I’m a citizen of the United States.

I speak 4, besides American English, at various levels of proficiency, but I’m an American-born son of immigrants who splits time between the US and EU (my wife is Dutch). I also enjoy linguistics and etymology.

Even though this is anecdotal, every daughter and son of an immigrant diaspora that I personally know, like me in the US, speaks multiplle languages.

I argue this meme refers to an issue largely for Americans of European descent. Since a very young age, I noticed “white” people in America seem to be scared of “new” or “foreign” things. One of them is learning a language, trying to speak it in public with a native-speaker, and getting corrected for mistakes which will happen, including self-styled “leftists” and “liberals” (the American definition).

I categorize this specific phenomenon, this fear of embarrassment, as another facet or aspect of what some of my black colleagues back in the States refer to as “white fragility”.

Those people who look down on “Americans” should talk to more of us who aren’t of European descent. Perhaps, that may give some depth to your perception of us, or of what our capacity for a global perspective is.