A dogwhistle

[azurelunatic]

Hearing "foreigners" said in that tone of voice, the one that's inviting complaints about How Hard It Is To Deal With Foreigners who are Taking Our Jobs or Just Being Different, makes me profoundly, profoundly uncomfortable.

Comments

[asciident]

YES

"foreigners" definitely, but with parts of my family "hispanics" or "orientals" D:

My hometown is like 40% latin@ at this point, my own FAMILY has latin@ children, but still the comments with that tone of voice... nails on a chalkboard and always bracing for whatever horrible thing (subtle or not) they say next

[lilysea]

Urgh. :(

The only reason my country (Australia)
- has veges other than lettuce/tomatoes readily available at shops (seriously in 1950s Australia capsicums and cucumbers were exotic and hard to find, it was Italian and Greek migrants who brought us decent veges, followed by Vietnamese migrants);
- has great restaurants
- has great coffee;
is successive waves of migration.

So whenever I hear people bad mouth migration I'm all

"You hate tasty, varied food? You hate cultural festivals? You hate seeing people on public transit/in public spaces wearing interesting, colourful clothing? You hate primary/highschool/university students having a diversity of experiences and opinions to learn from and broaden their worldviews?"

Plus, my local fruit and veg shop is run by people who've recently migrated here, as is the post office, the bakery, the lunch bar, the newsagent, and two of the local takeaways - so without them, this suburb would be an absolute desert.

[wibbble]

More to the point, the only reason the US, Canada, Australia, etc, have *white people* is successive waves of migration. I never fail to boggle at how the people who spout this bullshit always seem to overlook these small details.

[batrachian]

o/~ There'll be blue lights flashing down the long dirt road when they ask me to step out /
They say we be looking for illegal immigrants can we check your car /
I say you know it's funny I think we were on the same boat back in 1694 o/~

("Shame on You" - Indigo Girls)

[silveradept]

Oogie. I know that tone, and I have always tried to distance away from anyone who says things in that way.