chapotraphouse

My mom sometimes tells me an anecdote from her early days as an American in Norway. I don't remember exactly how the anecdote goes, but it was something like that my mom listened to some guy she knew, an Frp politician (think right-wing populists), go on some sort of anti-immigration spiel. And she said in response to this spiel, basically, "Uhm, I'm an immigrant...", and the guy replied, "Yeah, well, I'm not talking about immigrants like you." — I think that when pressed about what he meant that he qualified it as something like "unskilled migrants" or whatever other dogwhistle for

As far as I remember mom and this politician are still in touch to this day and more or less amicable, but my mom definitely thought that this guy was being kind of a racist (which he was, obviously). Frankly, if I were in my mom's shoes I'd probably avoid talking to an Frp guy at all if I could avoid it, which is why I've never tried to get this politician into my own social life — but I do thank him for my authentic Soviet-era KGB vodka flask. At least I think he was the one who gave that little trinket to me when I was a kid, which I think is actually what started my pet interest in Russia/USSR that eventually culminated in... y'know.

I don't know where that flask went off to though.

In any case, whatever, if my mom wants to be friends with a racist, then that's her problem. Mom came here in the '90s and basically has never given a damn about where someone was born, because she's always known fully well that Not Being Born Here was something that in practice gave her a lot more in common with someone than whether that Somewhere Else happened to be in West Africa, the Middle East, Latin America et cetera et cetera. Mom has always thought of herself as an immigrant and has done a lot of good work to help others in this ever diverse community that comprises an ever larger share of this nation's population.

Sometimes I myself think about moving to ol' Mni Sota Makoce, where mom was born. And sometimes I think about the inevitability of running into an "I'm not talking about immigrants like you" type situation if I ever were to live in Mni Sota Makoce... And I'm like, damn, what would I have to do for racist kkkrakkkers to actually be talking about immigrants like me, right? Would I have to wear a bunad 24/7, refuse to eat anything but the traditional cuisine of Eastern Norway, and refuse to speak English? Would I have to refuse to salute any flag but those of the municipality where I grew up (she will rise again!) and my adopted homeland of the Seven Council Fires? Would I have to become some sort of in-your-face reconstructionist Norse pagan such that kkkrakkkers couldn't talk about "Judeo-Christian values" or whatever?