2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.
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3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a fixture.https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Assimilation-Immigrants-Changing/dp/0520295706 …
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4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).
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5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".
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6/As the children and grandchildren of each wave of immigrants become fully incorporated into American society, being conflated with their immigrant ancestors can lead to persistent racial divisions...which is probably why the character began to upset people as the years went on.
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7/ At the same time, the advent of Trumpism, and the capture of the GOP by anti-immigrant, anti-diversity forces, will significantly curtail the immigration that defined the America I grew up in.
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8/Whether this will speed the integration/assimilation of the descendants of recent immigrants, or lead to permanent racial divisions, remains to be seen.
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9/But both the Trumpians and the opponents of permanent-foreigner stereotypes seem to agree on one thing: the America of the 1990s and 2000s must end.
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10/The end of Apu symbolizes the end of that ephemeral, transitory, beautiful, immigrant-defined America. Where we go from now - toward full and equal incorporation of the descendants of immigrants, or toward exclusionary white supremacy - remains to be seen. (end)
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it's a shame, since they could have been clever and have Apu retire and hand the business to his hipster millenial NYC desi nephew. Think of the fun they could have with breaking stereotypes.
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My interpretation is that the showrunners canceled Apu as a way of straddling the fence in the culture wars...just as America is straddling the fence.
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I asked my Indian-American parents years ago what they thought of Apu's accent, and they said "what accent"?
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Fat Tony and Luigi are accepted caricatures of Italian Americans---it doesn't hurt that their skin tone helps assimilate thempic.twitter.com/Y3eWzV11Zh
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I'm wondering why the Simpsons' Italian American stereotypes (mobsters who literally are seen discarding bodies fairly often) are allowed to remain if Apu isn't. And there's probably more stuff like that if you look a little.
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Are there lots of Italian Americans complaining about fat Tony? Do you find him offensive? I do wonder what people in Scotland think of groundskeeper Willie (and so I married an axe murderer) but both of these characters are unrealistic. Apu is... Too close to real. Punching down
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The whole show of the Simpsons is stereotypes. Homer of course the main example, but basically every character. This is a bad decision
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I think the decision doesn't make any sense. Apu was the example of a successful inmigrant integrated in the community. I agree with the author of this video about the topic.https://bit.ly/2yQBtF3
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It's inevitable that media is going to age badly. The appropriate response is to let shows die before 20 years have passed, not let them shuffle on as zombies covered in profit-spittle.
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