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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Fun realization I made over the past 18 months or so after 6 years living in USA continuously: When you're white, you can't be an immigrant.

This whole time I thought I was a plucky immigrant seeking a better life (economically). Turns out I was and am just white. Still grappling with this.

Learning your identity was wrong is very discombobulating. On some level it feels like maybe I've been here long enough that I've become accepted? Nobody ever asks "Where are you from?" anymore ... guess working on my accent finally paid off.

Friends have repeatedly told me I'm not allowed to complain or comment because "I can pass". Feels like if that were true I wouldn't need to pass, but when I ask that question it's like their brain gets a blue screen.

Anyway, just sharing one person's experience. This is not commentary, a value judgement, or anything like that.

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Hey there just wanted to say : not everyone in America thinks like this. there is this strange brand of modern racism where people reduce everything down to a race issue even when it is not. Ergo immigrant = not white. Same type of people that will claim that a given communities lack of resources is because it is a black community, ignoring that the community is poor and that there is a white community not 20 miles away with the exact same problems.

Ironically, this seems to come from highly educated individuals whom I suspect have never 1) been to a third world country, off the resort 2) lived in a financially struggling household 3) worked an honest day of manual labor ever.

Kibda got off in a rant there, but just wanted to say, fuck anyone who says "you can pass" when you say your an immigrant. If you want to call them out in language their indoctrinated brains can understand, say "are you denying my lived-experience?"

I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify.

Cheers

> I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify.

As someone that grew up somewhere in the midwest (which isn't as homogenous as is often implied) and then moved to a stereotypically left-leaning coastal city, this was perhaps true in certain circumstances but definitely not others. I wouldn't bother with smaller towns/villages outside of the largest metropolitan areas (that aren't university towns) unless you want to feel prejudiced by a racial identity that's imposed on you, and reminded of that on a daily basis, but the same is true of these smaller towns in most states as well as countries in the west, in my experience. It's a bit idealistic to say that people in the midwest care less about how you identify if there are instead more that impose their own identity on you.

Yeah somehow I just don't buy that. Like ymmv but I've seen exactly 2 examples of actual racist people in the midwest.

But like yeah I mean I grew up in one town, lived 1 life, and im a member of the racial majority so take my words with a grain of salt I guess.

> im a member of the racial majority so take my words with a grain of salt I guess.

In that case, I probably will, unfortunately. The incidents I encountered directed at me almost never involved a witness who belonged to a racial majority, so if I had to guess you wouldn't have witnessed a representative number of them either. I suspect that's because most people are (thankfully) afraid of being seen as racist in public, so they're usually in a more one-on-one setting.

>Ironically, this seems to come from highly educated individuals whom I suspect have never 1) been to a third world country, off the resort 2) lived in a financially struggling household 3) worked an honest day of manual labor ever.

is programming the common denominator between them?

What do you mean?

I mean yeah a lot of programmers fall into that catagory but no theres a plenty of people in all different professions (including blue collar professions) that fall into the catagory im describing

Compared to this, it's fun to live and work in NYC. Here everybody assumes that everybody else can be an immigrant, or at least moved across the country to live here. But everybody also assumes that everybody else may be local, independently from the skin color, eye shape, accent, etc.

(I personally love this arrangement. I've seen it in several other cities, like London and Moscow.)

Happens for people leaving the USA (and other countries) too. They're not immigrants, they're ex-pats!

This doesn't mean the same thing though.

If they are working abroad with the intention of returning, then expatriate is the correct term.

No, in my understanding expatriated has two specific meanings:

1. Legally expatriated by a Nation/government. Removed from a nation's territory by decision of said nation.

2. Comission/Secondment abroad, where an employee of a government/company gets assigned to work abroad for a fixed period.

From what I gather the term expat has been appropriated in British-American circles, to somehow detach higher income immigrants from the 'immigrant' stigma. I think this became a de facto convention when Investment Banking and Retail Banks (in non english-speaking countries) started adopting the term 'expat' in customer branding, to target higher income immigrants.

When an English term sounds too shitty on them, the British reliably turn to Latin or French.

Work migrant is even more correct.

> Friends have repeatedly told me I'm not allowed to complain or comment because "I can pass". Feels like if that were true I wouldn't need to pass, but when I ask that question it's like their brain gets a blue screen.

“Friends”

It was meant as a friendly warning, I think. Like a "Make sure you don't say this in public or to people you aren't super close with, you'll be crucified"

Gross of other people to tell you who you are. I hope you swiftly told them to F off.

What is the question they are blue-screening on?

I think I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I don’t understand this formulation: “you can’t be an immigrant”. It sounds like you are, by definition, an immigrant. I wonder if this statement would more accurately capture the truth: “I realised that my experience is not aligned with some dominant popular narratives of immigrant life”. Or even: “generalisations of the immigrant experience are fraught”.

If people are telling you that you can’t “complain or comment” on your experience.. I’d suggest questioning what kind of people you are calling your friends.

> If people are telling you that you can’t “complain or comment”

It’s because any such commenting is immediately seen in the context of the current social rights battles. Immigrant implies brown or hispanic in most people’s mind. Since I do not experience that sort of prejudice (supposedly), any complaining is immediately seen as “distracting”.

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