I'm still stuck in the middle of James Kirchick's The End of Europe. I just get busy, and I don't give myself enough time to read. Actually, I'm essentially exactly in the middle of this 230 page book, and the section where I'm bogged down is called "The European Union." The immediately preceding section was "Germany," and Kirchick isn't done talking about Germany, even though he's switched to a new section about the EU. Kirchick's writing is gorgeous, although somewhat dense.
At the moment, he's talking about emigration from middle eastern countries into the EU. Frankly, he's describing some bad behavior on the parts of the immigrants, and he's parsing the possibility that it would be unfair and inaccurate to ascribe this bad behavior (mostly misogynistic, but also represented by unemployment) to the Muslim culture, instead of just to comparatively uncivilized individuals. The theory he's challenging is that Muslims are misogynistic and possibly lazy people, who want everyone else to adopt Muslim customs, and they impose their cultural deficiencies on the people, and countries, around them.
This got me thinking about experiences I've had, personally and as a citizen of this country. On a personal level, I was born into a Jewish family, but I have never believed there is such a thing as "god," so I eventually gave up thinking of myself as Jewish, since I don't have the entry-level criterion: thinking there's such a thing as "god." And I have no affection for or connection to the non-religious cultural features of the "community," so there was nothing to hang on to. Am I a "mensch?" I certainly hope so. Am I a "goniff?" I certainly hope not. But this is because I care about other people. It has nothing to do with religion. And even if I did care about religion, what's that got to do with anyone else? The fact is that I have never known any religious person who was true to the tenets of his or her religion. They always manipulate, so they can do what they want, and find some excuse for it. Among the Jews, which is what I know best, it's called "rabbi-shopping," where someone wants to do something the rules of Judaism tell them they're not supposed to do, so they ask enough rabbis until they find one who tells them the rule can be interpreted to permit the person to do what he or she wanted to do, and that becomes their permission to do it. As best I can tell, the religions are sort of all like that. Unless the supposed adherent doesn't even bother to shop for an accommodating cleric, and they just do what they want anyway.
Anyway, to get back to assimilation and Kirchick, as of Kirchick's data as of publication (2017), he started this part of the discussion talking about how terribly women are treated in the middle east, then extending to some of the residual bad ways EU women are treated, seemingly by middle eastern-origin men. Kirchick, for his own reasons, is careful to try to propose that the ways these men/boys treat women may be unrelated to their Islamic culture.
But what if it was? What if people, in their "formative years," learned a number of things, including how to treat other people (they unquestionably do: that's my metier), and that's why they treated women in the EU the ways they and their families treated women back in the middle east? This raises much broader, and frankly more provocative, questions. If Muslims, for example, feel free to expect the world to function as if it were a Muslim place, why would we not say precisely the same thing about Jews (the more Orthodox, the more insistent), or about Christians? Muslims, Jews, Christians, or anyone else are welcome to live their own lives as they wish, but they seem unable to resist demanding that everyone else live as they themselves wish to live.
In various parts of various countries, Orthodox Jews live in relatively tight communities. Part of this is logistical, because they walk to synagogue on Friday nights and Saturdays, so they can't live far enough from the temples, and from each other, that they couldn't walk there. And maybe it's no big deal if you can't get a cooked lunch at an Orthodox-owned restaurant on a Saturday, because they don't cook on their Sabbath. You can eat somewhere else. But there was a time in parts of Israel where if you were driving during the Sabbath, the Orthodox vigilantes would stone your car. You have to live the way they want to live.
What's in many ways worse is the United States, where we anticipated this kind of problem, and we very explicitly separated "church" from state, and specified that there would be no government-backed religion. You can talk yourself blue in the face explaining that to the Christians. There's a population of them who will tell you this was always intended to be a Christian country, and it is one, and it should be run according to Christian tenets, as those tenets are massaged. That is very forcefully to say that you should behave as a Christian person might wish to behave, whether or not you're Christian.
It's not only religion, either. Many years ago, I was the Psychiatric Medical Director for a Community Health Center in what had become the traditional Italian section of downtown Boston. There were enough patients who didn't speak English, despite having lived in this country for decades, and translators were sometimes too busy, that I took Italian lessons in night school so I could communicate with the patients. I had a job to do, I couldn't not do it, and I couldn't always get a translator. In our area, there are loads of people who have been here for several decades, and still really only speak Spanish. Several people have suggested to me I learn Spanish, so I can communicate with them. Because they can't be bothered to learn English. About two nights ago, I was having dinner at the restaurant of a friend of mine, and I delivered one of my more common flirts to the waitress. She managed to ask how the food was, and I told her it was the second best thing in the restaurant. Usually, they smile, get the joke, or ask what's the first best thing. She was blank. My friend, who knows I do that, explained that her English is not very good. And she's a waitress in a restaurant that welcomes people like me, who don't speak Spanish.
Kirchick also talks about unemployment among immigrants. As I said, in the chapter I'm reading, he focuses on the EU, but he offers illustrative comparisons. "Across the EU, 15% are [were in 2017] unemployed," which he says is 5% higher than the unemployment rate of native born Europeans. Interestingly, he compares this to the US, where "just" 5.8% of immigrants are unemployed. This is/was 1% lower than the unemployment rate for native born Americans. So with respect at least to employment, immigrants seem to do better here than do Americans. They find ways to assimilate better, at least regarding employment. (It would still be nice if they learned English, but many of them do, and all of their offspring do.)
It's a mixed curiosity, then, about people and assimilation. As it turns out, Americans assimilate poorly, even in the US. They can't accept their own Constitution, they are tenacious about insularity, and they appear not to work as hard as do immigrants. And this is in the country where even born and reared Americans will boast of the promised fruits of work, and the endless possibilities. They can say it, but they can't bring themselves to do it. Not as well as can immigrants, who assimilate in whatever ways they can. Which is why they come here.
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