th, 2006 11:13 pm
random items
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toastykittenThis is a really good post.
Insisting that people know English before we even allow them to immigrate is discrimination on the basis of social class -- and that discrimination is already one of the main sources of our immigration problem. Damn Foreigner had a great post recently on the difference between his experience as a legal immigrant and the experiences of the undocumented. The most important point he made was this: As a well-educated, skilled worker, he had a path into the United States. When we tell poorly educated, unskilled workers to "get in line," we're ignoring the fact that there's essentially no line for them to get into.
I picked up the San Francisco Bay Guardian today. It had an awesome interview with Paul Beatty about his anthology of African-American humor. Beatty studied under Allen Ginsberg! (It makes so much sense now.)
There was also a whiny review of two political blogger books by Tim Redmond. He liked the book, partially because it doesn't fall into the self-indulgent trap of arguing that the "blogosphere" is so important that the people on the inside are about to take over the world (and all the rest of us in the old print media are dinosaurs). Gee, I wonder what's bugging him? The following sentence annoyed me, though: The two men are particularly critical of the abortion-rights movement, and in some ways their strategic analysis is accurate. (There's not really any specific follow-up on that claim.) Can you guess why?
Today at my Dale Carnegie class I received a "Breakthrough Award" - which is a nice pen. Everyone in the class votes on the person they think has shown the most improvement in performance. So it was nice to get one, and to get validation that I'm actually improving in the class. I think I'm getting more out of the class than I expected to, but I wouldn't call it a life-changing experience. It's improved my public speaking skills a lot, and I think it's mostly because I'm forced to practice it every week. I don't know about other aspects of my life, though.
Insisting that people know English before we even allow them to immigrate is discrimination on the basis of social class -- and that discrimination is already one of the main sources of our immigration problem. Damn Foreigner had a great post recently on the difference between his experience as a legal immigrant and the experiences of the undocumented. The most important point he made was this: As a well-educated, skilled worker, he had a path into the United States. When we tell poorly educated, unskilled workers to "get in line," we're ignoring the fact that there's essentially no line for them to get into.
I picked up the San Francisco Bay Guardian today. It had an awesome interview with Paul Beatty about his anthology of African-American humor. Beatty studied under Allen Ginsberg! (It makes so much sense now.)
There was also a whiny review of two political blogger books by Tim Redmond. He liked the book, partially because it doesn't fall into the self-indulgent trap of arguing that the "blogosphere" is so important that the people on the inside are about to take over the world (and all the rest of us in the old print media are dinosaurs). Gee, I wonder what's bugging him? The following sentence annoyed me, though: The two men are particularly critical of the abortion-rights movement, and in some ways their strategic analysis is accurate. (There's not really any specific follow-up on that claim.) Can you guess why?
Today at my Dale Carnegie class I received a "Breakthrough Award" - which is a nice pen. Everyone in the class votes on the person they think has shown the most improvement in performance. So it was nice to get one, and to get validation that I'm actually improving in the class. I think I'm getting more out of the class than I expected to, but I wouldn't call it a life-changing experience. It's improved my public speaking skills a lot, and I think it's mostly because I'm forced to practice it every week. I don't know about other aspects of my life, though.
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