Word: contrastes
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Nevertheless, a lack of communication does not erode my international connections. Two Australians I worked with in Honduras came to New York City last year and I made a six-hour bus journey from Boston to see them for an evening. In contrast, for a year I’ve neglected to visit close high school friends who live nearby. When I exchange updates with folks abroad, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve spoken, I’m struck by how easily we can pick up where we left...
...contrast, the America that I knew growing up in California seemed to operate under different premises. What I have observed is a constantly evolving society that meets the immigrant halfway, thereby taking the edge off of the cultural confrontation and facilitating assimilation. What it has meant to be an American has been a work-in-progress for 200-plus years. Immigrants arriving here generally join family and/or move into ethnically congenial neighborhoods. They typically work in a commercial culture where, if need be, they can get by only dealing with their fellow countrymen. Television, radio, music, church services...
...Contrast this accommodating attitude with France’s, a country with a more rigid traditional culture that is perceived to be under attack. Universities in Michigan last year installed footbaths in dormitories to meet the needs of Muslim students who washed their feet before praying. France, by contrast, outlawed headscarves (as well as yarmulkes and large crosses) in schools. And in spite of wide gaps in achievement and employment between Arab immigrants and the rest of France, affirmative action policies have never been implemented and remain deeply unpopular. The positions and arguments of left-wing politicians in France...
...similar contrast can be found on the issue of “mind control.”Swastikas, among other offensive symbols, are banned in many European countries. Scientology has failed to obtain religious recognition in France, Germany, and the UK, among others, and Greece has banned it altogether. The mind-control argument in relation to burqas is easy to make. Absent the expectations of fathers, brothers, and husbands, what woman would choose to wear a burqa ? It deprives them of ordinary human interaction and makes them wholly subservient to the men in their lives. Burqas, it can be argued...
...contrast, the United States is not a society that protects its members against cults and perceived mind control. We tolerate the existence of skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan, flag burning, the swastika, and the hammer and sickle. We don’t interfere with the Amish, although their lifestyle represents a wholesale rejection of mainstream American society. We have a history of tolerating open expression of life-styles that are antithetical to mainstream values. Hippies in the 60’s were not only extremely objectionable to most of American society, but belligerent towards that society, and yet there...