May I see your papers, citizen?

A cry of cretitude.

"cretitude- no dictionary results "

What does the "d." stand for, Osso ?





David

The sound of his voice saved... .

Wouldn't have saved a lot people I knew in San Angelo or Robert Lee, Texas (there's a dot on the map for you.) They were native born Americans who spoke Mex-Tex Spanish ninety percent of the time to their family, neighbors and their pastor. (I worked with a local Catholic priest in Robert Lee.) They could read enough English to follow highway signs and such, but not much else. Their kids went to the local school. They did their schoolwork in English, but at home, spoke the language of their parents. They listened to Spanish radio out of San Antonio.

I met, but never got to know well, two Native-American families who laughed when I asked if they were Comanche. "No,'' they said" you never heard of us. We're Caddo." They spoke a kind of Caddo/Mexican/Spanglish to their kids and the kids spoke it too.

(During one conversation between some Anglo Texans and some Chicanos, both of whom were making the claim of first presence in Texas, I reminded them that the Caddo, the Comanche, the Tonkawa and others were in Tejas thousands of years before anyone from anywhere else arrived. Maybe they should have asked for Coronado's papers.)
===
The same is true for my present neighborhood, not far from you, David, where, in the building next door, are more Russian speakers than English, where across Broadway no one speaks English at first, even at the Radio Shack, where in my own building people who have lived in the city for years and years speak excellent Peruvian but have a little difficultly understanding one of our new buyer-owners who is from Spain.
===
Btw: If this was the law in NYC, I don't have anything that I carry on me which proves my legality in the country. I have a driver's license, so? Voter registration card, SO? Aetna Insurance Card, SO?
Where do any of them say "Born in the USA" ?

Take me down to the Tombs before shipping me out to somewhere that will have me.

Joe(Arizona, mebbe, where they won't ask my white ass for ID.)Nation

Actually, our ID-card only says that the holder is a German citizen. The place of birth is mentioned, not the country of birth, as well is the nationality.

And since you can't stamp visas on that card, you have to have a passport for countries where you need those.
In the USA, when leaving, you have to give back your "entry ticket", which was stapled on a passport site.

Walter(seeming to be the USA illegally since two years)Hinteler

I seem to be missing something here. Without seeing your papers first, how would police officers know that you're a citizen, and that they don't want to see your papers?

I was only expressing the opinion that those of us who have English
as a first language probably will not have much trouble with the police of Arizona,
even if (as in Ed 's case) we 've been darkened by the sun.

I did not take the next step to allege that all American citizens
have learned English as a first language; u have shown that such is not the case.

I am confident that the Legislators and the Governor of Arizona
knew that enactment of this law 'd have consequences at the ballot box.
Many laws do.
Presumably, thay expect to deal with that for better or for worse.





David

There are people, newly arrived from other countries, who, because they learned English from Americans, speak with impeccable American accents.

There are also people who speak with impeccable "Oxbridge" accents because they were taught English by British citizens.

There are also people from smaller countries, whose appearance belies no specific 'racial' or 'ethnic' background who speak with accents that are difficult to place. For example, I met a man from Hungary just yesterday. He was about 6' 2", had shaved his head due to balding, had a medium complexion and features that might have been 'Caucasian' or 'mixed race.' What would the AZ state troopers do with him?

Districtist, sure. Consider that there are Americans whose spoken language you or I do not understand. I have to work hard to understand many Southerners.

Frankly, an accent could simply be an indicator of how acute the person's "ear" is. Think of Meryl Streep.

It's not really wild talk. Beginning with my daughter's high school graduating class, I noticed that the kids who were on the bottom of the academic pile were criminal justice majors. Many of the CJ majors are in remedial or developmental classes. At least half of them, given "why I chose my major" as an essay topic, write that they like to have power over others. It is true that the other half writes that they wish to serve their community, but the power seekers are frightening.

And, of course, there are people at the bottom of the academic pile who will do well. There are so many fields for which an academic preparation is unnecessary. Retail comes immediately to mind. In fact, there is no field in which personality is not an important factor.

And, yes, there are people who achieve well in school early on who do miserably later. I went to college with a woman who was the Catholic college equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa and who earned a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship who was not accepted to graduate school. Her basic problem was a total lack of social skills. Late in August, the nearest state university finally accepted her. My daughter went to high school with a girl who did all honors level classes and who finished in three years. She wanted to major in theatre but no college accepted her. A year later she was admitted to a school as a sociology major.

And, finally, there are people in the upper ranks who don't succeed because they either too dreamy . . . too stereotypically academic . . . or because they have Ph.Ds in over-crowded fields.

All this leads us to the notion of stereotyping itself. A great many stereotypes are based on facts and there is a germ of truth in each stereotype.

The work that scientists have done on DNA has thoroughly discredited race as a scientific construct. However, race remains a social construct.

The people of Mexico are highly mixed. There were several indigenous groups that mixed, of course, with the Spaniards, to varying degree. There are still Mexicans who are proud to of their Spanish ancestry just as there are Mexicans who boast of being mostly Indian. There were also strains of French and German settlement in Mexico that stirred up the ethnic brew even more.

I suspect that this new law, for the most part, will find its practical expression
within contexts of the police having had their attention attracted by circumstances
other than immigration, e.g., brawling among non-speakers of English that happen to speak Spanish.
THAT probably will merit further inquiry.
This will also apply to criminals found during acts of robbery or of burglary by said
non-speakers of English that happen to speak Spanish.

There may be other circumstances; e.g. tips from a helpful informants.





David

Within the US, a passport is the most highly regarded form of identification and is considered the least "fakeable."

My objection is the duplication of effort. Just have everyone obtain a passport.

O, yeah, right; no races. Wanna buy a bridge, Professor ?




OK, as long as thay are mixed and proud SOUTH of the Border, down Mexico way.
Let them boast all thay want.





David

Good points and a funny remark about Coronado

Just remember how many of those situations later turn out to be false. . . how many brawls never happened . . .how many informants are piqued neighbors or coworkers . . . or how many witnesses counter the police version.

You seem to have an active dislike of science. Any time scientific discoveries are mentioned or when commentary veers off toward the mention of carcinogens or demonstrable environmental stress, you admit to having no knowledge of the matter. Here, you pooh-poohed the scientifically demonstrated reality that race among humans has no basis is reality. A person from Sao Paolo is closer genetically to a person from from Bejing than a poodle is a to a collie.

And, don't misquote me. I did not say that there are no races, but that race is a social construct. Scientifically, race can not be found.

That does not matter; those events only COMMENCE an investigation;
some results will go one way and some results will go the other.





David

South of WHICH border?

There are many people of Mexican descent who are as much American citizens as you are. Some US citizens living in Arizona had Mexican great-grandparents even though their family never moved.

No, its just that u like to try to clothe leftist propaganda nonsense
in the fony disguise of science. NO sale.
The nazis and the commies tried to do that.





David

Use a little imagination David.