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by nostrademons 3188 days ago
Eh, I don't blame them, but I also don't blame the high-income highly-educated immigrants for feeling derisive toward people whose only asset is that they're American. I think Tom Lehrer's 1967 observations are still remarkably on-point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY

1 comments

I think it's pretty hypocritical. India and China certainly don't subscribe to the "credo nation" concept that American elites have embraced. In Bangladesh, when we speak about other Bangladeshis we identify precisely where in the country their families are from. (It'd be like making it a point to note that someone was from Texas or Virginia.) But when we speak of people from outside the country, we call everyone "bideshi" ("foreigner"), regardless of nationality. An American could move to Bangladesh as a young child and live there her whole life, but she'd always be "bideshi."
Do people from West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, who speak Bengali count as bideshi?