Creating an Immigrant Community

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Clarissa

February 6, 2015

My Ukrainian friend and I got an email from a gentleman with a Ukrainian last name. The gentleman in question is a professor close by and he was happy to discover two more Russian-speakers in the area.

“Let’s meet and get to know each other!” the gentleman suggested. “You are the only two Russian-speakers I have discovered for miles around.”

We were also very happy to have been found by the Russian-speaking gentleman.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” my friend responded in her email. “Let’s definitely get together.”

“OK, let me forward this conversation to my wife,” the Russian-speaking gentleman responded, “she manages our social life and she will set something up.”

And at that point, both I and my Ukrainian friend immediately lost all interest in the gentleman.

“He could have turned out to be a Putinoid, so it’s better that way,” the Ukrainian friend said.

Nothing is more hopeless than trying to create a Russian-speaking immigrant community. Everybody is beyond nuts.

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17 responses to “Creating an Immigrant Community”

David P. Bellamy

February 6, 2015

A wife handling all social arrangements is a very common cultural phenomenon in the U. S. Maybe this person was just very highly assimilated into the American cultural milieu.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 6, 2015
  
  The wife is Italian.
  
  We are college professors, though. I expect a certain degree of sophistication. He is a man, talking to two women who are college professors and consequently have got to be feminists. He’s got to know that making this kind of statement will go over badly.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    February 6, 2015
    
    He could have said, “Let me talk to my wife and get back to you”, like a normal person would do. But he had to make this bizarre show of complete helplessness out of it. Brr.
    
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  2. b g
    
    February 7, 2015
    
    LOL, always have been impressed with the feminist tolerance of other viewpoints ;-D
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      February 7, 2015
      
      Tolerance is for wimps. Militancy is for winners.
      
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      1. b g
        
        February 10, 2015
        
        Hmmm, so you imagine that your childish lipping off should somehow matter to others ;-D
        
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        Clarissa
        
        February 11, 2015
        
        Others keep coming here in droves, desperate to hear my opinion. So yes, what I say obviously matters.
        
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musteryou

February 6, 2015

The wife setting something up sounds very conservative to me. I don’t find such conservatives good company.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 6, 2015
  
  And the way he worded it is just too bizarre. I don’t care how they organize themselves in their relationship but I’d like to be spared this “I’m such an obedient little boy” spectacle.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    February 6, 2015
    
    The funniest thing is that the wife actually got back to us and invited us to a charitable dinner to advance the association of Italian Americans.
    
    Nuts.
    
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  2. musteryou
    
    February 6, 2015
    
    Lot of nutters in the world
    
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  3. musteryou
    
    February 6, 2015
    
    I think that academic and so called “leftwing” men generally do not understand the critique of patriarchy. Getting back to my experience, I found that I wanted some moral support in the face of people, trolls are family members alike, alledging the I was “emotional”. This was a simple need. Stand up for me and with me so that I do not feel pulled down by a slur on my character that makes me unrecognisable to myself.
    
    However there are those who have a strange notion of objectivity, which they counterpose to subjectivity. They imagine that individuals are biased and have no access to their own inner lives but that observers are always impartial and politically neutral. These implicit assumptions unravel all their calculations and make them wrong indeed. Uni professors tend to be very blind in this area of the ideological loading of meaning on the basis of the implicit paradigms they hold. They don’t do the self-analysis because they are intellectually arrogant.
    
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lamestllama

February 6, 2015

Maybe his wife is a psycho who might be insanely jealous of him meeting other women.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 6, 2015
  
  Hmm. As an insanely jealous psycho, I have now got a strong compulsion to ask my husband what he would respond in such a situation.
  
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  1. valter07
    
    February 7, 2015
    
    Can you be sure he dares answer truth? 🙂
    
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Jones

February 7, 2015

Couldn’t they just do the English solution and meet at the pub? 🙂

They could even bring cricket bats if there are zombies in the forecast …

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n8chz

February 7, 2015

To my American ears, this fellow sounds like the 1950’s “Organization Man” stereotype. If his wife is his de facto social secretary, they’re like Paul and Anita Proteus in Player Piano.

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