Hatred or not, but there is difference in world views and cultures. When you bring people from, say 15th century Afghanistan, to your country, you cannot seriously talk about 'integration'. It is impossible. For example, contemporary Western society simply will not tolerate 'honour killings' mentioned by Jahn.
Integration seems to be failing everywhere in Western societies. I doubt, if the integration ever has actually occurred - maybe immigrant minorities were initially simply to small to elicit sufficient response from host societies.
The difference between Europe and the US on this assimilation of multiple cultures has this paradox about it, one that I don't think can be ignored:
White society in the US is the interloper! It was accomplished through the attempted genocide, conquering and internment of native americans -- it was built on the backs of African slaves in the 18th and 19th century. Strange that we whites could view ourselves as "hosts".
I realize it's "realistic" to see it that way .. that the culture we brought is simply the conquering culture, and "that is that". But what is the conquering culture? My observation is that it is an amorphous thing in the US, this "white" identity -- it could mean anything: very few know the roots of their DNA...
What is its identity, beyond its deeply puritannical and christian roots? I couldn't even identify for you what is a good puritan, christian culinary dish!
It is the mixture of everything. It really is! Until that mixture is celebrated and embraced as a strength rather than a source of revulsion, there will always be trouble.
Most of my childhood occured in Paterson, New Jersey, 20 minutes from New York City. I would walk home from school and smell dinners cooking along the way. There was a Puerto Rican block, a German block, a Greek block, an Italian block, a Hebrew block: everyone's mother spoke a different language. Our neighbors came from India. I loved that as a kid, and I thought that that was the way-the-world-was, and when I came to the South, I was shocked at the sea of white people, all dressing alike. When my mother brought me to my Junior High School, I saw all the (white) girls, all wearing the same sort of shoes, skirts, and blouses, and I honestly exclaimed to my mother: "I didn't know this school had uniforms!" It was so boring and homogenized and soulless. And the call for conformity to it set me back decades.
Of course, I was a child and didn't know any better.
What is white culture? I'll be darned if I know! It's in charge, I don't doubt it, but what the hell is it?
You can say you're Estonian, Jahn can say he's Swedish, but we interlopers don't really know from whence we came. It's a rare few... I have no "traditional costume" I can bring out of the closet to celebrate. So what are my roots, what is my culture? Indentured servants, starving diasporans? Ancestors who were on the lam? Secrets no one dares mention: that's my culture. I don't think I'm unique there.
The political correctness is in this context merely an attempt to plaster over the gap...and monumentally sickening it can be with all its mindlessness and inability to acknowledge the real problems.
Agreed.